Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396350I'm probably the worst CoC player in history because I always want my character to die in a cool Mythos-related way. So I'll always be "doubting the Mythos" loudly, or reassuring everyone there's nothing to be afraid of. I'll volunteer to check out the basement alone, or lean casually against the demonic altar saying "see, I told you there was nothing to worry about down here.." or pick up the insane book and page through it non-chalantly. We used to do a yearly game at Halloween.

Nah, that's playing in theme. You're invited to the Trail of Cthulhu game I keep meaning to run.

There's probably something to be said for a general theory of comfort food. D&D is comfort food. Call of Cthulhu is comfort food; you know what to expect. Shadowrun is comfort food. Champions is not comfort food, because even if you're talking the superhero genre, there are a lot of flavors.

......With all these comfort Food references.....

You guys know what too much comfort food leads to, don't you?

Getting fat and lazy -  thats what.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;396355......With all these comfort Food references.....

You guys know what too much comfort food leads to, don't you?

Getting fat and lazy -  thats what.

Seriously no offense, dude, but you're a Star Trek fan. Don't get snide about comfortable parts of pop culture.

Quote from: Koltar;396355......With all these comfort Food references.....

You guys know what too much comfort food leads to, don't you?

Getting fat and lazy -  thats what.


- Ed C.

I guess we can't all be lean mean fighting machines like you, Ed. I salute you!

Quote from: Captain Rufus;396338snip rant

I surmise the lion's share of your frustration comes from the fact that you can't get a game going with a good group, rather than some perceived failing of D&D.

On the difficulty of finding a group, I've been there, and it sucks; you have my sympathy. But that's hardly D&D's fault. Most people suck because most people suck (Sturgeon's Law at work), not because they play game X.

As for D&D in general, it is a quirky game, all things considered. I love it warts and all, but I suppose it's very much a "love it or leave it" deal.

It was a good rant, though. :cool:

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396350I'm probably the worst CoC player in history because I always want my character to die in a cool Mythos-related way. So I'll always be "doubting the Mythos" loudly, or reassuring everyone there's nothing to be afraid of. I'll volunteer to check out the basement alone, or lean casually against the demonic altar saying "see, I told you there was nothing to worry about down here.." or pick up the insane book and page through it non-chalantly. We used to do a yearly game at Halloween.

I do the same and if this is wrong, I don't ever want to be right.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396350Then again, I think Beyond The Supernatural is a better game for horror.

:eek:

Quote from: The Butcher;396364\
:eek:

My model for horror is Sam Raimi. Come on, he's awesome.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396367My model for horror is Sam Raimi. Come on, he's awesome.

Oh. You mean that sort of horror.

Yes, Sam Raimi is pretty awesome, as Drag Me To Hell recently reminded me. World of Darkness would be my go-to game for cinematic horror in general, but I've never read BTS 1e (I'm told 2e is ass), and I'm a sucker for Palladium stuff.

Raimi's stuff is Ho-ho-ho-horror

The distinction between writing and design is an important one. And going forward it is important for WotC (and everyone else) to understand that with an audience containing literally hundreds of thousands of eager fanboys, the available writing capacity of WotC is essentially limitless. Writing content within the context of existing design parameters is something you could leave to monkeys with typewriters - or at least the next best thing which is SF/Fantasy fans with a few hours to kill.

Filling in the blanks, whether it's making additional class builds and attack powers for fourth edition or prestige classes and feats for third, just isn't very difficult. Releasing campaign backstory or fantasy prose isn't hard either - DMs make that shit for fun every week and have been doing so since the early seventies. And if WotC wanted to release a set of material within existing design guidelines that was as extensive as In Search of Lost Time by Proust, they just could. In fact, the first drafts could be in within a month from sorting through the submissions.

The obvious answer is to shift the writing to the subscription service. That way you don't daunt new players by showing them a stack of books with more pages than the unabridged OED that is all somehow "core". But you also don't make players think the game isn't supported by having a dearth of new material. While the "core books" (or even just "book" as a singular thing, or "box" or whatever) should be dense in design but the subscription service should be dense in "content."

Seriously, the subscription service should give you:

• A writeup of a Forgotten Realms location every Monday.
• A set of a dozen magic items every Tuesday ("Treasure Tuesday").
• A setting-free organization or region every Wednesday ("Worldbuilding Wednesday").
• A Dungeon every Thursday.
• A pile of monsters every Friday.
• A set of a dozen NPCs every Saturday.
• A whole adventure path every Sunday.

And that's on top of making class variants, pantheons, updates to retro settings like Birthright and Ravenloft, and of course: optional rules). That shit should also be in there every month (though of course coming out on a "when it's ready" schedule). Gamers are going to skim shit they aren't interested in, so the subscription has to offer so much shit that every gamer will be interested in some of it. And with a digital delivery system, it really doesn't skin your ass to drop a pile of disparate reference material the size of Moby Dick on peoples' laps every week. That's seriously achievable with less than twenty regular contributors - and the reality is that you actually have access to thousands of would-be irregular contributors.

And the great thing about this is that you can watch message board traffic for positive reviews and use it as a recruiting tool for later potential A material. People who get positive word of mouth on their subscription web submissions can get drafted to write material for the hardcopy magazine you send out that has the new classes and shit in it or even actual new books that you will continue to print at a slow and manageable rate.

But the current project design, where you get a small number of people who can write large amounts of words and have them spam the universe with books - that's a non-starter. Writing large amounts of material isn't even  skill you care about for the books, because raw word count isn't even a positive trait for the hardcopy.

-Frank

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396358I guess we can't all be lean mean fighting machines like you, Ed. I salute you!

Or such irresistible ladies men either.

You know, I usedto hate WotC for what MTG did to gaming, but now...

I actually kind of respect them for allowing people like //www.starfrontiers.com to use old TSR material free, as long as it's non profit. That was decent of them.  {And remember, they do have permission to use the stuff, so no need to attack them or call them "bastards" or "weasels".)

I think they're Ok and don't have a real problem with them, They may have fucked over D&D royally, but I don't play it or any d20 system game so that's no plating off my hull.