Quote from: Spinachcat;745733Remember that scene in Man on the Moon when Andy Kaufman was having that huge feud with wrestler Jerry Lawler?

Yeah...me too.

Good call. (btw the original Kaufmann/Lawler exchanges are all on Youtube.)

Instead of writing a short, forgettable review about a short, forgettable RPG product, we need a multipage thread spread across several fora and blogs to give two (largely fictitious) persona an exposure that their contributions do not merit.

Sort of reminds me why I largely have signed off here. It's either personal trivia or shit stirring threads like '1 on 1 gaming - sorta gay?' that Pundit uses to drive traffic here.

I understand exactly why pundit and the 10 foot pole blog didn't like the product. I think I would agree, though I haven't read the book.
But what about this? Maybe it was that things were trully so subtle nobody noticed them?

Quoted from geoffrey(in the other forum):

As a result of their explorations, the players discovered some of the underlying mysteries of the Isle. I don't want to spoil things too badly, so let me just give a few pointers:

1. Why are there 13 [14 if you count the Gemini twins as two] Zodiac mages? Shouldn't there be 12 [13 if you count the Gemini twins as two]?

2. If you plot the locations of the Zodiac mages on a hex map, what do you see?

3. What is the significance of the star Sirius?

4. What is the common factor amongst all the magic statues? Where did they come from? Whom do they really represent? Why do they look like pagan Roman statues?

5. Who are the two divinities who grant powers to clerics? Hint: The good clerics dress like Knights Hospitaller.

6. So who must the evil clerics worship? Uh, huh. And where does Dante say that he resides?

7. Why are the monsters all hostile? What is their origin? Could #6 and #7 have anything in common?

8. Why are most of the monsters chimeric?

9. Isn't it strange that there seems to be no undead on the Isle?

Etc.

There are more layers of intentional design in Isle of the Unknown than there are in Carcosa. Perhaps I can be faulted for being too subtle, though when writing my fear was of being too obvious. Perhaps I overcompensated by being too subtle, but I don't think so. I don't want to bludgeon the referee over the head. I want to give him cool stuff to use. I don't want to tell him how to use it. It's really none of my business how he uses it. I want to tease, to tempt, to suggest, to allude, to make a creative use of implications and silences. I want to arouse the referee's imagination. I don't want to smother it.

Quote from: Malfi;745750There are more layers of intentional design in Isle of the Unknown than there are in Carcosa. Perhaps I can be faulted for being too subtle, though when writing my fear was of being too obvious. Perhaps I overcompensated by being too subtle, but I don't think so. I don't want to bludgeon the referee over the head. I want to give him cool stuff to use. I don't want to tell him how to use it. It's really none of my business how he uses it. I want to tease, to tempt, to suggest, to allude, to make a creative use of implications and silences. I want to arouse the referee's imagination. I don't want to smother it.

It sounds to me like I would pay Geoffrey for exactly what he doesn't want to give me.

The contents as described are absolutely useless to me. It's the material he doesn't want to be obvious about that I want.

Quote from: Malfi;745750Quoted from geoffrey(in the other forum):

There are more layers of intentional design in Isle of the Unknown than there are in Carcosa. Perhaps I can be faulted for being too subtle, though when writing my fear was of being too obvious. Perhaps I overcompensated by being too subtle, but I don't think so. I don't want to bludgeon the referee over the head. I want to give him cool stuff to use. I don't want to tell him how to use it. It's really none of my business how he uses it. I want to tease, to tempt, to suggest, to allude, to make a creative use of implications and silences. I want to arouse the referee's imagination. I don't want to smother it.

Then I would modify my review. You can't make the DM do that much work. Writing your supplement in cuneiform is not the sort of usability a designer should be providing. Note the overview sectoions in Stonehell, explaining the factions and what's going on on the sublevels.

Quote from: Naburimannu;745756It sounds to me like I would pay Geoffrey for exactly what he doesn't want to give me.

The contents as described are absolutely useless to me. It's the material he doesn't want to be obvious about that I want.

This seems a fair summery of my position also.

It reminds me of the terrible excesses of World of Darkness and Deadlands where the authors kept back information from the GM because they were more in love with their 'Story' than actually making a useful product. It odd to see this sort of behavior cropping up in OSR.

Quote from: jadrax;745765This seems a fair summery of my position also.

It reminds me of the terrible excesses of World of Darkness and Deadlands where the authors kept back information from the GM because they were more in love with their 'Story' than actually making a useful product. It odd to see this sort of behavior cropping up in OSR.

I don't think it is.

Let's not conflate amateur authors and self/small publishing with anything larger. Geoffrey is not a monster nailing things to church doors. He's a dude with a day job who took initiative and wrote a couple of supplements for a niche version of a niche hobby. Criticisms and suggestions for improvement are fair. Conflating him with Evil, as Pundit does a bit, is not fair. Isle is a gorgeous book. If G had done a little bit more with each entry and had included a single page or so overview then I think he would have produced one of the best supplements EVER.

Geoffrey produced Carcosa and published several OD&D works through Psychedelic Fantasies. His bona fides to not only the OSR but to OD&D are real and established, more so than the Pundit if we just went off of product.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;745775IIf G had done a little bit more with each entry and had included a single page or so overview then I think he would have produced one of the best supplements EVER.

I think one of the guiding principles here should be "teach me how YOU (the author) run the setting/adventure/material.".  For example you could give me a product of random tables. But if you give me that and a chapter on how you personally use them in prep or play the product becomes that much more useful.

Mm ... I'm with those who don't think that rebuttal was nearly as insulting as Pundit took it to be.

As against that, the guy could've been speaking to me, as well.  I didn't like the old Wilderlands style of having completely unrelated and random-gen wandering encounters in every third hex.  I like my gameworld to have nations, and nations require trade, and both are incompatible with having horrid monsters permanently rampaging over the landscape.

Where I disagree with that writer is the insinuation that, well, the JG style promotes imagination.  No, it doesn't ... it requires that you do all the work yourself, which somewhat defeats the purpose of purchasing a commercial product.

Don't see where the game writer's rebuttal was anything that would induce rage.

Quote from: RunningLaser;745800Don't see where the game writer's rebuttal was anything that would induce rage.

Nah. Just seems to be a way of drumming up some of that patented rpgsite dramaactionrage - it's been a while.

Quote from: RunningLaser;745800Don't see where the game writer's rebuttal was anything that would induce rage.

Pundy's prone to rage. If he asked the time and you said it was three o'clock that might provoke rage.

I wasn't that impressed with LoTFP and even less so with Isle of the Unknown. I bought 'em both and sold 'em both fairly shortly afterwards, along with Carcosa and Vornheim. They just did nothing for me. I like Old School stuff. I write old school stuff. That's all.

Quote from: Isle previewThe societies, flora and fauna of this predominantly mountainous and wooded isle resemble those of the French territory of Auvergne circa 1311 A.D.

:eek:

Man, for someone who doesn't want to impose a particular vision onto the referee's imagination, that is a really precise micro-historical, cultural reference right there!

Quote from: Benoist;745821:eek:

Man, for someone who doesn't want to impose a particular vision onto the referee's imagination, that is a really precise micro-historical, cultural reference right there!

I think it's a shout-out to Clark Ashton Smith.

" Auvergne circa 1311 A.D."

I've read this whole thread and I never would have guessed.

I suspect it really means generic high medieval.