Snake-oil.

Quote from: CRKrueger;913030A collectable rpg with a random reward mechanism?  I will never accept the CCG model in rpgs. Not for minis, and not for rules, not even as some kind of transmedia RPGAAS model experiment.

Agreed. I have never been interested in CCGs and the model makes no sense at all for the type of RPGs I enjoy.

I went back and looked at Monte's first kickstarter for Numenera. He used his name twice in the description. Then he was very earnest and humble in the updates.

Most importantly he delivered the huge finished product. I can see why some people want to give him money.

But he still isn't going to change how people roleplay. That sounds like pure marketing hype. I wish he would just say what the characters will be doing and the mechanics behind it.

Quote from: fellowhoodlum;913367Yup. He definitely priced himself out of my range for sure.  Nothing wrong with catering to an even higher level of the luxury market though I wonder how many backers are merely going to get it for the sake of collecting rather than actually playing it

I would not be surprised if more copies are purchased for colectibility than for play.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;913238THIS IS NOT A WHOLE NEW WAY TO PLAY

I was doing this pervasively in 1992 in my Shadowrun campaign.

FFS, Monte, WTF?

"Changing The Way RPGs Are Played": "Side scenes"

After reading the blurb and reading the solo gaming thread, I'm wondering about what he means by this:

"is game facilitates and encourages players to take (and resolve) actions away from the game table, either alone or as a group."

How can one resolve any actions alone unless he means GM + 1 player. The closest thing that comes to mind is blue booking/journaling, and what he says about one of his players seems to be in line with that:

"A lot later on, as an adult, I ran another D&D campaign. This time, I noticed one of the players was very quiet. She didn't seem engaged, and thus didn't say much at the table. One night, after a game, I approached her and asked if she was enjoying herself. I fully expected to learn that she wasn't into it. Instead, I got a half-hour discussion of what her character felt about the events of the game, the NPCs they'd met, the other PCs, and so on. In other words, what I didn't realize was that she had this whole rich inner life of thoughts and opinions, but had not expressed them at the table because she was not a big talker in groups of people. She was very much enjoying the game, but in a very different way from the other players. In fact, she was probably spending more time away from the table thinking about her character and the events going on than anyone else."

Maybe he's found an interesting way to expand these activities, who knows. Worth $197? Not for me, but I won't begrudge anyone who wants to pay up.

Didn't Monte retire from writing RPGs a decade ago...three or four times?

Slightly more seriously, I think that he does do a good job of delivering on his promises, but I'm rather amazed at the degree of success he's had at turning his name into a brand. In the RPG community, that's quite rare, or at least it seems that way.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;913443How can one resolve any actions alone unless he means GM + 1 player. The closest thing that comes to mind is blue booking/journaling, and what he says about one of his players seems to be in line with that:

Perhaps the phone app has some sort of resolution system.

Quote from: Harlock;913448Perhaps the phone app has some sort of resolution system.

An integrated notes system, to keep track of campaign events, would seem to be requisite.

Quote from: DavetheLost;913428I would not be surprised if more copies are purchased for colectibility than for play.

That's probably true for more RPG items than people around here would like to admit, especially the big and costly ones. I love Frog God Games' stuff, but how many copies of the Slumbering Tsar or Sword of Air have ever seen play at the table? Same with Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Frankly, I doubt commercial RPG publishers are big enough these days to survive without collectors. Even the big boys like Paizo rely on a very large percentage of customers who buy and read but don't play. The historical wargaming hobby recognized this long ago, and nobody seems to mind the customer base is about equally divided between collectors, solo players, and active players. They need all groups to keep the games viable.

I will admit to buying into the recent Mutant Crawl Classics KS more as a collector than a potential GM. Grimtooth's Complete and Cthulhu Wars much the same. Although I do hope to actually play the latter someday.

My group from college would have played this, and I would have tried to buy it then. We played the hell out of Kult which seems in some ways similar. Also a fair bit of White Wolf. But, today that group is dispersed, and I have other games that do what this one seems to do.

I still reqd RPGs for fun, even if I don't intend to play them.

Quote from: fellowhoodlum;913367Yup. He definitely priced himself out of my range for sure.  Nothing wrong with catering to an even higher level of the luxury market though I wonder how many backers are merely going to get it for the sake of collecting rather than actually playing it

There probably are quite a few. I'd be wary of picking this as an investment though. Depending on how the app works, it might be rendered unusable at some point.

Quote from: Haffrung;913518That's probably true for more RPG items than people around here would like to admit, especially the big and costly ones. I love Frog God Games' stuff, but how many copies of the Slumbering Tsar or Sword of Air have ever seen play at the table? Same with Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Frankly, I doubt commercial RPG publishers are big enough these days to survive without collectors. Even the big boys like Paizo rely on a very large percentage of customers who buy and read but don't play. The historical wargaming hobby recognized this long ago, and nobody seems to mind the customer base is about equally divided between collectors, solo players, and active players. They need all groups to keep the games viable.

It's been this way for a long time. When I was in gaming retail 20 years ago, there was a sizable number of regulars who never actually played anything. When I played D&D thirty years ago there were plenty of kids who got a Red Box for Christmas and never did anything with it.

Quote from: Baulderstone;913586When I played D&D thirty years ago there were plenty of kids who got a Red Box for Christmas and never did anything with it.

Track those little tykes down and tell them to put those dadgum things up on eBay. I could use a few more mint copies!

Quote from: Harlock;913590Track those little tykes down and tell them to put those dadgum things up on eBay. I could use a few more mint copies!

I already took one of them for myself. I started with the Moldvay B/X Purple Box. A few years later I was visiting a kid across the street and he had a Red Box sitting in his closet, still in the shrink wrap. He'd gotten it for a gift and had no interest in it, so I happily took it off his hands and spent an afternoon playing the solo adventure. I still have them, boxes intact and all. I have the Moldvay Expert book, but the box was flattened many years ago.  

Ironically, my sturdier AD&D hardbacks were ruined in a basement flood.

I just re-acquired a copy of C&S 2e at a con last weekend. Box is a bit battered but the contents including the original character sheet are still in almost pristine condition. Played the hell out of C&S 1e & 2e back in the day, even wrote for third edition. But our games and especially the sort of games I play nowadays often don't get any players who are so involved in the game that they'd pay 30-40 dollars for a rule book. It's mostly down to the GM to buy the material and the players reluctantly agree to play according to the amount of effort the GM put's into his elevator speech about the game setting and that's tempered by the likelihood of having to learn a new system.

Players generally seem to be stuck in a rut where the game system they first learned is almost the only one they'll play unless it's really, really simple and some won't even play any sort of narrative system as they have to think rather than hit the target even social interaction is 'I roll Charm or Charisma' rather than speak actual words in character.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;913464An integrated notes system, to keep track of campaign events, would seem to be requisite.

It would also have to track "rolls" made by the players and discretely share them with the GM's app.