Quote from: Benoist;416263RPG history Fail.

Yeh, pretty much.

I came into gaming through GURPS, and when I looked at D&D, was informed by my parents that it wasn't allowed in the house.

For some reason, I never did catch up on the old stuff all that much.  Keep meaning to, but new shiny.

About Tim Kask.

Quote from: Benoist;416282About Tim Kask.

Okay, another venerable-type dude.

Who has actually done me a good turn.  I have good (if hazy) memories of Awful Green Things From Outer Space, and if he encouraged said publication, the rock on.

What's up with their business model that they need to do this, then?  

I mean, why not just post their first intended product up on Kickstarter or some other "preorder to raise capital" thing?

I can't really answer, since I haven't been following too closely. If memory serves, they came out announcing their plans for a new publishing company, and started asking fans to actually fund the starting enterprise sight unseen. That did not go over too well with said fandom.

Others will be able to fill in the blanks, or correct me if I'm not remembering right.

I'm looking forward to whatever adventures they are able to produce. At Gary Con II I had the opportunity to play in a game run by Frank Mentzer. It was a lot of fun, and I found him to be a challenging and engaging Dungeon Master.

I hope they can get a few adventures published. I'd be happy to see what they come up with.

Quote from: StormBringer;416262The phrase "Mentzer Basic" comes to mind.  Kids these days, don't know their history.  

I don't know. To be honest it's only recently I've started to take paying attention to individual game designers. And even now I think Gary Gygax  is probably the only name most gamers know about. We just played the games and didn't really worry too much about how wrote them.

I think even then gamers knew the history but it was mostly framed in terms of publishers rather than individual writs. I think it was fairly common to find players who were fans of Chaosium, TSR, WEG or White Wolf as each of these companies had a style of its own which tended to carry through their diffferent games.

Which is actually a tremendous problem with RPG publishing, since companies don't write supplements, people do. TSR could mean someone actually talented like Monte Cook (although he's not my favourite), a generic hack like Douglas Niles or Jean Rabe, whose output was uniformly godawful.

What a weird way to do (or plan doing) business. Alas, division of labour has advanced humaty on all accounts. A writer obviously is not a manager.

I get the feeling these people are only able to write as main task and not on the sidelines of a regular job. Which is asking for a little much, these days.

Big names from the rpg past don't always produce good stuff later.  For example, Jim Ward ran the crappy d20 company "Fast Forward Entertainment".

In the case of Kask and Mentzer, wonder what exactly their business plan is.  Hopefully it is not to crank out another retroclone rpg ruleset.

Reading the original idea over on DF, it struck me as a bit overzealous and unrealistic for a startup plan.

Covering that many systems, at least right away looks like a sure path to burnout and failure. I would suggest picking a couple systems to start with at most and actually producing an introductory product or two.

The best way to drum up excitement and support is to produce something cool that will get people talking. Self publishing and distribution have come a long way since the old days. There is little excuse for anyone who wants to write something for not doing so provided they are serious about it.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;416405There is little excuse for anyone who wants to write something for not doing so provided they are serious about it.

Sure there is. I quit writing "professionally" to go to medical school. But before that I noticed that the time I spent getting my writing into game books was not well paid. And by that I mean that if you totaled up the hours I spent writing proposals, dealing with developers, fiddling with contracts, and arguing with the other chefs working on the stew, and considered my paycheck for writing to be renumeration only for that lost time - I would still have made more money simply working at Pizza Hut. Let alone driving an ambulance (my actual job at the time).

Writing is something I do for fun. I like doing it. Dealing with publishing companies is not fun. I don't like doing it, and that is why I need to be paid money for doing so. If it were not for a misplaced sense of "pride" at having my work published in "official" books, I would have simply walked away from the career long before I did.

So the thing I do today, where I make games and put them online for free, and then go back to studying for my real job where I will make real money - that makes much more sense from an economics standpoint. The time taken to monetize my products is simply less well paid than spending an equal number of hours working in healthcare and leaving my work as freeware.

-Frank

Quote from: ExploderwizardThe best way to drum up excitement and support is to produce something cool that will get people talking. Self publishing and distribution have come a long way since the old days. There is little excuse for anyone who wants to write something for not doing so provided they are serious about it.

That would have the taint of the amateur for Kask.  This is the man who hated fanzines back in the day and still doesn't have much good to say about independent publishers.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416407Sure there is. I quit writing "professionally" to go to medical school.

You're responding to the literal meaning but not the intent, which is that if someone really wants to put out product, they don't need a quarter million and a company infrastructure to do so. Or at least put out something so that people will believe that it's not a scam and can see the direction of the company.
 
Given that they are begging for free web design, I take it that they didn't have much success with investors.

Quote from: KenHR;416408That would have the taint of the amateur for Kask. This is the man who hated fanzines back in the day and still doesn't have much good to say about independent publishers.

Tim on answering player questions: "One of the very few good aspects of being the guy that had to answer the questions was that nobody cared how I answered. I would let them accumulate untill I scored some really good smoke and then bang them all out in a bong-haze inspired all-nighter."
 
Well then, sign me up as an investor.