Quote from: Settembrini;584660The more honest kickstarter would have been eerily similiar to what some of the great Old Ones (Kuntz?Mentzer? i forgot) once tried: Pays us for a year and pray we come out with something good.

Anyone whose answer wasn't "Nice try, Rob!" or "So why can't you leverage your fame as the co-author/editor of the best-selling RPG product, ever to get some starting capital?" deserves to get milked for all their money's worth.

Also, Eldritch Entertainment.

Quote from: estar;584653True, but you need to look at the past behavior of Wizards in regards to the OGL as well. For me personally I feel their past behavior doesn't leave me with much concern that they will take any type of action against an OSR publication, unless there is outright copying from older books.

Past behavior is not necessarily relevant, especially given that the OGL insulates more from copyright issues (for which the IP owner has more leeway about picking & choosing its defenses), but only barely insulates from trademark issues (for which the IP owner has no choice but to aggressively defend).

As an illustrative, hypothetical example (not that I feel WotC was/is setting up to do this), while WotC took no action against OSRIC in the time since its 2006 release, WotC could choose to take action against OSRIC _now_, specifically because its existence might undermine their sales of the AD&D premium reprints. And while, yes, OSRIC is based on the OGL, it is also a superset of the OGL, and the OGL affords no protection for copyright infringements of other material that is not explicitly covered by the OGL. So if WotC felt they could eliminate OSRIC on the grounds that it infringed their copyright on AD&D, they could attempt to do so in 2012, even though they chose not to do so in 2006.

Again: That's a totally hypothetical example where I'm illustrating a stance that does not necessarily represent my own viewpoint/opinion. Obviously there are a number of reasons why this sort of defense might be hard to pull off. It's just an example.

Quote from: Melan;584663Anyone whose answer wasn't "Nice try, Rob!" or "So why can't you leverage your fame as the co-author/editor of the best-selling RPG product, ever to get some starting capital?" deserves to get milked for all their money's worth.

Also, Eldritch Entertainment.

Here here. As I recall even Dragonsfoot gave Eldritch Entertainment short shrift when they were begging for money/free websites, etc.

I would also like to point out Kevin Siembieda. Look at HIS track record. Track record of GETTING THINGS DONE. Everytime he has more ideas than time. But if I look at the bookshelves...JMs contributions pale utterly in comparison.
Also, Kev's kickstarters indeed have been successes and product and extras were delivered on time.

Consider that before you shit on Palladium the next time...

Quote from: Settembrini;584678I would also like to point out Kevin Siembieda. Look at HIS track record. Trac k record of GETTING THINGS DONE. Everytime he has miore ideas than time. But if I look at the bookshelves...JMs contributions pale utterly in comparison.
Also, Kev's kickstarters indeed have been successes and product and extras were delivered on time.

Consider that before you shit on Palladium the next time...

Palladium's doing Kickstarters? :eek:

Also, this has got to be a joke. Even in an industry characteristic in which disregard towards deadlines in endemic, Palladium is infamous for its delays of years. Mechanoid Space, anyone?

This thread made me import my signature from dragonsfoot.    Never had a sig here before...

Lots of talk about ACK here, and I feel qualified to contribute to that discussion because I got an unsolicited free copy from the authors by email and this thread inspired me to read it.

In the interests of giving you a fair and balanced review, I did find some stuff on pages 117 and 118 that might actually make it into my own game.

I mean, my first impression was that the system is clearly misnamed.  If I'd written a book called Adventurer Conqueror King, it would involve adventuring, conquering, and being king.  This system ought to be called Manager Merchant Landlord, which is what it's actually about.  Adventuring doesn't seem to come into the equation at all.  Despite the authors' penchant for extreme detail, including for example seven pages about mundane equipment, they haven't written word one about dungeons or exploring or all that boring stuff that appears in other games.  They've skipped straight onto the subject they love:- resource management.

Anyway, after marvelling at the price tag, I skimmed over stuff I'd already read hundreds of times, and indeed written myself at least twice, before I made it as far as the first custom PC class.  The Bladedancer.  I quickly determined that what this means is "druid chick", and moved on.  My right eyebrow crept upwards as I encountered the Dwarven Vaultguard and Dwarven Craftspriest.  Then I read about the Elven Spellsword, and Elven Nightblade, at which point I had to stop and send out a search party for my eyebrow, since it had not stopped rising and was now lost somewhere above my hairline.

Once my facial features had recovered from this surreal excursion, I skimmed on, to Chapter IV: Proficiencies.  I noticed the existence of a Dwarven Vaultguard Proficiency List but could not read about it as my retinas went on strike and refused to process the World of Warcrafty crap before them, and thus temporarily severed their link to my visual cortex.  I was able to resume normal reading at page sixty, but then noticed the existence of the proficiencies of Dwarven Brewing and Elven Bloodline.  At that point I did the only thing I could do: I threw my laptop out of the window, shouting obscenities at the top of my voice.

Once I had had the computer repaired and apologised to the passing harmless elderly lady with the keyboard imprint on her face, I skipped on to the combat section.  Oh look, there's a Mortal Wounds table, and a Tampering with Mortality table that appears to replace the resurrection survival chance.  In an interesting and innovative twist, it now seems that being resurrected can now succeed, fail, or turn you into a vegetarian.

Special manoeuvres: Sunder.  I decided it was safer not to read that.  I've never read 3e but I still know a feat when I see one.

Chapter 7: Campaigns.  This is sposed to be the high point of the system, so I decided to check it out more carefully.  Some detailed-looking rules for magic item creation by high-level PCs.  Magical research throw.  This looks like a cash-sink, designed to incentivise player characters to build their magical research libraries at a cost of tens of thousands of gold pieces, and oh look they'll need a castle to put it in.  This is somewhat worthwhile, and desperately in need of a suitably hilarious Spell Research (Critical Failure) Table for the DM's amusement.  Pages 117 and 118 are worth reading.

Establishing strongholds!  How to attract peasants to your service.  Expenses.  Realms and vassals.  Chaotic domains, Dwarven vaults, Elven fastnesses.  Hideouts and Hijinks for the thieves and assassins---AHA!  This is something that actually leads to adventures!  Apparently once you have a Hideout, you get opportunities for Hijinks.  Which means you can be offered the chance to perform... assassinations... rumour-gathering... spying... stealing... oh.  Nothing that isn't already commonplace in D&D-derived rulesets, then.  They do have a system for resolving them!  You roll against the relevant skill and then collect your reward.  There's a table.

Taking over a criminal guild.  (You roll and add your Charisma modifier, Diplomacy, and Intimidation.  There's a table.)  Then, building sanctums and dungeons.  (Apparently mages do this in order to harvest parts from monsters.  This presumably leads to the mage giving lowbie adventurers quests such as "bring me ten mummy wrappings and I'll pay you 100gp".  Another place where the authors may have been channelling world of warcraft?)

Mercantile ventures.  Jesus Christ, I knew this was familiar, do you remember Book 2 from Traveller?  Someone published these rules in 1977.  These guys have converted them to a percentile system, turned the starports into towns and space into roads and starships into wagons, and then republished.  So your adventuring party can buy (rolls) a couple of bags of tea in Freeport for 150gp and sell them in Kingstown for (rolls) 162gp!  Rock on!

Apparently in ACK you get experience for this.  Provided it doesn't exceed your Class Level GP Threshold, of course.  There's a table.

Monsters.  Nothing new here.  Oh wait, there's a Phase Tiger.  No, that's just their name for Displacer Beast, there really is nothing new here.  Oh wait, there's a Skittering Maw (centipede with the head of a shark).  One new monster.  54 pages of text, which they're charging you for, and all you get is a Skittering Maw.  But the picture of the griffin eating the hobbits is slightly amusing.

Magic items.   Nothing new here.  No, wait, there's something new.  There's a page about buying and selling magic items.  A table called Magical Transactions By Item Class.

Chapter 10: Secrets.  Here's a lot of tables about how to build a campaign world exactly like the authors'.  Would have been more worthwhile if well-thought-out or original.  Oh, and special rules for making high-level player characters so you can skip over all the boring dungeoneering and get straight down to the merchanting and management!

-----

Sarcasm aside, the basic problem with Manager Merchant Landlord is that the authors do not have clue #1 about how real Feudal Kingdoms worked which introduces massive anomalies and problems.  They may know a bit about Ancient Rome (hence having rules for slaves but not for serfs, for example), but they don't understand the basic mediaeval paradigm.  You don't "attract" peasants into your fucking service!  Their population figures are totally borked (tens of millions of families?  Really??) but they clearly indicate that peasants are not a scarce resource.  Even if you did need to "attract" peasants, you wouldn't do it by making "agricultural investments" of tens of thousands of gp or holding "festivals".  You'd build houses with safe water supplies in communities that include schools and hospitals.

Overall, this is a game of mediaeval economic management written by people who don't understand mediaeval economics, superimposed on an admittedly tightly-written retro-clone. If you can secure a free copy, pages 117 and 118 may inspire a mildly useful house rule or two.  I have no clue why anyone would drop the RRP of $40 on it.

Quote from: I run with scissors;584579

QuoteAnd can you explain why you're claiming that these dates are "typos" given that both of these dates are, in fact, completely accurate?

Where is the 1 and 2 on a keyboard? Sadly, since you are so perfect and probably never made a mistake it must be incomprehensible for you that someone could very easily transpose two numbers while typing. In addition, if you feel that a transposing of numbers invalidates my argument, no matter how much you yell, rant or rave, you will not get me to admit my transposing of 1 and 2 as anything more than just that.

But there was no transposing of numbers. The dates you posted were accurate. Tavis' update was the 10th. Robert's post was on the 20th. Can you explain why you keep claiming that these dates are "typos" when both of these dates are, in fact, completely accurate?

For a pathological liar, you are remarkably bad at lying.

Quote from: Settembrini;584575Any damage to your own reputation is worth real money! So, why don't you do damage control and explain why you did not deliver the full product you promised for over a year? From a superficial scan I see you have some art difficulties?

I won't engage a tu quoque fallacy, but since you're asking independently here's the short version (which can also be found on my website):

The reason I went to crowdfunding was in order to pay for the art in the final book. Because of that, I was always very clear that (a) backers would immediately get access to a beta rulebook that didn't include the final art and (b) the final books would be published when the art was finished.

Because I was looking for money to fund art, I thought it would make a good funder reward to feature their player characters in one of the art pieces. In order to do that, I approached an artist and got a quote for what those pieces would cost. Based on that quote, I priced out the appropriate reward level.

Once the funding was completed, all the backers got the beta version of the rulebook I had promised. But then the artist who had committed to the specific funder reward pieces flaked.

I looked for another artist who could complete the pieces at the quoted price, but couldn't find anyone. So I contracted an artist at a much higher price and covered the difference out of pocket. (To be clear, however: Money was only due on delivery, so no money has actually been lost in any of this.) This second artist also flaked.

The problem is that it takes a long time to realize and deal with the fact that you've got a flaking artist. So months are dragging by.

Right now, I've got two different artists each working on a two different sets of pieces that will cover my legal obligations to my funders. (The additional expense of which will be covered out of my pocket.) As long as one of these artists completes their commission, we'll be moving forward. If they both flake, then I'll be looking to issue refunds to the specific backers in question and we'll move forward.

There's also an unrelated problem with two different artists flaking on the character sheet for the book. But that hasn't been holding up production of the final product.

Lessons I've learned: Don't promise specific backer rewards unless you've got 100% control over your ability to deliver those rewards.

Lesson I learned before launching this project: Don't promise a specific release date unless the creative work is done and in the bag. This is a lesson I learned back in 2008 with L&L. Which is why I didn't set a final release date for L&L and I won't set one until I have the final art lined up and ready to go.

It should be noted that while it's easy to say that my reputation is somehow "on the line", that's not really true. You're imbuing that lying sack of shit with too much authority. None of the people actually backing my project have questioned my integrity. The people who have contacted me with the most frustration over this situation are, in fact, those who didn't fund the project and wish they had some way to get access to the Black Book Beta.

Best therpgsite thread ever.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;584683But then the artist who had committed to the specific funder reward pieces flaked.

This is astoundingly commonplace. Want to know why so many RPG books have subpar art? It's because those artists are good enough, and can deliver the commissioned pieces by the promised deadline.

Writers, game designers, and artists who can hit a deadline with unerring reliability don't need to be geniuses to be successful. A certain amount of professionalism and a drive to produce on time go a long way towards making them hirable prospects.

(Or, at least, so I have been told by both publishers and editors of newspapers, magazines, and RPGs.)

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;584686This is astoundingly commonplace. Want to know why so many RPG books have subpar art? It's because those artists are good enough, and can deliver the commissioned pieces by the promised deadline.

Writers, game designers, and artists who can hit a deadline with unerring reliability don't need to be geniuses to be successful. A certain amount of professionalism and a drive to produce on time go a long way towards making them hirable prospects.

(Or, at least, so I have been told by both publishers and editors of newspapers, magazines, and RPGs.)

I think anybody who has freelanced in any industry and built a client base can attest to this. Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, as the saying goes. (Or 10% inspiration? Whatever.)

This James M episode is very interesting for me. I, like most people, have had 'personal problems' from time to time, but they have never affected my day job; if anything they've made me more focused on it. This is a pattern I recognise in others, too. (An ex-girlfriend of mine back at university, for example, lost both her parents in the space of a year, and she coped with it by studying harder and got a better degree than almost anybody else.)

But I certainly have been in a position where, because of other things going on in my life, the last thing I want to do is play D&D, or blog about it. So I get that: sometimes, for one reason or another, you just don't feel like you want to be creative.

The problem for James M is that, the moment he got paid $40,000 or whatever it was to get Dwimmermount finished, it ceased being a hobby that he could just say "I don't fancy doing that today" about, and became a day job that he ought to focus on getting completed. If he'd stopped blogging and playing Google+ games because of his personal problems, on the other hand, I suspect people like IRWS would have been much more forgiving.

That said, I don't have a horse in the race, so what do I know?

So far as I know he's working away, it's just taking a while, it's not like he stopped.

Writing creative material isn't like mowing lawns--the more ambitious the project the less predictable the real deadline is.

In the end, if it's really good when it's done then all this will seem like a footnote. If it's not, well people will feel like they got taken no matter how long it took to come out.

If every single extra week it takes means the project gets that much better than it was supposed to be, then that's great, and if backers don't think it is, then they can just ask for their money back and they'll get it.

And man, proofreading takes forever and ever and ever and ever, especially on RPG stuff because there's an extra layer of detail-agreement to do. I wouldn't want anybody at Autarch to rush the editing just on account of people getting antsy.

Quote from: Zak S;584690So far as I know he's working away, it's just taking a while, it's not like he stopped.

Writing creative material isn't like mowing lawns--the more ambitious the project the less predictable the real deadline is.

In the end, if it's really good when it's done then all this will seem like a footnote. If it's not, well people will feel like they got taken no matter how long it took to come out.

If every single extra week it takes means the project gets that much better than it was supposed to be, then that's great, and if backers don't think it is, then they can just ask for their money back and they'll get it.

And man, proofreading takes forever and ever and ever and ever, especially on RPG stuff because there's an extra layer of detail-agreement to do. I wouldn't want anybody at Autarch to rush the editing just on account of people getting antsy.

Fair points all. But you can get creative projects done quicker with the carrot of being paid, which I think is the problem with Kickstarter in general - you're giving away the carrot before anything's done. I don't think for a single second that I'd be much more productive than James if somebody had already given me forty grand to work on what I was doing, instead of promising it to me after I'd finished.

Quote from: noisms;584692Fair points all. But you can get creative projects done quicker with the carrot of being paid, which I think is the problem with Kickstarter in general - you're giving away the carrot before anything's done. I don't think for a single second that I'd be much more productive than James if somebody had already given me forty grand to work on what I was doing, instead of promising it to me after I'd finished.

Maybe I have a different point of view because in the art business people get paid up front like this all the time in grants and commissions.

And you do the work and you turn it around and you want it to be good because  you like it and because you want to be able to be trusted to do it again so you get to do it more.

I think if James has another RPG project in him (which I'm guessing he does, he seems to like writing game stuff and the enthusiasm for the kickstarter was encouraging)  I'm guessing he'll want to put his best foot forward.

I mean, that doesn't obviate the possibility of a titanic screw-up, but I think it's fair to say he's not real motivated to make writing for and about RPGs less fun or lucrative for himself by dropping the ball.

Quote from: Zak S;584693Maybe I have a different point of view because in the art business people get paid up front like this all the time in grants and commissions.

And you do the work and you turn it around and you want it to be good because  you like it and because you want to be able to be trusted to do it again so you get to do it more.

I think if James has another RPG project in him (which I'm guessing he does, he seems to like writing game stuff and the kickstarter was encouraging)  I'm guessing he'll want to put his best foot forward.

I mean, that doesn't obviate the possibility of a titanic screw-up, but I think it's fair to say he's not real motivated to make writing for and about RPGs less fun or lucrative for himself.

Some people are honestly just more hard working and conscientious than others. I'm not one of those people. Put it this way: I got paid a considerable wad of cash at the beginning to complete a PhD and it's taken me a year too long.

But I've been paid large sums on completion of translation projects (which are not as creative as writing a PhD, but by no means lacking in creativity requirements) and never once missed a deadline.

Some people just really need that carrot.