Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;645928I've had that happen to me too. Some game store I went to some years back (now out of business) had a sales associate saying derogatory things about the rpg product I was buying. In my mind, I'm thinking, "you do actually want to make money here, right?"

Is that a normal game store phenomenon? I hear that it happens a lot.

The last time this happened to me was in Nord's Games. I had a bunch of marked down 3.5 products and the cashier informed me that 3.x sucked and I should move on to 4E. I left the $100 potential sale on his counter and walked out.

If the guy that I am trying to give money to for his wares is so stupid as to insult the customer, then they do not need my business.

Quote from: MistwellBTW, the debate you're looking for? You're not going to find it from me.

Quote from: xech;645484You didn't answer for a third time:

I am starting to think you're just not a very bright person.

Quote from: Sommerjon;645923Whatever dudette.  You seem to be way the hell over there some place.

'My armchair salesmanship is better than yours!'

Quote from: xech;645688I believe their goal for the design of the game was
1)players needing an online subscription product so to play it
2)cater to the investment sensibilities of the established D&D fan base so to sell it to it and kill the OGL while at it. Which means to be able to market it to hardcore fans as a better game than the previous iteration.

They failed but I do not believe that their goals were achievable in tandem.

They failed BECAUSE those goals were not achievable in tandem.

JG

Quote from: David Johansen;645804I still think the D&D 4e marketing campaign was actually inspired by the Dominos adds where they talk about how bad their pizzas used to be.  It was considered massively innovative and successful at the time.

I do think game designers come to resent the flak they get from gamers though.  But I don't think they're dumb enough to come out and shout at people.  Well, okay excluding a few anecdotes about Lou Zochi

The difference being that D&D 3 did not suck, whereas Domino's did and still does.

JG

Quote from: Sommerjon;645589Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....I may be wayyyyy out here in like the back 40, but I would swear boardgames have a thing called a 'winner'.  If I understand this phenomenon correctly a 'winner' is the person or thing that has accrued the most "things"(things being points, money or some such that the boardgames uses to keep "score" with).

Actually, some of the most popular hobbyist boardgames today are cooperative (Pandemic, Lord of the Rings Card Game, Arkham Horror). More to the point, WotC's own Dungeons and Dragons line of boardgames are cooperative. They also use grids and minis, and they can feature ongoing campaign play. So it's not at all clear that the D&D line of boardgames are a fundamentally different kind of game from 4E D&D.

Nifty.

Now there is no definition of boardgame.

Quote from: Sommerjon;646190Now there is no definition of boardgame.

Sounds like a good time for an ontological overhaul.

A board game is a game that uses some flat/card-board surface to represent the going-ons in the game (a board) and generally has a winner. I think that covers it.

A role playing game involves actual role playing, that is, a sense of identification with your character, which then becomes a field of much debate (here and elsewhere) between narrative mechanics, author versus character stance, etc, and what actually constitutes an RPG versus "not an RPG", story game and otherwise.

In that sense, 4th edition D&D is NOT a board game, because it does not have a "winner" in the conventional (board game) sense of the term, though it does in a (role playing game) more general sense of the term, and very much involves a sense of identification with your character (along with all the mechanical bits customizing your alter-ego and so on).

Milton Bradley's HeroQuest, for anyone who's read the original rules, is an hybrid, in the sense that there is some identification with your piece, and yet, it is very much treated as a piece, not a "character" in the conventional RPG sense.

Quote from: Benoist;646236A board game is a game that uses some flat/card-board surface to represent the going-ons in the game (a board) and generally has a winner. I think that covers it.

A role playing game involves actual role playing, that is, a sense of identification with your character, which then becomes a field of much debate (here and elsewhere) between narrative mechanics, author versus character stance, etc, and what actually constitutes an RPG versus "not an RPG", story game and otherwise.

In that sense, 4th edition D&D is NOT a board game, because it does not have a "winner" in the conventional (board game) sense of the term, though it does in a (role playing game) more general sense of the term, and very much involves a sense of identification with your character (along with all the mechanical bits customizing your alter-ego and so on).

Milton Bradley's HeroQuest, for anyone who's read the original rules, is an hybrid, in the sense that there is some identification with your piece, and yet, it is very much treated as a piece, not a "character" in the conventional RPG sense.

Not sure that the boardgame defintion really works. Trivial pursuit is a boardgame, no doubt, but you can play travel TP without a board. MtG is much more like a boardgame than HeroQuest but has no board.
I treat Heroquest as an RPG. Having said that I also treat Escape from Colditz as an RPG.

Games are a thing the way we play games is a style we impose on the rules. cards, boards, minis are all elements that influece the play style.
You can definitely play D&D like a boardgame. You only use a subset of the rules and you abstract the stuff outside the ruins/dungeon to stuff that happens out of character (training getting equipment and spells etc). This is just what MBs HeroQuest is like.

I can imagine an RPG that uses a deck of cards to generate the PC and run them through the game play. so the party each draw 4 character cards then they travel through a card generated dungeon but can rolplay. Add a GM and its fully like an RPG.

Maybe that part havign a GM is a good benchmark?

Quote from: Haffrung;646051Actually, some of the most popular hobbyist boardgames today are cooperative (Pandemic, Lord of the Rings Card Game, Arkham Horror). More to the point, WotC's own Dungeons and Dragons line of boardgames are cooperative. They also use grids and minis, and they can feature ongoing campaign play. So it's not at all clear that the D&D line of boardgames are a fundamentally different kind of game from 4E D&D.

Dungeon! isn't coop.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646260Not sure that the boardgame defintion really works. Trivial pursuit is a boardgame, no doubt, but you can play travel TP without a board. MtG is much more like a boardgame than HeroQuest but has no board.

It doesn't work that way. Trivial Pursuit is a board game; if you don't play with the board, the actual wheel with six sides and stuff, you're not actually playing TP, you're just using the TP question cards in some other type of game of your own making. Magic is a trading card game (not a board game), and HeroQuest is an RPG/board game hybrid.

Since several board games offer solitaire options (GMT games), while others work off a cooperative basis often against an automated solitaire program, the "winner selected from the players" competition basis does have to be reconsidered. That board games have an end game and the potential to "win" (divorced from selection among participants) might be more appropriate. But I'm sure we can splice this hair even further if we try!

Quote from: Rincewind1;645844Customers having opinion on the product?

Preposterous entitlement. Jeeves, fetch my cloak, I shall be dining at the club tonite.


edit: Since I love all this whining about Internet being boo boo, let me reiterate: For customers everywhere, Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Because while you may need to read some white noise while you do, it has none the less liberated us from the tyranny of the so - called "critics", and their whorish morality, allowing us to garner opinions of our fellow customers, and a large database of such, not just our friends and acquaintances.

I agree that Internet is the bes thing for us. It is also true, too, that opinions in Internet are just a tiny subset of the hobby and thus, taking them as general opinions is a terrible idea, as shown here:

http://www.cracked.com/funny-4739-scott-pilgrim/

Being vocal about something on Internet does not equal to spending money on it.

Quote from: Piestrio;645868I'm going to write a song called, "The Red Herring" and it's going to be all about how nobody gives a fuck about how D&D was "really played back in the day" because it doesn't fucking matter.

TSR D&D is alive today. There are some really cool ways to play TSR D&D TODAY.

Right now.

That way when someone starts fapping about how D&D was/wasn't back "in the day" in order to score some internet points and make their epenis larger we can all break into song.

Wonderful. I can do a very good bass.

Also, I agree with Daddy Warpig and Haffrung. For all its many virtues, 1e DMG does not such a good job explaining how the game was to be played, so everyone did the best they could.

Quote from: Benoist;646263It doesn't work that way. Trivial Pursuit is a board game; if you don't play with the board, the actual wheel with six sides and stuff, you're not actually playing TP, you're just using the TP question cards in some other type of game of your own making. Magic is a trading card game (not a board game), and HeroQuest is an RPG/board game hybrid.

Um .. like I said in my post you can play Travel TP without a board, it comes in a little box so you can play in the back of a car or whatever.
Magic is a card game but if you use a play mat its just like using a 'board' living card games ? card games with boards loads of examples. I created a 'hybrid' board ccg eventually dropped the board but meh ... its moot.
We used to play Magic without cards. You have a 0 sized hand you drew 1 card a round and had to play it straight away and any card could only be played once. More a memory exercise than anything else but certainly played like Magic.
You can definitely play D&D like herorquest. In play it feels identical to a game of D&D played with minis and a floortiles. Rember Ad HeroQuest doesn't have a baord it just has floor tiles you put together for each adventure. If you let the ref make up their own game is so close to D&D I am suprised they weren't sued.

Point is that games want to be free they don't like to be categorised Defining the category of a game through the media or materials used to play is a bit restrictive. D&D with dwarven forge and minis... board game? Heroquest with GM generated content and custom characters ...RPG?
Magic with out any cards ? CCG? Magic with a play mat that tells you where to put the cards? Board game? Monopoly on a tablet... computer game ?
etc etc