TheRPGSite

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108530078404383929502/posts/AhU4cgseQ9H

QuoteI talk a lot about creating a culture of play. It's kind of our thing at The Gauntlet, and frankly, it's a philosophy that is probably holding us back in the short term. We would have a larger following if we talked about, say, issues of social justice and diversity in gaming, but it's just not our thing. Gaming and the academy, so to speak, is for other groups. We are proud, blue-collar gamers who focus on the low and distasteful act of play. And you better believe, in the indie hobby’s current state, it is a low and distasteful act. Since doing the podcast, I have discovered there are some designers out there who don’t actually want people to play their game and offer criticism, either positive or negative. They prefer to exist in a world where everyone loves their game in a theoretical way; where they can hoard their +’s and retweets and reshares like a dragon with his gold. And there are still other designers who may enjoy having their work played and criticized, but who don’t think it’s nice when their designer friends are subject to the same. Once again, everyone gets a trophy and no one has to feel bad or less special than anyone else.

A money quote from a related thread, lol:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+PaulCzege/posts/JnsFDCi5yUv

QuoteGotta admit that I'm bristling at this "proud blue-collar gamer" stuff. Where are these designers who don't ever want to play? I almost feel like this in Pundit raging against the "swine".

And, if there are way more games than there are people to play them, why should anyone be surprised if these alleged designers don't show up to play other people's games? Aren't they just like everyone else, lacking time to play everything that's out there? Much stuff they are not currently working on?

I know of two well-attended Meetup groups in LA for boardgame designers (and aspiring designers, and people who like to playtest) several games have been published from their people. I don't know of a RPG design group though.

Part of the problem is there is a VAST difference between Writing a RPG, Running a RPG, and Marketing a RPG. Many people who write games aren't the best people to run their own stuff. Most people who write have no idea how to market and advertise their games. That part isn't considered "fun" compared to working on settings or rules.

Also, running demos for strangers can be stressful. People will criticize your baby and convention demos are NOT a "safe space" - you are asking people to give up time from their limited weekend schedule to play your thing they never heard of. And you're probably trying to pimp it for them to buy it too! It's not a game demo, its a SALES presentation!

The "build it and they will come" mentality isn't limited to indie RPGs. You see in across the board in many businesses. Restaurants are notorious for wondering why people aren't filling their tables...and then going out of business. Word of mouth is great BUT it always starts the creator getting out there and engaging with customers.

What a useless blah-blah... :duh:

I haven't followed this podcast so I feel like I am missing something. Is the concern people not playing the games they are making (so the games are not adequately designed for real play at a table), not playing games in general (so they just don't get what people are doing at the table) or that they are not getting out there and playing games publicly in the community (which I guess is more of a PR concern)?

There's a wide difference between "I want to create My Thing" and "I want to create something for other people to enjoy."

I read it as a criticism of people not engaging in actual play as a basis for their design. Doing more design than actually engaging in the hobby.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;863059I read it as a criticism of people not engaging in actual play as a basis for their design. Doing more design than actually engaging in the hobby.

Or doing design as their hobby... with the finished project being more like a concept car than an actual vehicle that's meant to be driven on actual roads.

Playtests with strangers can suck and be totally unfun. They can be rough on the ego, but they are necessary to make games work. Many people don't want to deal with that step.

Quote from: Spinachcat;863063Playtests with strangers can suck and be totally unfun. They can be rough on the ego, but they are necessary to make games work. Many people don't want to deal with that step.

Anyone that does anything creatively and professionally especially regarding things for entertainment purposes should develop a thick skin for criticism.

That was the first thing one of my writing instructors told me many many moons ago. In writing-workshops you have to sit there while everyone stabs your "precious baby" to death and tears it to pieces and you're not allowed to speak or even defend it. It's the first lesson you learn outside of writing: listening.

That of course doesn't mean all criticism is "good criticism". But the reality is this: If you are going to be a professional, you do not have "precious children" you're trying to protect from the outside world. It's quite the opposite - you're a pimp and trying to pimp your work out to whomever will buy it.

Working with my wife as development editors for writers - it's the first thing we break from noob writers. You gotta sell your work.

The same is true for RPG design. And the amount of self-afflicted, introverted ass-hats that want to make this "High Art" and protect their little sweet precious games from criticism are partly why this industry is seen as petty and unprofessional. Because it's filled with people that really don't understand it.

What I don't like is when a developer calls an event a "playtest" but it actually isn't. I was involved in several playtests for PBM games. I tried various aspects of the game and wrote up a report of what I thought worked and different. Turns out, the game was already set-in-stone and the developers didn't really need any input from the "testers". The Middle Earth PBM was one such game I "tested."

Similarly I went to a convention and joined a "playtest" of the diceless game Actorix (or whatever it was called) run by the designers themselves. But again, the rulebooks were set, printed and nothing was to be changed. The event was really just an introduction/advertising moment instead of a real test.

To me a "playtest" should be just that, a test to see if the rules and numbers work out. The designers should be open to feedback and be willing to say "You're right, this doesn't work. We'll change it." We all know what happens when editors stop editing the work of popular authors. Flab accumulates.

Quote from: Doughdee222;863075We all know what happens when editors stop editing the work of popular authors. Flab accumulates.

See this? This ^^^ <--- yeah THAT.

Not a day goes by when working with new writers and shockingly many veteran writers that believe their holy-writing is like the Virgin Mary herself spewing forth divine-glory on the page. And Editors are from Satan himself...

Many writers new to the game don't really understand the importance of a good editor and don't realize while the act of writing is a solitary craft, the actual creation of a book/game/etc. is a group-effort. And the difference between a good writer putting out decent book vs. an outstanding classic is almost always because they did not get enough editorial feedback on it.

Quote from: robiswrong;863058There's a wide difference between "I want to create My Thing" and "I want to create something for other people to enjoy."

I think the Web, with its overturning of the price barrier to publishing, has brought us to a really splendid era for hobby games. We can make up something that we enjoy with our friends, then make the material available online for however many others may also like it.

The few lucky enough to have corporate jobs in the field -- even as free lances -- face the same kinds of pressure that were par for the course back in the day.

Quote from: Spinachcat;863063Playtests with strangers can suck and be totally unfun. They can be rough on the ego, but they are necessary to make games work. Many people don't want to deal with that step.

It seems that fewer still do the blind testing -- testing by people with no prior involvement in the project -- that goes a long way toward cleaning up problems that otherwise might not even be noticed.

For people who have been involved, it's all too easy to see what one expects to see, and to rely on information imparted by the designer via other channels.

Quote from: Spinachcat;863063Playtests with strangers can suck and be totally unfun. They can be rough on the ego, but they are necessary to make games work. Many people don't want to deal with that step.

I actually enjoyed the public playtesting because it tended to weed out any holes in the design. Ive seen a number of designers now buckle and cave, or worse case, blow a gasket when they arent met with yes-men nodding and praising their work.

Game designers can make for poor playtesters. When I playtest someone elses design, and I have done alot of that, I focus on two things. Syntax and repettition goofs in the rules. And on the table gameplay. Are the rules clear? Are there any holes? etc ad playtestium.

Getting people to playtest and getting the right people to playtest can be the tricky part.

Quote from: tenbones;863071Anyone that does anything creatively and professionally especially regarding things for entertainment purposes should develop a thick skin for criticism.

Agreed x1000...BUT the low barrier to entry in the POD/PDF market means that loads of noob designers who don't expect real sales can put their "pure" baby on the market without any risk of "failure."

I am a thick skinned mofo, but DAMN playtesting can be rough on the soul. The worst is when you realize your brain had the right idea, but the page doesn't explain it in plain language and now the good idea is getting shit upon (quite deservingly) at the play test.

Quote from: tenbones;863071In writing-workshops you have to sit there while everyone stabs your "precious baby" to death and tears it to pieces and you're not allowed to speak or even defend it.

Workshops can suck necrotic leprosy dick.

I find half the people show up just to shit on other people. In LA, screenwriting "workshops" are a breeding ground for two kinds of fucknuts - idiots who praise anything and scum who think cutting apart another writer gets them closer to a job.

Writers need to find editors/readers who can be trusted to be honest and direct, but not cruel or fawning. Sadly, those are rare.

Quote from: Omega;863119Getting people to playtest and getting the right people to playtest can be the tricky part.

Agreed.

That's why I like the game designer's Meetup. It's supportive, but not bullshitty. We focus on what works, what doesn't work, and what is confusing. There have been several times the designer went "oh shit, this is crap" and brought a new version back that really rocked...or was still shit. That happened too.

What kills alot of indie games is that most amatures have really no concept of the huge amount of cost that can go into making a game and the little profit mage back if you tally it up. Many have it in their heads that the publisher just sits back and gets fat off the designers hard work. When the onus of most of the real hard work and risk is on the publisher side.

PNP/PDF may cut out alot of that. But if you go physical copy then research the costs all down the line.

User testing is an under appreciated concept in many, many fields. To ensure a quality product, and to reduce costs in the long run, test your product early and test it often. Like, have people review each and every draft.

You should only assume that it's "your precious baby" after going through the terrible pain, sweat, blood and tears of birth (when it's out in the world, on shelves).

Skipping the rigorous testing and rewrite phases is cheating, in my opinion, and risks a flawed work.

Designing and making games is work like anything else. Revenue is isn't everything, it is the only thing.

The dilettante game designing is rampart in TTRPGs because anyone can (and does) claim to be game designer and/or invent some theory about it. These "theorists" do not usually bother to actually read any books about subject of game design at all. Since we do have good books about game design it boggles my mind...

Second thing that bothers me is the sheer ignorance concerning play testing. When people whine about having tough time with strange people playing their rules it is good to remember that those strange people are your actual buyers...

I teach game development as a day job and the reason why I do not have these kinds of problems is that people I teach are typically unemployed. They start from day one with the goal of making money which means making games that are fun and pondering how to market them to make sales. It is wonderful how impending poverty concentrates one's mind to essential...

Yes, I am ranting.

Reading that page I have a question.... What does #threeforged. mean?

I think play testing with new people is important, but I think one of the most overlooked things is people running the game in a regular campaign of their own. I mean making that the game they run every week so they fully understand it. Play testing gets you lots of good information about how different types of gamers feel about your mechanics. But it can't inform you as well about how the game holds up over long term play in your natural style of running a game. If you don't know how the game works at your own table, chances are it won't work so well at other tables.

Quote from: Spinachcat;863121Agreed x1000...BUT the low barrier to entry in the POD/PDF market means that loads of noob designers who don't expect real sales can put their "pure" baby on the market without any risk of "failure."

I am a thick skinned mofo, but DAMN playtesting can be rough on the soul. The worst is when you realize your brain had the right idea, but the page doesn't explain it in plain language and now the good idea is getting shit upon (quite deservingly) at the play test.

.

I've seen some real meltdowns at playlists.

Quote from: Phillip;863091It seems that fewer still do the blind testing -- testing by people with no prior involvement in the project -- that goes a long way toward cleaning up problems that otherwise might not even be noticed.

This is true--blind testing and even reading by people otherwise not involved is necessary. Kind of like having someone other than the programmer test some code. I know what it does; I wrote it; of course my "tests" work.

I'm giving feedback on one group's RPG and getting feedback from another person on one I'm writing. It was obvious (I think) from the one I read that the writers had walked people through character creation, as that section had a lot of out of order or scattered information. A quick rewrite made it actually usable.

It was painfully obvious from just a single person reading what I'd wrote (albeit a very rough version) that the way I was trying to explain the core concept of the game was never going to work the way I was going about it. The new way I like a lot better so far.

I may have misread the intention of the post, but I think the main gripe is people designing stuff without actual play experience as a guide (as opposed to theory-wank I infer).

edit: Oh boy, get the popcorn out:

Quote+Jason Cordova Then I suggest you avoid framing "the academy" in opposition to play, and that you avoid shitty little comments like "a whiff of academia," because we're already doing the things you care about and in many cases we are doing it better than you. 

QuoteI got your message +Jason Cordova.  I'm sorry you feel too uncomfortable to be on my #threeforged panel at Metatopia anymore.  I suppose it is uncomfortable to have women disagree with you in public spaces, no matter how politely we do it.  I'm sure that we will be fine without your assistance.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;863161I may have misread the intention of the post, but I think the main gripe is people designing stuff without actual play experience as a guide (as opposed to theory-wank I infer).

I think you are correct. A paragraph or two after the quoted one from the original post talks about how they've only had one game designer take part of any of their sessions.

I'm not sure if that's meaningful. I've never heard of The Gauntlet until this thread, so I'm not sure that's a good metric to use. I see people online asking for or talking about their playtesters all the time.

The idea of it being self important but meaningless talk is reinforced by Jason's post the following day to disable reshares of future posts.

I don't disagree with the TLDR version he posted

QuoteI don't think people should stop designing games, but I do think they should start playing them. 

Those conversations have de-evolved into accusations of racism and sexism.

I think I'm going to quit G+.

Quote from: Necrozius;863169Those conversations have de-evolved into accusations of racism and sexism.

I think I'm going to quit G+.

Do you have a link? I am curious about how that happened.

Quote from: Necrozius;863169Those conversations have de-evolved into accusations of racism and sexism.

I think I'm going to quit G+.

That's less an issue of G+ than with the type of people that are always looking to invoke racism and sexism. The G+ groups I'm in don't seem to have those problems, but they also don't seem to have those kinds of people in them. But then, I'm in game specific communities for the most part and I tend to get disgusted with overly PC written (IMO) games and quit reading the rules, which probably also skews the demographics.

It's like quitting The Internet because TBP exists.

The Gauntlet's community from the few posts I read seems OK. The people actually in that community that had personal questions about the post evidently addressed them directly and what seems politely/professionally with Jason.

Quote from: Spinachcat;863121Agreed x1000...BUT the low barrier to entry in the POD/PDF market means that loads of noob designers who don't expect real sales can put their "pure" baby on the market without any risk of "failure."

Yep. This is the front-end (and the largest part) of the problem.

Quote from: Spinachcat;863121I am a thick skinned mofo, but DAMN playtesting can be rough on the soul. The worst is when you realize your brain had the right idea, but the page doesn't explain it in plain language and now the good idea is getting shit upon (quite deservingly) at the play test.

Man I feel you on this. But that's the process of polishing your work for consumption, unless you're going for Heartbreaker status, or worse, this is what unintentionally lands you in Heartbreakistan despite our conceptions. Which is why playtesting with a lot of people and getting as many *good* eyes on the project is crucial.

Quote from: Spinachcat;863121Workshops can suck necrotic leprosy dick.

I find half the people show up just to shit on other people. In LA, screenwriting "workshops" are a breeding ground for two kinds of fucknuts - idiots who praise anything and scum who think cutting apart another writer gets them closer to a job.

Writers need to find editors/readers who can be trusted to be honest and direct, but not cruel or fawning. Sadly, those are rare.

Workshops in LA - having done my share of shit-swimming in workshops in LA I can attest to the Shitlords that congregate there. It's LA afterall... everyone has a script in their pocket, and everyone thinks they have the next Big Thing. That said... even among the Shitlords of a workshop, you can find a peanut and corn-kernal among the shit-flow that is a good piece of criticism. The goal is to get eyes on it. Often it's what is not said that as equally important as what is said. Especially in craptastic workshops.

As for Editors you're spot on. You *must* find an editor that understands your goals and intent for the project. I have never met an editor that "fawned" on a creator that was worth a damn. Editors, the good ones (my wife is one of the finest editors around, right alongside Deanna Hoak), are point blank but not cruel but their intent is always to serve what's best for the project so it can be consumed. Noobs find "point blank" often too abrasive for their little darlings

And yeah.. they can be hard to find. Word of mouth is the best bet.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863170Do you have a link? I am curious about how that happened.

From this reshare: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+PaulCzege/posts/JnsFDCi5yUv

Quote from: Vivian SpartacusI got your message +Jason Cordova.  I'm sorry you feel too uncomfortable to be on my #threeforged panel at Metatopia anymore.  I suppose it is uncomfortable to have women disagree with you in public spaces, no matter how politely we do it.  I'm sure that we will be fine without your assistance.

Quote from: Jessica HammerPlus, let's talk pragmatics. You know who benefits from lowered barriers to entry? Women designers. Black and Latinx designers. Queer designers. Designers who are parents. Designers without a lot of formal education. Very young designers. Old designers. Basically everyone except Mr. Blowhard Dude who is going to share his crap game no matter what - and a whole lot of those games that come out of the lowered barriers to entry will be wonderful and would never get made in a different design culture. This is not theorizing, here. This is experience from, as I've said, helping hundreds of designers (~50% women, ~40% PoC/international non-Western) make their first games.
...
That said, I should probably bow out of this conversation - because the longer I'm a part of it, the more insulting and disingenuous I find +Jason Cordova's post (yes, we get it, you are resentful that people who talk about diversity get more attention than you), and I should probably not be here by the time people start valorizing the Forge. Have a good discussion without me!

Quote from: Matt Weber...I've definitely had the interaction with people trying to design games who clearly, really, truly knew nothing about the medium of TRPG and lacked the humility to take people's advice about which games to read and play before proceeding with their ill-fated heartbreakers.

Those people have, to my knowledge, always been able-bodied, white (and presumably straight) men. I've literally never seen a female game designer reject a piece of honestly-given advice about a different game that might provide a useful perspective if she checked it out.

The thing is... I can't find anything that Jason posted (nor anything from those who agreed with him) that complains about anything related to diversity, gender, ableism etc... His critics have brought up those accusations: not only do they disagree with Jason, but they insinuate that he's ableist, racist, sexist etc...

Now I could be wrong: I've never heard of ANYONE in this discussion before, and there could be something else going on from past interactions between these people.

And for the record, I don't wholly agree with Jason or anyone else, I just thought that the discussion got real ugly all of a sudden.

EDIT: I WAS wrong, actually. oops

For the people here who do make rpg's and get playtesters- How do you do it?  I mean, how do you know sifting through it all what is good criticism and what's just teeth gnashing?  Are there times when you just can't find any good playtesters?  Just curious about it.  I've helped proof read rpg's for folks, but never felt I was in a position to playtest one properly.

I like how Jason plainly states his position - and they ignore him and bash him, ironically a gay man with a self-admitted history of being bullied... then start attacking him.

Yes! It's true! They eat their own.

"I've literally taught BAZILLIONS of people how to make games!!! I am a Professor of Gaming!" - which might make her the source of all of Jason's problems. That's where all these shitty games are coming from!

OMG... she's the Boss of this level... /gasp!

Quote from: Necrozius;863176The thing is... I can't find anything that Jason posted (nor anything from those who agreed with him) that complains about anything related to diversity, gender, ableism etc... His critics have brought up those accusations: not only do they disagree with Jason, but they insinuate that he's ableist, racist, sexist etc...

He didn't, to normal folks. However...

Jason referred to approval of games without recognizing negative feedback as "another expression of 'everyone gets a trophy'".

Jason then said The Gauntlet "would have a larger following if we talked about, say, issues of social justice and diversity in gaming, but it's just not our thing".

And ended that paragraph with a repeated distaste for people that want to protect their friends from criticism so that "everyone gets a trophy and no one has to feel bad or less special than anyone else".

That's enough to set off the professional victims.

The "female" stuff is because Jason evidently indicated he wasn't comfortable being on a panel with a member that intended to be a pain. Again, to the professional victims this is due to the pain being a female, without any proof or even any reasons or reasoning.

So you mean there's an Indie Recreational Outrage Complex? Or are they just another wing of the normal Recreational Outrage Complex?

The only thing he said which could be stretched-- with strenuous mental gymnastics-- into him being a bigot is that he said:

"We would have a larger following if we talked about, say, issues of social justice and diversity in gaming, but it's just not our thing. "

Quote from: Necrozius;863176Now I could be wrong: I've never heard of ANYONE in this discussion before, and there could be something else going on from past interactions between these people.

You are in fact wrong. Check his original post:

QuoteI talk a lot about creating a culture of play. It's kind of our thing at The Gauntlet, and frankly, it's a philosophy that is probably holding us back in the short term. We would have a larger following if we talked about, say, issues of social justice and diversity in gaming, but it's just not our thing. Gaming and the academy, so to speak, is for other groups. We are proud, blue-collar gamers who focus on the low and distasteful act of play.

This is the exact thing that the bolded thing from Jessica Hammer was talking about: Jason there is griping that other podcasts are getting more attention than his and seems to be straight-facedly claiming that his audience would be bigger if he made his podcast all about social justice and diversity, instead of play.

It's particularly odd because it's a swipe that has nothing to do with the bulk of his argument. You could delete it entirely and it wouldn't really affect his point, though it would probably help the reception because it won't have this blue-collar martyr complex going on. As it is, I can't blame people for finding it an off-putting aspect of the original post; throwing this sort of pointless, random tangent into a post makes you look like a grudge-saddled grump who's so pissed off at whatever the subject of the tangent is that they can't resist mentioning it, no matter how much of a non sequitur it is.

well, he did mention Metatopia, and this podcast is apparently closely associated with it:

http://www.genesisoflegend.com/category/rpgdesignpanelcast/page/3/

I don't know how popular this podcast is, but the comment fits.

Quote from: Warthur;863188You are in fact wrong. Check his original post:

Noted! I somehow missed that part. Thanks for the clarification: the accusations make more sense now (a little less out of nowhere).

Quote from: RunningLaser;863178For the people here who do make rpg's and get playtesters- How do you do it?  I mean, how do you know sifting through it all what is good criticism and what's just teeth gnashing?  Are there times when you just can't find any good playtesters?  Just curious about it.  I've helped proof read rpg's for folks, but never felt I was in a position to playtest one properly.

I usually ask people online, sometimes putting out posts asking for feedback. More recently I find I have people contacting me who are interested in play testing stuff which is helpful.

It can be tough because usually there is a bit of attrition. That is to be expected as people are doing you a favor unless you are paying them to playtest. So I usually figure for every 5 people who say they can run a playtest for you, 1 might get back to you with feedback.

Going out in public events is a good way to get feedback too. Especially places where people are there to game, not to playtest. For example we used to go to Boston Game day and events like that once our game was in shape for regular games (harder to do now, since that was Bill's role once I got sick). Now I do most of that stuff online or recruiting people to do it for me.

Ultimately I filter the feedback through what I am trying to do at my own table. That is what matters to me. Sometimes you get feedback that isn't aligned with what you are trying to do (i.e. your making D&D basic but someone is giving you feedback on how to make GURPS). In those cases it is still useful to know that there is a line there between what you are interested in doing and what might turn off certain types of gamers. The most helpful thing for me is just running the game like I would any other. If that isn't happening, and I am not running regular campaigns, then I am just not getting a full sense of what all the feedback means (and I might be missing important details, mistaking things that don't well in discrete playlists for problems when they actually smooth out in the context of a full length campaign).

I notice a big difference between the way I talk about ideas when I first come up with and playtest them, versus how I speak about them once I've incorporated them regularly into my gaming sessions (and I consider that last part the most important in really working out things).

Finding Beta playtesters - Alpha playtest is for finding faults in the rules, Beta playtest is for finding faults in the expression, and my play group consists entirely of experienced, fierce, and talented alpha playtesters - is always a nightmare for me. I am always poking around with weird-ass settings and game subjects few but me are interested in, so I understand that, but it doesn't make it any the less difficult. I advertise here, on RPG.net, and on G+ for people interested, and usually find a few, but out of any ten volunteers, two will only read the text, with one actually proofing rather than commenting, one will return some absolutely beautiful, precious, solid gold data, and seven will disappear, never even saying 'sorry, things didn't work out.

I am a professional tech writer, and am perfectly used to a review process. I treasure it profoundly, in fact. I have little to no ego, and cheerfully and eagerly submit my work to be chopped up, because it makes for a better product. Generally, my gaming Beta testers - when I do get some response at all - are far too gentle with me, too respectful. I'm not some sensitive artist! I want my work *pushed*! Unfortunately, it never seems to work out that way.

Still, I do the best I can with what I have. :D

-clash

Flyingmice - you nailed it.

/puts Devil's Advocate hat on...

So Jason's comment lemme quote it so I'm clear...

QuoteI talk a lot about creating a culture of play. It's kind of our thing at The Gauntlet, and frankly, it's a philosophy that is probably holding us back in the short term. We would have a larger following if we talked about, say, issues of social justice and diversity in gaming, but it's just not our thing. Gaming and the academy, so to speak, is for other groups. We are proud, blue-collar gamers who focus on the low and distasteful act of play.

First off - I've never been to "The Gauntlet" nor have I listened to a podcast. But consider this - he's on G+ talking to presumably a specific group of game-designers that happen to engage in the exact phenomenon he's criticizing. How many threads are started here and in Pundit's playpen that cause many to twitch at the moment "diversity" and "gender politics" and "criticism" get pulled into a discussion or it gets cross-posted from TBP/G+?

Hell, *many* of us are on this forum BECAUSE of the propensity of outrage at the moment one chooses to differ in opinion - even without personal attack.

But like it or not - these folks he's talking about are in this very corner of the business whose pigpen he happen's to share. I don't think it's too crazy to mention that bringing up these kinds of identity-politics would boost his profile - IN THE SHORT-TERM. Ironically, that's exactly what that crowd does (and has done in the past, and will continue to do so as a matter of course in order to perpetuate their outrage). So pound for pound - I think their reaction is making his point even stronger.

Because really - why *are* those things being used as discussion points that are more important than the games themselves? I don't wanna derail this thread - but I also don't want to lose sight of how tightly bound these two phenomenon are. Someone even asked - "What game designer doesn't play games?" in a way that implied it was somehow ludicrous... when there are several at the TBP who crapped out Exalted 3 that fit that bill pretty nicely. And that's no indie-project. Yet there it is. And YES it underscores Jason's point precisely because Exalted didn't get enough playtesting and editing either by the looks of it.

BOOM! I squared the circle, bitches!

/Devil's Advocate hat off!
/mic drop

Quote from: RunningLaser;863178For the people here who do make rpg's and get playtesters- How do you do it?  I mean, how do you know sifting through it all what is good criticism and what's just teeth gnashing?  Are there times when you just can't find any good playtesters?  Just curious about it.  I've helped proof read rpg's for folks, but never felt I was in a position to playtest one properly.

Personally I try to get playtesters in my target audience. I have seen far far too many games strangled in the crib when the designer took seriously criticizm from playtesters who were blatantly NOT the target audience.

As a playtester I do not accept testing for deckbuilding games, or games with zombies as both are a turn off for me and so past a possible quick glance for syntax errors I dont participate.

Where you garner your testers from is another factor. I know RPGGeek and RPGNet are about the last places on earth Id ever want RPG playtesters from.

Conventions are a good place to test a game. I've done that for a few that eventually got published. Barring that. Local gaming groups, and then gaming forums.

Quote from: RunningLaser;863178For the people here who do make rpg's and get playtesters- How do you do it?  I mean, how do you know sifting through it all what is good criticism and what's just teeth gnashing?  Are there times when you just can't find any good playtesters?  Just curious about it.  I've helped proof read rpg's for folks, but never felt I was in a position to playtest one properly.

Well, here is another approach, somewhat different from what others have said.

Make a game you and your gaming group like.  And like you are probably not the only people in the world who like ham and pineapple on your pizza, you are probably not the only people in the world who will like that game.

It's not a very scientifically rigorous approach, but it worked for Gary Gygax.

Though you may want to be a bit more straightforward in describing what you like and what the assumed play style of your game is.

Hell I would kill for some play testers just to see if my game idea is playable.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863250Though you may want to be a bit more straightforward in describing what you like and what the assumed play style of your game is.

What and short circuit a few Internet slap fests and navel gazing blog posts. What would we do with our free time then?

Quote from: Bren;863258What and short circuit a few Internet slap fests and navel gazing blog posts. What would we do with our free time then?

Get drunk, dance with girls, and listen to some extremely evil music?

Quote from: tenbones;863071Anyone that does anything creatively and professionally especially regarding things for entertainment purposes should develop a thick skin for criticism.

Should be engraved in platinum over the computer of anyone who fancies a try for professional glory as a writer, in ANY field.

One of my guilty pleasures is fanfiction.net.  If the writer of a fic I'm reading claims to be polishing up a piece for publication, I give a comprehensive review.  I doubt many would be surprised that I'm often caustic regarding pervasive screwups on spelling, punctuation, grammar and style.  I've long since ceased to be surprised how many purportedly aspiring professionals respond in PM with bitter denunciations, often citing their hundreds of fawning reviews.  I'm sometimes curious as to whether they think a professional editor, with his or her job on the line for a wrong guess, would be kinder.  

Quote from: Phillip;863091It seems that fewer still do the blind testing -- testing by people with no prior involvement in the project -- that goes a long way toward cleaning up problems that otherwise might not even be noticed.

+1 the second.  My main contribution to the GURPS (non-supernatural) rules as a blindtester, as far as I know, was to the cold weather survival rules, the perspective of a native Texan being understandably different from that of a fellow who's done midwinter camping in northern Maine.

By contrast, when I playtested a winter mountaineering adventure, however well read I am, I've never done that ... how the hell do I know how fast is reasonable / suicidal to climb a 500' 80 degree slope in light snow?   One of my players was a cold-weather technical rockclimber, however, and I'd check with him from time to time to ensure I was getting the verisimilitude right.

Quote from: tenbones;863179"I've literally taught BAZILLIONS of people how to make games!!! I am a Professor of Gaming!" - which might make her the source of all of Jason's problems. That's where all these shitty games are coming from!

OMG... she's the Boss of this level... /gasp!

Yeah, there is a guy teaching game design who despises minis in games. Never fails to make a dig about playing with those "dolls". And another jackass designer who was telling new designers that its perfectly fine to steal from other designers and sell it. During PLAYTEST! Another good one is some designers will tell you to pump out a bung of half assed games to get a feel for game design. What that means is you now have on your resume a bunch of half assed games. And they dont.

Quote from: Omega;863269Yeah, there is a guy teaching game design who despises minis in games. Never fails to make a dig about playing with those "dolls".

He's still upset that as a child he wasn't allowed to have any G.I. Joe or Captain Action figures.

Quote from: Bren;863270He's still upset that as a child he wasn't allowed to have any G.I. Joe or Captain Action figures.

He did it on TV too. The news interviewers glanced at him like he was insane.

This discussion brings to mind Powerkill (http://johntynes.com/revland2000/rl_powerkill.html)... an 'indie' game that, to me, didn't actually seem intended to be played but instead existed as a commentary on mainstream gaming tropes.

I can't remember the title but I read one game from RPGNow that had the designer's preamble talking about how he'd actually never played it and wasn't sure anyone could play it... but invited anyone who tried to let him know how it went.

Quote from: Omega;863269Another good one is some designers will tell you to pump out a bung of half assed games to get a feel for game design. What that means is you now have on your resume a bunch of half assed games. And they dont.

This might be me being naive, but wouldn't it be better to attempt to write GOOD games?

Beyond that, this isn't any huge kind of effing mystery.  The notion that you have to have written a game to have a feel for game design is like claiming you have to have written a script to know if a dramatic presentation is any good or not.  Any grognard has a sense (however idiosyncratic) for what makes a good game or a bad game, and what elements in combination work and which don't.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863266Get drunk, dance with girls, and listen to some extremely evil music?

In retrospect, experiencing these three activities (especially all at the same time) provided much inspiration for my GMing abilities.

Quote from: Bren;863258What and short circuit a few Internet slap fests and navel gazing blog posts. What would we do with our free time then?

LOL Good start to the morning. :D

Quote from: Simlasa;863274This discussion brings to mind Powerkill (http://johntynes.com/revland2000/rl_powerkill.html)... an 'indie' game that, to me, didn't actually seem intended to be played but instead existed as a commentary on mainstream gaming tropes.

I can't remember the title but I read one game from RPGNow that had the designer's preamble talking about how he'd actually never played it and wasn't sure anyone could play it... but invited anyone who tried to let him know how it went.

I'd separate out Powerkill from normal game discussion.  It was a John Tynes game, and it really was just meant as an essay for him to work through some ideas or as a tool to dissect play.  Tynes' credibility as a game designer/writer is pretty above reproach, for my money, and I'd rather read a thought experiment from him or Robin Laws or Greg Costikyan over actual games by a dozen other authors.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;863305I'd separate out Powerkill from normal game discussion.  It was a John Tynes game, and it really was just meant as an essay for him to work through some ideas or as a tool to dissect play.

Still, it was sold as a game... I've got a copy on the flip side of Puppetland. I'm not even bothered by it, I thought it was at least a bit interesting, and I've liked other stuff by him. I took the quotes in the OP to be about more than just games that were poorly playtested or not playtested at all, that it was aimed at games that, like Power Kill, weren't really intended to be played but were done more as exercises and experiments.

Am I the only person, when I see Future Villain Band my mind says "Future Bond Villain"?

Quote from: Doughdee222;863321Am I the only person, when I see Future Villain Band my mind says "Future Bond Villain"?

That is how I always read his name.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863323That is how I always read his name.

Me three.

Quote from: Bren;863326Me three.

You mean it's *BAND* villain? Huh!

-clash

Here are my modest and meek thoughts on this event (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-radioactive-ruins-of-storygame.html).

Mildly intresting blog post, Pundy.

One thing did attract my attention was the "games not played even by their designers."

(When did games stop being written and start being designed?  For that matter, when did computers stop being programmed and start being "developed?"  But I digress.)

Anyway... back in the late 90s and early 00s a model railroad loose group, the Layout Design SIG, got hit with a huge influx of people who weren't interested in model trains, or real trains, but in achieving some sort of "perfect" model railroad layout.  It reached the point where people actually trying to build a railroad layout spun their wheels for literal years because every design would be tossed out onto the forum to be criticized... by over a thousand people!  You can't get that many people to agree on "OXYGEN IS GOOD," never mind something with any element of personal taste to it.

I don't know what the denoument of that was, because about 2005 or so I totally lost interest in the LDSig.  But the notion of "hobby artifact designed by people not actually interested in the hobby" seemed reminiscent to me of the "games not played by their designers."

No great philosophical insight, just something mildly interesting that occurred to me.

Quote from: robiswrong;863058There's a wide difference between "I want to create My Thing" and "I want to create something for other people to enjoy."

And great designers exist in the intersection of the two.

Quote from: Doughdee222;863321Am I the only person, when I see Future Villain Band my mind says "Future Bond Villain"?

We need Maxwell's Silver Hammer now. :cool:

Quote from: RunningLaser;863178I mean, how do you know sifting through it all what is good criticism and what's just teeth gnashing?

Follow up questions are hugely helpful.

It's not uncommon for a playtester who isn't outgoing verbally to actually has good ideas. Instead of letting them just say "I did not like that part" (or worse, stay silent), don't get defensive, but ask them follow up questions to probe. Once the playtester sees that you are not being defensive just inquisitive, they often open up and give you a deeper perspective. Not always, but often enough.

Quote from: tenbones;863223BOOM! I squared the circle, bitches!

Damn it tenbones! Now I'm never gonna be able to invent the wheel!

Quote from: Omega;863248Conventions are a good place to test a game.

Agreed.

At the LA cons, its common for name designers to bring one playtest to the con to test out.

Quote from: Doughdee222;863321Am I the only person, when I see Future Villain Band my mind says "Future Bond Villain"?

Now I see it!

Also, there's a great rock band in Los Angeles called Future Villains that opens for Steel Panther so I always assume FVB is the lead singer.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863336But the notion of "hobby artifact designed by people not actually interested in the hobby" seemed reminiscent to me of the "games not played by their designers."

Not as uncommon as all of that.  I've got my name on several MERP books without ever playing MERP.  I've got two DC Heroes credits; never played the game.  I got my start writing Gamelords' stuff without ever touching their fiddly weird VD&D system.  I bet anyone who has significant ongoing income from RPGs has had to have written for systems they've never actually played.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863266Get drunk, dance with girls, and listen to some extremely evil music?

Man, I wish I had not been in the Geek clique growing up.  I might have had a chance to do some of that...

Quote from: Doughdee222;863321Am I the only person, when I see Future Villain Band my mind says "Future Bond Villain"?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863323That is how I always read his name.

Quote from: Bren;863326Me three.

It's NOT?

Quote from: flyingmice;863329You mean it's *BAND* villain? Huh!

-clash

I just realized that TODAY!  Right now. Nov. 7 2015, and I think I remember the name from the TBP days!

Quote from: RPGPundit;863330Here are my modest and meek thoughts on this event (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-radioactive-ruins-of-storygame.html).

One quick thing, Pundit, apparently there IS a Pathfinder for 4e, isn't that what 13th Age was supposed to be?

I could be wrong, I've not looked into it, though.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863336(When did games stop being written and start being designed?  For that matter, when did computers stop being programmed and start being "developed?"  But I digress.)

I'm going to digress, because it is actually related IMO. Disclosure: I'm a software developer.

Computer programs are, or should be, "developed" when they are complex in some manner. Either in what they do, what they work with, or how they work.

At work, I take scripts/algorithms which have been "programmed" or "written" by biologists, statisticians, or other forms of cancer researcher, to work with their individual data set. I then "develop" them into a program that works with (hopefully) anyone's data set.

I also fix problems like "you're using UCSC's transcripts file as if it were a gene annotation file, which it isn't, which will give you incorrect results", which again is a "development" issue. An issue requiring knowledge, inside and outside of code syntax, in order to address properly. As opposed to a "programming" issue of having the path or file name wrong.

RPGs often get designed because they have a lot of moving parts that have to fit together, and a lot of continuity. As opposed to few moving parts, which may have been designed, but the bulk of the work is the writing, rather than the designing. (See the 64 page RPG thread for example.)

And for a lot of people "designer" sounds more prestigious than "writer". And I think nowadays, the designer may not be the actual writer (as in word-smith). In software development, the latest "fashionable form of idiocy" is "software architects" that can't write or design code.

Quote from: Spinachcat;863369Follow up questions are hugely helpful.

It's not uncommon for a playtester who isn't outgoing verbally to actually has good ideas. Instead of letting them just say "I did not like that part" (or worse, stay silent), don't get defensive, but ask them follow up questions to probe. Once the playtester sees that you are not being defensive just inquisitive, they often open up and give you a deeper perspective. Not always, but often enough.

Ask them why. Make sure they understand, you aren't upset that they don't like it. You want to understand *why* they don't like it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;863376One quick thing, Pundit, apparently there IS a Pathfinder for 4e, isn't that what 13th Age was supposed to be?

I could be wrong, I've not looked into it, though.

  I have, and 13th Age is more a 3E/4E/narrative hybrid.

  Of course, there are several other factors that may be contributing to the absence of a Pathfinder for 4E: The lack of the ability to do much of the system design through copy and paste from the SRD, the centrality of the still-functioning D&D Insider to so many 4E fans' approach to the game, the fact that the books are generally not hard to find and are now available in PDF format, and the lack of any third parties that depend on 4E product for their livelihood.

   Once DDI goes down, and once the hostility fostered by the edition wars and poor transition (and fed by Pundit and his ilk) dies down a bit, we may see some more serious efforts at retrocloning the game, or a new appreciation for its merits.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863336(When did games stop being written and start being designed?  For that matter, when did computers stop being programmed and start being "developed?"  But I digress.)

Blame it on Military-Industrial Complex of Free World and modern telecommunication system with digitalized communication network that allowed us to create weapon systems rather than weapons. You can see it in practice in impossibly complex modern F-4 Phantom II jet which is so complicated and filled with electronics you need two men to fly it.

Oh yes. The software engineering was coined to meet needs of Free World in 1960's and you all in civilian world got interested about it in mid-1970's when "Mythical Man Month" came out and secret techniques used by IBM for their massive military software projects got spilled out in plain English.

The main reason we went from writing to design was that things got complex.

The main point why we design anything is that it is professional way to look at things and ponder issues that might look invisible to hobbyist but will bite you in the ass when your money is in it - like marketing to an audience and importance of different kinds of play testing. This is why I deplore complete lack of reading about game design. People do not seem to actually want to study game design at all. It is all either personal experience war stories of doing things like some old fart has done 20, 30 or 40 years or invention of buzzwords in RPG forums.

Quote from: Tod13;863399I'm going to digress, because it is actually related IMO. Disclosure: I'm a software developer.

Computer programs are, or should be, "developed" when they are complex in some manner. Either in what they do, what they work with, or how they work.

At work, I take scripts/algorithms which have been "programmed" or "written" by biologists, statisticians, or other forms of cancer researcher, to work with their individual data set. I then "develop" them into a program that works with (hopefully) anyone's data set.

I also fix problems like "you're using UCSC's transcripts file as if it were a gene annotation file, which it isn't, which will give you incorrect results", which again is a "development" issue. An issue requiring knowledge, inside and outside of code syntax, in order to address properly. As opposed to a "programming" issue of having the path or file name wrong.

RPGs often get designed because they have a lot of moving parts that have to fit together, and a lot of continuity. As opposed to few moving parts, which may have been designed, but the bulk of the work is the writing, rather than the designing. (See the 64 page RPG thread for example.)

And for a lot of people "designer" sounds more prestigious than "writer". And I think nowadays, the designer may not be the actual writer (as in word-smith). In software development, the latest "fashionable form of idiocy" is "software architects" that can't write or design code.

I was more taking a dig at the fact that one day my job title changed from "computer programmer" to "software developer" when I was, in point of fact, doing the same damn thing I'd been doing the day before.

I'm also old enough to have lived through the "Who Cut My Cheese" book era.

Quote from: RPGPundit;863330Here are my modest and meek thoughts on this event (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-radioactive-ruins-of-storygame.html).

Wait a minute, what's the relationship between D&D4 and the Forge/storygame movement?

Quote from: Frey;863461Wait a minute, what's the relationship between D&D4 and the Forge/storygame movement?

  Pundit is convinced that D&D4 was a concerted effort by the Forge or Forge-sympathetic designers to change D&D into a game more suited to their tastes. The best evidence anyone has come up (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=841466&postcount=243) with is the tight focus of the mechanics and a few designers referring to it as 'gamist', generally after the fact.

  On this point, as on so many, the Pundit makes me think of Matthew 17:21 (or Mark 9:29) and the Inferno, Canto III, verse 28. :)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863445I was more taking a dig at the fact that one day my job title changed from "computer programmer" to "software developer" when I was, in point of fact, doing the same damn thing I'd been doing the day before.

At my work at a cancer research hospital, job titles that don't really make sense are normal, since it is often easier to change the description of an existing job title than to create a new one.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863445I'm also old enough to have lived through the "Who Cut My Cheese" book era.

Me too. I've been programming professionally for 27+ years. Don't forget the "7 habits" and "servant leader" and "patterns" and "UML". (I worked one place where upper management mindlessly worshiped patterns. It didn't matter what you did, as long as you could name the pattern. Same thing with UML. Didn't matter whether it was right, as long as you had a UML diagram.) The latest seems to be "agile", which isn't, as an excuse not to document requirements.

Oh, sweet Crom's hairy nutsack.  My last (and probably final) IT gig was someplace going to Java because it was new and sexy and they were all about "agile" meaning "everybody dicking around."  We mainframe programmers got laughed at for being old fashioned for wondering things like why everybody built their own classes for database access, since "code reuse" was one of the big "selling points" of Java (we were told).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863445I was more taking a dig at the fact that one day my job title changed from "computer programmer" to "software developer" when I was, in point of fact, doing the same damn thing I'd been doing the day before.

I'm also old enough to have lived through the "Who Cut My Cheese" book era.

The difference between a programmer and a software developer is that I can bill the latter at an extra $60/hr USD.

Quote from: Tod13;863477Me too. I've been programming professionally for 27+ years. Don't forget the "7 habits" and "servant leader" and "patterns" and "UML". (I worked one place where upper management mindlessly worshiped patterns. It didn't matter what you did, as long as you could name the pattern. Same thing with UML. Didn't matter whether it was right, as long as you had a UML diagram.) The latest seems to be "agile", which isn't, as an excuse not to document requirements.

Agile is so 2014. It's all Adaptive and DevOps now...

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;863466Pundit is convinced that D&D4 was a concerted effort by the Forge or Forge-sympathetic designers to change D&D into a game more suited to their tastes. The best evidence anyone has come up (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=841466&postcount=243) with is the tight focus of the mechanics and a few designers referring to it as 'gamist', generally after the fact.

  On this point, as on so many, the Pundit makes me think of Matthew 17:21 (or Mark 9:29) and the Inferno, Canto III, verse 28. :)

Yeah, it seems like a stretch. There have been a ton of games with tight focus of mechanics, and many people use the term "gamist" without knowing anything in particular about story games. It's plausible that there was some small influence from story games, but I'd say Magic: The Gathering had a far bigger influence. Incidentally, I recently noticed that there are two story games credited in the 5th edition DMG: Once Upon a Time and Microscope.

As for Pundit's post in general, he seems really determined to declare himself the winner.

Story games are just a small niche within the niche of tabletop RPGs, which is strongly dominated by D&D and Pathfinder. However, as far as I can tell, Pundit's games are an even smaller subniche. If I look around at game conventions, I regularly see people running games by Jason Morningstar, for example (Fiasco, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, etc.), but I have not yet seen anyone running games by Pundit (Forward to Adventure, GnomeMurdered, Lords of Olympus, or Arrows of Indra).

I've seen some sales figures from story games authors. For example, Vincent Baker posted sales figures here:  http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/824 - short form, 4197 direct online sales for Apocalypse World by 2014, while Dungeon World had about 19,000 total sales by 2015. Other sales figures:

http://www.evilhat.com/home/q3-sales-numbers-summer-wraps-up/

https://plus.google.com/+SageLaTorra/posts/eGzGwBu1tyo

http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/square-deal/2013/01/10/bpg-sales-numbers-q4-2012/

http://pelgranepress.com/index.php/tag/biz/

That's a small niche of the overall RPG market, and nothing compared to D&D. However, I suspect it's fair compared to small press RPGs. I'd be curious to see sales numbers for Pundit's games.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863479Oh, sweet Crom's hairy nutsack.  My last (and probably final) IT gig was someplace going to Java because it was new and sexy and they were all about "agile" meaning "everybody dicking around."  We mainframe programmers got laughed at for being old fashioned for wondering things like why everybody built their own classes for database access, since "code reuse" was one of the big "selling points" of Java (we were told).

Ha, Java seems to me just a headache; I think code reuse is perhaps more practical within a project than across them, anyhow and OOP is often more overhead than it's worth. (I'd prefer Smalltalk if we must go all OO all the time)

I have an old-fashioned appreciation for requirement specifications (treated as the documentation for the program I'm writing), but find that actual programming tends to turn around and go bottom up. 'Agile' to me means a good environment for experimentation: preferably an interpreted language, though nowadays a combination of editor and fast compiler can come pretty close.

I like having a small set of simple tools for building more, even if fancy pre-built libraries are also available. There's a similar deal in game rules, where one way the 'code' speaks for itself, while the other way I need to pore through documentation just to get the necessary vocabulary.

Quote from: jhkim;863560Yeah, it seems like a stretch. There have been a ton of games with tight focus of mechanics, and many people use the term "gamist" without knowing anything in particular about story games. It's plausible that there was some small influence from story games, but I'd say Magic: The Gathering had a far bigger influence. Incidentally, I recently noticed that there are two story games credited in the 5th edition DMG: Once Upon a Time and Microscope.

As for Pundit's post in general, he seems really determined to declare himself the winner.

Story games are just a small niche within the niche of tabletop RPGs, which is strongly dominated by D&D and Pathfinder. However, as far as I can tell, Pundit's games are an even smaller subniche. If I look around at game conventions, I regularly see people running games by Jason Morningstar, for example (Fiasco, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, etc.), but I have not yet seen anyone running games by Pundit (Forward to Adventure, GnomeMurdered, Lords of Olympus, or Arrows of Indra).

I've seen some sales figures from story games authors. For example, Vincent Baker posted sales figures here:  http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/824 - short form, 4197 direct online sales for Apocalypse World by 2014, while Dungeon World had about 19,000 total sales by 2015. Other sales figures:

http://www.evilhat.com/home/q3-sales-numbers-summer-wraps-up/

https://plus.google.com/+SageLaTorra/posts/eGzGwBu1tyo

http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/square-deal/2013/01/10/bpg-sales-numbers-q4-2012/

http://pelgranepress.com/index.php/tag/biz/

That's a small niche of the overall RPG market, and nothing compared to D&D. However, I suspect it's fair compared to small press RPGs. I'd be curious to see sales numbers for Pundit's games.

It may be worse than you think. I'm someone that no-one ever heard of, right? As a game designer if not a forum poster. I made a game called Other Worlds. I don't have my own forum. I don't maintain a daily blog. I put zero effort into self promotion and the small web presence my game does have is woefully basic and only occasionally updated.

Yet my game is an electrum best seller on DTRPG, putting it in the top 3.43% of products. And my sales figures are low, in the hundreds but not the thousands. Numbers like Vincent Baker's would be a pipe dream for me. I'm in profit and I'm happy enough, but man the bar I have set is low.

Arrows of Indra is a copper best seller, two orders of magnitude below electrum, putting it in the top 12.34%. Lords of Olympus and Dark Albion are silver best sellers, one order of magnitude below electrum, putting them in the top 10.1%.  

Does my game really outsell all of Pundit's? I dunno, maybe. Maybe Pundit sells more games through some other channel I don't know about. But on the face of it the man's book sales do not match his self-proclaimed importance.

Quote from: soviet;863568But on the face of it the man's book sales do not match his self-proclaimed importance.

Just the fact that Pundit writes RPGs and proclaims some manner of importance from that is really all that needs to be said. I guess in his long battles with The Swine, the inevitable has happened, and he's become one of them.

I do not know if this would alter its copper seller status or not, but I do want to clarify something about Arrows of Indra. It was originally sold under the Avalon Games page, on which it reached copper selling status. Last year we decided to put all our PDFs up on a new Bedrock Games page. This reset the sales figures for all our products (everything effectively went back to zero). Since then, it has reached copper again.

I can say it has been a consistent seller for us and we've never been disappointed with its sales figures.

That said a lot of the numbers Jhkim put up are very impressive and way beyond what most RPG publishers achieve. I would kill for those kinds of numbers myself. I just wanted to clarify the Indra status because Bedrock's decision to open a new PDF page (which was the right call long term) affected its accumulated sales numbers (in terms of One Book ranks things). I can't say for sure but I suspect it would be at least one category higher had we not done that.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863575That said a lot of the numbers Jhkim put up are very impressive and way beyond what most RPG publishers achieve. I would kill for those kinds of numbers myself. I just wanted to clarify the Indra status because Bedrock's decision to open a new PDF page (which was the right call long term) affected its accumulated sales numbers (in terms of One Book ranks things). I can't say for sure but I suspect it would be at least one category higher had we not done that.

Of course, there are a ton of story games whose numbers are tiny compared to these, and they don't generally publish their numbers. But yeah, if we declare story games to be extinct, then by those standards I think the whole of small-press RPGs has been extinct for quite a while.

Story games are small compared to D&D, like they always were, but they're doing fine on the standards of small-press RPGs. They're neither going extinct nor taking over the hobby.

Quote from: jhkim;863578Story games are small compared to D&D, like they always were, but they're doing fine on the standards of small-press RPGs. They're neither going extinct nor taking over the hobby.

My experience locally is that D&D and pathfinder are king. There is just no comparing other games to how much those are played. But I'd say OSR and story games I see about equally. Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a bit of an exception in that I see more of that around. I imagine this varies a lot though from place to place (for instance there is one game store here where I've seen a lot of traveller games, but haven't seen it played much else beyond that one location or in specific groups of players I know).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863579My experience locally is that D&D and pathfinder are king. There is just no comparing other games to how much those are played. But I'd say OSR and story games I see about equally. Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a bit of an exception in that I see more of that around. I imagine this varies a lot though from place to place (for instance there is one game store here where I've seen a lot of traveller games, but haven't seen it played much else beyond that one location or in specific groups of players I know).

So, pretty much the same as it's always been since, oh, 1974?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863595So, pretty much the same as it's always been since, oh, 1974?

More things change, more things stay the same.

Yep.  There were indie games in the 70s, there'll likely be indie games in the 2070s.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863595So, pretty much the same as it's always been since, oh, 1974?

I wasn't around then, but compared to when I started gaming in the 80s and 90s, I think D&D, or some version of it, is now more ubiquitous. In the 90s especially I recall there being some serious alternatives to D&D and most of the people in my area seemed a lot more open to playing them. Locally, I'd say it is actually harder now to get people to try a system that isn't D&D based. That was just the reality we saw anyways when we would go to public gaming events or game stores (also matches what I've seen for people looking for groups here online). There is definitely still space for indie games, and even a few mid-sized competitors, I just don't see that there is anyone seriously challenging then dominance of D&D right now the way White Wolf did in the 90s, nor does there seem to be as substantial a market for the smaller games (though maybe that is because D&D has fragmented into d20 and there are now simply more D&D-based options---I definitely would say it felt like there was a big shift back when 3E game out and you had this avalanche of d20 games released).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863595So, pretty much the same as it's always been since, oh, 1974?

(I'm sure you know all this, but I'm using your post as a jumping off point...)

Actually, one important thing which has changed is the size of the market.  A second-tier game like Call of Cthulhu or Villains & Vigilantes sold tons of games back in the late '70s and early '80s, to the extent that I would doubt any game company today could approach it, outside of Wizards or Paize.  As far as I can tell from conversations with people who were there at the height of the RPG craze, the market was so much bigger that the number of sales to be had, even from an also-ran, was much more impressive.  

I mean, bear in mind that purportedly, TSR was able to pay 300 employees in 1984.  At some point, non-D&D products were capable of moving 50,000 units. Independent, non-D&D publishers in that kind of market were looking at completely different forces at work and opportunities.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;863643(I'm sure you know all this, but I'm using your post as a jumping off point...)

Actually, one important thing which has changed is the size of the market.  A second-tier game like Call of Cthulhu or Villains & Vigilantes sold tons of games back in the late '70s and early '80s, to the extent that I would doubt any game company today could approach it, outside of Wizards or Paize.  As far as I can tell from conversations with people who were there at the height of the RPG craze, the market was so much bigger that the number of sales to be had, even from an also-ran, was much more impressive.  

I mean, bear in mind that purportedly, TSR was able to pay 300 employees in 1984.  At some point, non-D&D products were capable of moving 50,000 units. Independent, non-D&D publishers in that kind of market were looking at completely different forces at work and opportunities.

* applause * Bravo.  Seriously, no snark.

Around 2005 or 2006 on TBP Paul Chapman, the Marketing Director of Steve Jackson Games (who should know a bit!) estimated the RPG industry at about $50M per year.

TSR's 1982 revenue was $20M to $22M.  Rounding to the integer, that's $46 M in 2006 dollars.

In other words, TSR in 1982 had by itself 92% of the 2006 market value.  In 1985 when FASA hired me to write "Imbalance of Power," a module for their Star Trek RPG, their estimated first print run was 5000 or 6000 because they wanted a small first run.  Nowadays that's considered a major size print run for one of the major players in the RPG game.

That is indeed a very different market within which to work.

Quote from: Phillip;863562Ha, Java seems to me just a headache; I think code reuse is perhaps more practical within a project than across them, anyhow and OOP is often more overhead than it's worth. (I'd prefer Smalltalk if we must go all OO all the time)

The secret of Object Orient Programming isn't in code reuse but rather in implementing interfaces so objects can talk to each in standard ways. For example I write and maintain a CAD/CAM program for HVAC Ductwork. I have an object called a Fitting that interfaces with a Fitting Program that actually produces the part's geometry. I have about a 100 Fitting Programs in the software but to the Fitting Object they look the same because they all use the Fitting Program Interface.

Now the advantage over the older method of using standard function in libraries is that the if you miss implementing a function or a property it will throw a compile error and highlight exactly what went missing. While libraries generally only show up as a runtime error.

But when it comes to the traditional teaching of OOP I want to take the book and slap the author's head a few time if they start out with the example of a cat inherits from mammal which inherits from animal. I have a several hundred thousand line program and I can count the number times I have on one hand code reuse through inheritance. But I have hundreds of interfaces for various purposes. Most of the code reuse is done through traditional libraries of routines and function.

Quote from: Phillip;863562I have an old-fashioned appreciation for requirement specifications (treated as the documentation for the program I'm writing), but find that actual programming tends to turn around and go bottom up. 'Agile' to me means a good environment for experimentation: preferably an interpreted language, though nowadays a combination of editor and fast compiler can come pretty close.

Unit Testing is the way go. It have improved my productivity immensely because because most unintended bugs get caught in the automated tests. If they don't get caught just write another unit test and add it to the test library. The unit tests also serve well as a backup of the original code requirements.

The only downside that it takes a lot of time to ramp up if you have an existing project that didn't have unit testing from the get go.

Quote from: Phillip;863562I like having a small set of simple tools for building more, even if fancy pre-built libraries are also available. There's a similar deal in game rules, where one way the 'code' speaks for itself, while the other way I need to pore through documentation just to get the necessary vocabulary.

My experience with Unit Tests grew hand in hand with my appreciation of developing rules through actual play.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863641I wasn't around then, but compared to when I started gaming in the 80s and 90s, I think D&D, or some version of it, is now more ubiquitous. In the 90s especially I recall there being some serious alternatives to D&D and most of the people in my area seemed a lot more open to playing them.

Imaginative play where you pretend to be a character doing something fun and interesting is one of the biggest forms of entertainment on the planet Earth. However in the form of setting around a table with pen & paper and a human referee has declined from it's 80s and 90s height.

For example circa 1980 if you wanted to run and bash monsters and take their shit the only choices was Dungeons & Dragons or a similar RPG. However by 2000, you could fire up Diablo and get the same experience.

Quote from: estar;863676The secret of Object Orient Programming isn't in code reuse but rather in implementing interfaces so objects can talk to each in standard ways.

Agreed.

Quote from: estar;863676But when it comes to the traditional teaching of OOP I want to take the book and slap the author's head a few time if they start out with the example of a cat inherits from mammal which inherits from animal.

Slapping's too good for 'em.

Quote from: estar;863676Unit Testing is the way go. It have improved my productivity immensely because because most unintended bugs get caught in the automated tests. If they don't get caught just write another unit test and add it to the test library. The unit tests also serve well as a backup of the original code requirements.

Agreed 100%

Quote from: estar;863676The only downside that it takes a lot of time to ramp up if you have an existing project that didn't have unit testing from the get go.

Aarggh! Tell me about it...

Quote from: estar;863676My experience with Unit Tests grew hand in hand with my appreciation of developing rules through actual play.

Huh? Are you my long lost twin?

Quote from: estar;863676But when it comes to the traditional teaching of OOP I want to take the book and slap the author's head a few time if they start out with the example of a cat inherits from mammal which inherits from animal. I have a several hundred thousand line program and I can count the number times I have on one hand code reuse through inheritance. But I have hundreds of interfaces for various purposes. Most of the code reuse is done through traditional libraries of routines and function.

I guess it depends on the software you write. Almost everything I do is via inheritance. Basically, as I find chunks of logic that different areas have in common (methylation 450 and methylation 27 both have the same kind of probes and data that gets processed the same way) the common logic and attributes get pulled into an ancestor, which gets passed specifics (such as, the list of platform specific probes and their genomic coordinates).

So I have a root converter mixin (animal) that is inherited by the methylation mixin (mammal) and by the methylation 450 (dog) and methylation 27 (cat) classes.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;863686Huh? Are you my long lost twin?

LOL Probably not but perhaps we have similiar pressures at work. My situation is that my company deals in manufacturing metal cutting machine. Our edge is the fact we write and support our own CAD/CAM software. Since it is a vertical market focused on particular industries (like HVAC) we get bombarded with specialty request all the time for software.

So rather bitch about it, I kept with current practices and designed a few of my own to make adding features, and redesigning features very easy with our software. We have a half-dozen distinct software packages to support different machines but they all use the same set of libraries with only the two top levels different. Those levels control the looks and feel of the UI.

And this experience had a big part in shaping my attitude to using different rules to for the various campaigns I run in the Majestic Wilderlands. I just don't attach the importance that some people do to using a set of rules to set the feel of a campaign. I understand the point especially Vreeg's point about how the setting with come to fit the rules. But I designed an "interface" within my Majestic Wilderlands that allows me to slot in completely different sets of rules with minimal work. Note it minimal work not no work.

Right now the latest set of rules to get the treatment is Fantasy Age by Green Ronin. To date it has included AD&D 1st, Harnmaster, Fantasy Hero, GURPS 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions, D&D 3.X, Runequest 2nd, Mongoose Runequest, D&D 4th, D&D 5th, Fudge/Fate*, and OD&D (which got turned into a published supplement).

*My Fudge/Fate attempt can be downloaded from here.
http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MajesticRealmsRPG_Fudge_Rev%2017.zip
It floundered on the fact that +1 or -1 is too much of a big deal.

Quote from: estar;863685For example circa 1980 if you wanted to run and bash monsters and take their shit the only choices was Dungeons & Dragons or a similar RPG. However by 2000, you could fire up Diablo and get the same experience.

Not even remotely the same unless you were a purely hack-n-slash player uninterested in anything but combat. Even the old SSI Gold boxes offered vastly more than Diablo. The whole "PC games offer the same experience as a real RPG!" gag has been shot down in flames since the 80s.

Quote from: Tod13;863759I guess it depends on the software you write. Almost everything I do is via inheritance.

I do all that by composition with interfaces. That is you create the animal class passing into its constructor a concrete implementation of the behaviour interface. Then you can unit test the animal class and the two behaviour classes  entirely separately.

Then you go home and fight some orcs.

Quote from: Tod13;863759I guess it depends on the software you write. Almost everything I do is via inheritance. Basically, as I find chunks of logic that different areas have in common (methylation 450 and methylation 27 both have the same kind of probes and data that gets processed the same way) the common logic and attributes get pulled into an ancestor, which gets passed specifics (such as, the list of platform specific probes and their genomic coordinates).

Sounds reasonable. The lowest levels of my software also uses inheritance as well in what I call utility classes like the standard lists that manage collections of objects. Since this involves replicating a set of standard behaviors I use inheritance.

You should look up the Design Pattern called Strategy. If you don't know what they are design patterns are like algorithims. Algorithms tell you how to use functions and data structure to do something useful. While Design Patterns tell you how to combine different objects to do something useful.

The strategy pattern is where you make a strategy object that has a standard interface. It then gets attached to the objects that need to use that particular strategy (or logic).

The advantage of this approach over is inheritance if the strategy/logic for one object out of a group changes slightly you can create a new strategy object assign it to just that object. While inheritance cascades down the chain. While inheritance allows methods (and thus the logic) to change in the child object my opinion it is not as clear as the assignment of an explicit strategy.

Then again my particular issue that I have to support my software over decades over multiple OSes and hardware generation. Some of my code dates back to 1985 when it was running on a HP Workstation using Rocky Mountain BASIC, a language designed to control and monitor science equipment. Which made it ideal for motion control of a metal cutting machine.

Quote from: Tod13;863759So I have a root converter mixin (animal) that is inherited by the methylation mixin (mammal) and by the methylation 450 (dog) and methylation 27 (cat) classes.

I wish my language (VB6/VB.NET/C#) supported mixins, that would help me with a particular class of design problems. When the problem is a variation on a common set of behaviors then inheritance may be the better fit.

Quote from: Omega;863764Not even remotely the same unless you were a purely hack-n-slash player uninterested in anything but combat. Even the old SSI Gold boxes offered vastly more than Diablo. The whole "PC games offer the same experience as a real RPG!" gag has been shot down in flames since the 80s.

Agreed. Even something as open ended as Morrowind still lacked what a p&p rpg has. The only way computers can hope to match that is by having an AI that can respond dynamically to anything you throw at it.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;863765I do all that by composition with interfaces. That is you create the animal class passing into its constructor a concrete implementation of the behaviour interface. Then you can unit test the animal class and the two behaviour classes  entirely separately.

Then you go home and fight some orcs.

LOL. Or play some orcs. "Work. Work". -Orcs

Unless your mixin (parent class) is abstract, you can still unit test it separate from the inheritors. Even if it is abstract, there are ways around that.

A more likely problem is that, you probably can't usefully unit test it separately from the inheritors, since it needs data from them to be useful. Toy data helps, but in some cases, I can't get the PhD who really understands their obtuse (to me) statistics to help me build toy data.

Quote from: Omega;863764Not even remotely the same unless you were a purely hack-n-slash player uninterested in anything but combat.

I think that's estar's point. Back in the 80s, people who wanted that generally had to use D&D for it. Nowadays, they have superior alternatives for getting that experience and so don't need D&D. Hence, some of the shrinking of the TTRPG market.

Quote from: Omega;863764Not even remotely the same unless you were a purely hack-n-slash player uninterested in anything but combat. Even the old SSI Gold boxes offered vastly more than Diablo. The whole "PC games offer the same experience as a real RPG!" gag has been shot down in flames since the 80s.

You not getting my point. You are right, tabletop is a different experience. But you miss my point that those gamers were not looking for the tabletop RPG experience in the first place.

Those gamers were looking for the experience offered by PC Games. Except it is 1980 and those computer games don't exist, hell for gamers at the they didn't imagine it could even exist.

However what they do know that circa 1980 they like to play AD&D because they get to bash monsters (or each other all day). This isn't theoretical. I seen and played with this type of gamer in my hometown in northwest Pennsylvania in the early 80s. Frankly they were a bit of a pain in the ass to those of us who wanted to get on with doing more with our characters.

Then when the computer games started hitting they started disappearing from tabletop and started playing Rogue-likes, and later Diablo for their fun.

So for them the PC Game was the better experience than tabletop RPG with all the world building and roleplaying with NPCs "bullshit" pushed to the wayside.

And why PC games became dominate is because on one hand they are more accessible in terms of time and availability and on the other hand they eventually began to look spectacular.

Quote from: estar;863685Imaginative play where you pretend to be a character doing something fun and interesting is one of the biggest forms of entertainment on the planet Earth. However in the form of setting around a table with pen & paper and a human referee has declined from it's 80s and 90s height.

For example circa 1980 if you wanted to run and bash monsters and take their shit the only choices was Dungeons & Dragons or a similar RPG. However by 2000, you could fire up Diablo and get the same experience.

Yes, I do think a considerable chunk of the audience for table top RPGs has been eaten up by video games and online RPGs. But I meant ubiquitous as in, within the current block of table top gamers, a smaller percentage seem to be playing alternatives to D&D* itself in my local area. I've always assumed this had to do mainly with the d20 boom we had following 3E. Before that people always made a new system for a new game. Once d20 opened up like that, I think it became the standard operating system for most gamers. I don't think this is bad or good, but I do think the reality that needs to be accepted by anyone creating alternatives to that (myself included).

My experience in the 90s was very different, where you had huge swaths of table top gamers playing things like white wolf and other games. Back then if I wanted to find a group playing GURPS or Rolemaster, it was pretty easy, not it seems a bit harder to find. Not impossible, just more difficult.  

*By D&D I just mean D&D and Pathfinder, as well as any D&D-like d20 system.

RE: Patterns. I know patterns. I mentioned earlier how one place I worked, patterns was "the thing". You just had to be able to identify the pattern you were using for management to accept the code. You didn't have to be able to explain why it was the correct pattern to use.

I use the strategy pattern in one or two places, but even then, the strategy instance is usually part of an inheritance hierarchy.

Quote from: estar;863768I wish my language (VB6/VB.NET/C#) supported mixins, that would help me with a particular class of design problems. When the problem is a variation on a common set of behaviors then inheritance may be the better fit.

Sorry. I used "mixin" simply as "parent class intended to be inherited" rather than the LISP-CLOS mixin of "mixing in via inheritance functionality from outside the hierarchy". I miss multiple inheritance too. In this case, I'm working in Java.

For the second half of your comment, that's exactly what I'm doing. This particular problem is converting from one overly complex data format (same "format" but implemented differently each time--I know that doesn't make sense, but I didn't get consulted by the NCI/NIH when they did it) into a simpler data format that is implemented the same. So it's often smaller variations of "what do I use as the gene-name equivalent for this platform" or "which column is THAT in for this institution's data files".

Quote from: estar;863772You not getting my point. You are right, tabletop is a different experience. But you miss my point that those gamers were not looking for the tabletop RPG experience in the first place.

Those gamers were looking for the experience offered by PC Games. Except it is 1980 and those computer games don't exist, hell for gamers at the they didn't imagine it could even exist.

However what they do know that circa 1980 they like to play AD&D because they get to bash monsters (or each other all day). This isn't theoretical. I seen and played with this type of gamer in my hometown in northwest Pennsylvania in the early 80s. Frankly they were a bit of a pain in the ass to those of us who wanted to get on with doing more with our characters.

Then when the computer games started hitting they started disappearing from tabletop and started playing Rogue-likes, and later Diablo for their fun.

So for them the PC Game was the better experience than tabletop RPG with all the world building and roleplaying with NPCs "bullshit" pushed to the wayside.

And why PC games became dominate is because on one hand they are more accessible in terms of time and availability and on the other hand they eventually began to look spectacular.

I think Estar is right about this. I also think the accessibility and availability are another factor. So you have people who were basically always looking for a diablo like experience and now they can get it, so they don't need table top RPGs, but you also have folks who may prefer table top RPGs but find the ease of playing diablo or WoW just is better for their schedule or lifestyle (I know a lot of former gamers in this latter category who simply prefer the flexibility but will occasionally meet with table top groups to get something that the online video game experience doesn't give them).

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;863769Agreed. Even something as open ended as Morrowind still lacked what a p&p rpg has. The only way computers can hope to match that is by having an AI that can respond dynamically to anything you throw at it.

The initial appeal of CRPGs and MMORPGs was accessibility, the ability to play whenever and to do it quickly without a lot of setup. Then later spectacular visuals got added in.

Both of which Tabletop RPGs can't compete with. But where tabletop has the advantage is in the flexibility of the human referee and the tabletop campaign. In my view that is tabletop's singular advantage over ever other form of roleplaying. That what tabletop needs to sell and improve on to compete.

For example you could fly in a CRPGs but it has to be added by some distant programmer or modder. If the CRPG doesn't support flying then it will never be there for the gamer. But with tabletop the human referee can make the change right there with just a ruling. When the idea is extended to all that characters can do in a campaign I feel it gives a compelling reason to play tabletop in of itself.

One of the main appeals of the OSR for me is the emphasis on building tools for referees to use to run and create campaigns.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863778I think Estar is right about this. I also think the accessibility and availability are another factor. So you have people who were basically always looking for a diablo like experience and now they can get it, so they don't need table top RPGs, but you also have folks who may prefer table top RPGs but find the ease of playing diablo or WoW just is better for their schedule or lifestyle (I know a lot of former gamers in this latter category who simply prefer the flexibility but will occasionally meet with table top groups to get something that the online video game experience doesn't give them).

I will add that Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo are not the same experience even as PC Games. As PC Games matured and diversified each alternative pared away some of the core audience of tabletop. Now in 2015 we are left with only with the things that alternative forms of roleplaying can't do. The face to face gaming, the human referee, etc.

And I feel that is a good thing similar to what happened to wargames and board games. Boardgame/Wargame imploded much worse than RPGs but now in the midst of a renaissance for the past decade because a new generation of designer figured out how to take advantage of the things that computer games can't replicate, as well as addressing the limitations of physical games.

Last weekend, I was helping out as an assistant scoutmaster at a boy scout camp-out that my youngest went too. The kids know that I play D&D and wanted me to referee. So I worked it in and ran a game.

Due to time limitations (Only got an hour to play) I managed on get one encounter off. I saw the kids were enjoying the novel experience but weren't quite getting the point. I am sure I was being viewed as the "Dad" who pulling out some interesting but old toys that were not as exciting as the new stuff.

But then came a moment where they ran into a ambush by a giant troll. One scout was quick thinking and decided to charm the troll. I blew the saving throw and suddenly the troll was that character's best friend. The next scout in the initiative order was the cleric who on a whim healed the troll from the damage it already took in the fight. Now the troll was the party's best friend.

At least for the next hour.

At the moment, I could see lightbulbs popping off of everybody head and them thinking "So that what it is about, I can do anything my character could do." Afterwards they started becoming very creative about things they wanted to do as their characters. They didn't always succeed but they found those results fun as well.

It moment like these is why I think that what vital for the survival of tabletop as hobby, the imagination and flexibility the setup allows compared to anything else. Tabletop doesn't need to be like anything else, it needs to be more like itself; players interacting with a setting as their characters with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Quote from: estar;863782I will add that Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo are not the same experience even as PC Games. As PC Games matured and diversified each alternative pared away some of the core audience of tabletop. Now in 2015 we are left with only with the things that alternative forms of roleplaying can't do. The face to face gaming, the human referee, etc.
.

I don't play video games much but I have a gamer friend who pretty much sticks with Blizzard products. He plays Diablo, WoW and Star Craft (may have that last name wrong) pretty regularly, but what you say matches what he says. I think he goes for diablo to get the dungeon crawl experience, he goes for WoW to get more of a campaign experience and maybe do some RP with people online. Star Craft seems to be scratching more of the board game itch. The one element that seems to be missing for him is the flexibility afforded by a human referee and more direct interaction with other people (though as he explains it, a certain amount of that interaction is possible----but it is very different).

Quote from: estar;863783Last weekend, I was helping out as an assistant scoutmaster at a boy scout camp-out that my youngest went too. The kids know that I play D&D and wanted me to referee. So I worked it in and ran a game.

Due to time limitations (Only got an hour to play) I managed on get one encounter off. I saw the kids were enjoying the novel experience but weren't quite getting the point. I am sure I was being viewed as the "Dad" who pulling out some interesting but old toys that were not as exciting as the new stuff.

But then came a moment where they ran into a ambush by a giant troll. One scout was quick thinking and decided to charm the troll. I blew the saving throw and suddenly the troll was that character's best friend. The next scout in the initiative order was the cleric who on a whim healed the troll from the damage it already took in the fight. Now the troll was the party's best friend.

At least for the next hour.

At the moment, I could see lightbulbs popping off of everybody head and them thinking "So that what it is about, I can do anything my character could do." Afterwards they started becoming very creative about things they wanted to do as their characters. They didn't always succeed but they found those results fun as well.

It moment like these is why I think that what vital for the survival of tabletop as hobby, the imagination and flexibility the setup allows compared to anything else. Tabletop doesn't need to be like anything else, it needs to be more like itself; players interacting with a setting as their characters with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

I had a similar experience the other night, when one of my players had, almost on a whim, performed a ritual to the demon emperor and it worked. The consequence of the ritual was he started losing control and turning into an ape-like demon at night, rampaging and killing (something where he would slowly gain awareness and control over time). It was the sort of thing that really required the hand of a GM to bring to life, but also it ended up being this sudden digression in the campaign where everyone was wholly focused on the emerging problem this character presented to the party. We spent about 1.5 hours of fun gaming dealing with that (finding a way to keep him from harming people, tracking him down in the woods when he ran off and went on his first rampage, etc). And this was all the more complicated because it was in the middle of them already on their way to do something else. I think that kind of thing would be very hard for a computer to do well at this stage.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863784a certain amount of that interaction is possible----but it is very different).

For me what drove the point home, was managing and running LARP events and LARP chapters for a decade. Then with Neverwinter Nights I managed what was a MMORPG for a year with a large group of friends (mostly from the LARP). Combined with my enjoying computer games since the TRS-Model I in the early 80s, I got to experience all the major forms of roleplaying as they developed.

The key thing is that roleplaying game have diversified tremendously. There not just distinct experience but nuances within nuances. A recent development in the past three years are survival games like Rust and DayZ. They got little bit of first person shooting, a little bit of CRPG character building, a little bit of minecraft style world building.

Then there is stuff like Pirate Puzzle, which is kinda of like a MMORPG but with pirates and puzzles oriented towards kids. From what I understand stuff is resolved through solving puzzle. You want to dig up treasure, solve a puzzle, fight another pirate ship it handled through solving a puzzle.

Then there are sandbox games like minecraft which are designed to be a collection of tools to manipulate a world with some constraints.

Crusader Kings 2 is a wargame but it handled through you playing a individual character that is the head of your dynasty. However the point isn't to advance your character, although there is some advancement, the point is to advance your DYANSTY. When you die, you switch to playing your heir and continue from there. This can play out over centuries. One scenario starts in 767 AD and ends in 1453 AD.

It just crazy amount of choices there are out there.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863784The one element that seems to be missing for him is the flexibility afforded by a human referee and more direct interaction with other people (though as he explains it, a certain amount of that interaction is possible----but it is very different).

Barring some breakthrough, I think there are some fundamental limits on what can be done with A.I. I feel we will not see sentient computers in our lifetime. However we become very good at capturing human knowledge and exposing it effectively through software. For tasks there will software that will seem almost human like. But tabletop RPG (or any of the arts) won't be one of them.

Particularly in the sense where a interested gamer can sit down in his home and create somebody to use with other gamers. Creating a WoW, or a Skyrim is out of reach of a individual gamer who want to run a campaign while it is very doable with pen & paper RPGs.

What will happen in our lifetime is that worldbuilding and support tools will become very good, user friendly and affordable. That the future of tabletop will be a blend of the virtual and paper. The same with war/boardgames.

Quote from: estar;863779Both of which Tabletop RPGs can't compete with. But where tabletop has the advantage is in the flexibility of the human referee and the tabletop campaign. In my view that is tabletop's singular advantage over ever other form of roleplaying. That what tabletop needs to sell and improve on to compete.

Absolutely, and I think it goes further than tools for the referee. It provides a level of interaction that you can't get with AI right now. To use my own example, I remember very well one situation in a Dragonlance game (I know, I know) where the group had to infiltrate an enemy location guarded by two Ogres. I figured that since ogres were supposed to be rather dumb, we should try to trick them rather than fight them. We were around a corner in a passage way, so we started a verbal exchange where we tried to impersonate how an ogre talks to tell them that we just came back with some great swag that included food but there was just enough for one more ogre. Yaddy, yaddy yadda, they ended up knocking each other out as they fought over who got to get that portion.

You can't get that with a computer game unless it's already scripted.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;863791You can’t get that with a computer game unless it’s already scripted.

Agreed, and it gets worse. If the script is found to suck, it already baked into the software. Oh well. But for the human referee if things are not working out he has alternatives ranging from slight tweaks to jettisoning the problem elements altogether. Tabletop Campaign can be dynamically changed to produce a more fun or interesting experience in the hands of skilled referee. Which is why I advocate the solution to tabletop's ills to is make better tabletop referee both in terms of technique and tools.

A bit tongue in cheek but what would be the health of the hobby if we could magically clone copies of Gygax, Arneson,  Bledsaw,  Mentzer, Kuntz or (insert favorite awesome referee) to handle everybody's campaign.

If the answer is "A lot better" then the  solution is to quit trying to fix shit through rules and working on making better referees. Which is my opinion on the issue.

Quote from: estar;863793If the answer is "A lot better" then the  solution is to quit trying to fix shit through rules and working on making better referees. Which is my opinion on the issue.

I wish I had had the resources back then that are available now, in terms of books, etc. It would have probably made my only attempt at GM'ing a success. I just wasn't born with the talent, I guess. I sure could have used some mentoring or hand holding-- or at least enough slack to mess up.

Quote from: estar;863762And this experience had a big part in shaping my attitude to using different rules to for the various campaigns I run in the Majestic Wilderlands. I just don't attach the importance that some people do to using a set of rules to set the feel of a campaign. I understand the point especially Vreeg's point about how the setting with come to fit the rules. But I designed an "interface" within my Majestic Wilderlands that allows me to slot in completely different sets of rules with minimal work. Note it minimal work not no work.

Right now the latest set of rules to get the treatment is Fantasy Age by Green Ronin. To date it has included AD&D 1st, Harnmaster, Fantasy Hero, GURPS 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions, D&D 3.X, Runequest 2nd, Mongoose Runequest, D&D 4th, D&D 5th, Fudge/Fate*, and OD&D (which got turned into a published supplement).

It depends upon the system and the setting as to how easily they can be matched. Role Playing in Middle Earth doesn't work well with AD&D's magic system, which is a large proportion of that game's published rules. How much do you tweak magic in D&D and Runequest to get them to work in your campaign?

The impact OO Programming has had on my game design is to encourage iterative design and having requirements for game mechanics. It persuaded me that writing lots of rules before trying them out generally fails, rules which never come up in play should be dropped, and that clever ideas for the sake of it are a bad idea.

Quote from: Tod13;863770Unless your mixin (parent class) is abstract, you can still unit test it separate from the inheritors.

The problem is testing the derived classes without having to retest the parent class, which is pretty close to what you went on to say.

I agree that the human GM is the tabletop RPG's unique selling point, but I also agree that there used to be a whole bunch of people in this hobby for whom that wasn't actually important - and those people are better served by videogames by and large.

Frankly, I think this is to the betterment of the hobby - the unimaginative hack and slashers who don't give two shits about characters or setting or human interaction are gone, and the people who are left have more compatible expectations and goals.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;863803It depends upon the system and the setting as to how easily they can be matched. Role Playing in Middle Earth doesn't work well with AD&D's magic system, which is a large proportion of that game's published rules. How much do you tweak magic in D&D and Runequest to get them to work in your campaign?

For D&D (whatever edition) I generally leave the spells alone and mess around with how spells are cast. Similar to the difference between 3.X Sorceror and Wizard. Both use the same spells but memorize spells differently.

For Runequest 2nd edition, the magic system wasn't a good fit and too much work to come up MW flavored cult. I supposed I could have done more but after a short run I moved on to another system.

For Runequest 6th, Mongoose RUnequest, and Basic RP, they have a variety of magic system including a BRP Classic Fantasy version so it is relatively easy to use.

The primary limitation on mages in my setting is the fact they are a scholarly profession, so are naturally limited by economics. That and cultural factors allows me to tolerate variations in the exact form of magic.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;863803The impact OO Programming has had on my game design is to encourage iterative design and having requirements for game mechanics. It persuaded me that writing lots of rules before trying them out generally fails, rules which never come up in play should be dropped, and that clever ideas for the sake of it are a bad idea.

The problem is testing the derived classes without having to retest the parent class, which is pretty close to what you went on to say.

Pretty much agree with this.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;863769Agreed. Even something as open ended as Morrowind still lacked what a p&p rpg has. The only way computers can hope to match that is by having an AI that can respond dynamically to anything you throw at it.

I'm skeptical as to how much we can approach the creativity of a person with something less than a person. Once you have a person, that's likely to involve similar conveniences and inconveniences regardless of whether the physical substrate is meat or semiconductors. Look at the issues that get heated in the hobby, and they mostly have to do with the fact that it involves people!

Quote from: estar;863790Barring some breakthrough, I think there are some fundamental limits on what can be done with A.I. I feel we will not see sentient computers in our lifetime. However we become very good at capturing human knowledge and exposing it effectively through software. For tasks there will software that will seem almost human like. But tabletop RPG (or any of the arts) won't be one of them.

I am like the least computer savvy person on the planet, so that question is way above my pay grade. Do you think if we were able to fully map out and understand the human brain, that it would be possible to replicate that level of complexity with an AI (and maybe get a bit of solo table top in) or do you think there is something fundamental that just makes it an impossibility for all time.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863842I am like the least computer savvy person on the planet, so that question is way above my pay grade. Do you think if we were able to fully map out and understand the human brain, that it would be possible to replicate that level of complexity with an AI (and maybe get a bit of solo table top in) or do you think there is something fundamental that just makes it an impossibility for all time.

On the very prospect of getting a very fine-scale view of human brain functions in the next half-century, I hesitate to bet. Developments in precision of non-invasive techniques have been amazing, but there might be no substitute for nanotechnology probes to collect really detailed data.

However, that is really not directly pertinent to advances in AI, which have been going on mainly by developing systems experimentally and through evolution rather than by copying human hardware.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863842I am like the least computer savvy person on the planet, so that question is way above my pay grade. Do you think if we were able to fully map out and understand the human brain, that it would be possible to replicate that level of complexity with an AI (and maybe get a bit of solo table top in) or do you think there is something fundamental that just makes it an impossibility for all time.

Sentience and awareness may be a result of quantum level effects in which case on thing that can simulate a human brain is something like a human brain not silicon. But we just don't know at this point. There is progress at isolating parts of human intelligence and capturing them in software like language translation. So perhaps there will be a black swan moment where it all falls into place.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863647In other words, TSR in 1982 had by itself 92% of the 2006 market value.  In 1985 when FASA hired me to write "Imbalance of Power," a module for their Star Trek RPG, their estimated first print run was 5000 or 6000 because they wanted a small first run.  Nowadays that's considered a major size print run for one of the major players in the RPG game.

See? Now the interesting question is just why indie games don't enjoy those relative kinds of sales these days. Or are we saying they do but due to competition the pie of money is too spread out... and/or they just suck?

Or maybe all of the above.

Quote from: tenbones;863970See? Now the interesting question is just why indie games don't enjoy those relative kinds of sales these days. Or are we saying they do but due to competition the pie of money is too spread out... and/or they just suck?

Or maybe all of the above.

I think the answer is more in the middle, and all of the above.

Quote from: jhkim;863560Story games are just a small niche within the niche of tabletop RPGs, which is strongly dominated by D&D and Pathfinder. However, as far as I can tell, Pundit's games are an even smaller subniche. If I look around at game conventions, I regularly see people running games by Jason Morningstar, for example (Fiasco, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, etc.), but I have not yet seen anyone running games by Pundit (Forward to Adventure, GnomeMurdered, Lords of Olympus, or Arrows of Indra).

That might have to do with all those games being non-RPG microgames that are very suited for one-shot play, while my books (gnomemurdered excluded) are designed best for campaigns and long-term play.

And that indie-forge cultists are famous for frequenting Cons and using them as a venue to try to proselytize.

Quote from: soviet;863568It may be worse than you think. I'm someone that no-one ever heard of, right? As a game designer if not a forum poster. I made a game called Other Worlds. I don't have my own forum. I don't maintain a daily blog. I put zero effort into self promotion and the small web presence my game does have is woefully basic and only occasionally updated.

Yet my game is an electrum best seller on DTRPG, putting it in the top 3.43% of products. And my sales figures are low, in the hundreds but not the thousands. Numbers like Vincent Baker's would be a pipe dream for me. I'm in profit and I'm happy enough, but man the bar I have set is low.

Arrows of Indra is a copper best seller, two orders of magnitude below electrum, putting it in the top 12.34%. Lords of Olympus and Dark Albion are silver best sellers, one order of magnitude below electrum, putting them in the top 10.1%.  

First, your stats don't sound like they make sense to me.  Although I guess maybe it might work if (almost) all your sales are happening only on DTRPG and you're talking quite high hundreds.

Second, you're saying "order of magnitude". I don't think you know what that means. Either that, and you do know what it means and you're using it wrong on purpose.

On DTRPG the difference between Copper and Electrum is the difference between the top 12.34% of all products on the site and the top 3.43% of all products on the site (with Silver being products in the top 10.09%).  So trying to make it sound like if you've sold 900 books on DTRPG that means Lords of Olympus must have sold 90 is ridiculous and stupid of you to attempt.

I'll note that on RPGnow, Other Worlds is only Copper rated, which is the same as Dark Albion even though Dark Albion has been out for a few months while OW has been out for years now. Arrows of Indra is also Copper rated, but it switched distributors and as a result of this had all its previous sales WIPED, before which it was Silver.  That means that as a product, Arrows got all the way to Silver, then from absolute zero got all the way back to Copper again.  The values mean something else there compared to DTRPG too; Copper is top 9.4%, while Silver is top 5.56%.

So again, that means Arrows of Indra became one of the top 5% of all products for sale on the entire site, then from nothing and more than a year after its first release got all the way back to being one of the top 10% of all products for sale on that entire site. It did close to the same thing on DTRPG, getting to copper after having all its sales figures wiped.

And Dark Albion is right on your book's heels after about 6 months of life compared to your book's years.

Oh, and yeah: Dark Albion on either of those sites? That's just the PDF. It doesn't even count the Hardcover sales, from Lulu, or the Softcover sales, from Amazon.
I can tell you this: Dark Albion has been by far the best selling RPG book I ever wrote; followed by its predecessor AoI, followed by its predecessor LoO.  Every single product I make does better than the last one.

Quote from: RPGPundit;864002I can tell you this: Dark Albion has been by far the best selling RPG book I ever wrote; followed by its predecessor AoI, followed by its predecessor LoO.  Every single product I make does better than the last one.

well congratulations on that at least. Do you have a dayjob you can quit or are you doing RPG-related stuff full time these days?

Quote from: RPGPundit;863999That might have to do with all those games being non-RPG microgames that are very suited for one-shot play, while my books (gnomemurdered excluded) are designed best for campaigns and long-term play.

My guess is that it might have to do with those games having better visibility and distribution than your books.

I saw varying selections of them at stores around the world (Cologne, Paris, London, Leicester), and consequently, played at conventions.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;864013My guess is that it might have to do with those games having better visibility and distribution than your books.

I saw varying selections of them at stores around the world (Cologne, Paris, London, Leicester), and consequently, played at conventions.

Perhaps; I've Arrows of Indra in game stores, and I've been told by my publisher that it would appear Dark Albion may be at some bookstores. In any case, I don't know if brick & mortar makes as huge a difference any more.

Quote from: TristramEvans;864005well congratulations on that at least. Do you have a dayjob you can quit or are you doing RPG-related stuff full time these days?

Not quite, but my various RPG-related activities account for about one-third of my income stream these days, more or less.

Quote from: RPGPundit;864015Perhaps; I've Arrows of Indra in game stores, and I've been told by my publisher that it would appear Dark Albion may be at some bookstores. In any case, I don't know if brick & mortar makes as huge a difference any more.

It does around here.  There's still a market for instant gratification with a solid object in my town.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;864017It does around here.  There's still a market for instant gratification with a solid object in my town.

Is it instant gratification or people wanting to see the product before buying it? Or just more Luddite tendencies in TTRPG people? I see an awful lot of people who don't buy PDFs. (Or they buy the print/PDF bundle, but never read the PDF.)

I think that sometimes people like to actually have a tactile object, or find it easier to flip through a book. Sometimes, though, it's just a bit tougher for some to read on a screen.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;864057I think that sometimes people like to actually have a tactile object, or find it easier to flip through a book. Sometimes, though, it's just a bit tougher for some to read on a screen.

That's what I meant by Luddite, I didn't mean it in a negative sense. (I carry a railroad pocket watch which I consider Luddite. But I only buy PDFs... Go figure.)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;863992I think the answer is more in the middle, and all of the above.

Much of the problem is the famously opaque economics of the industry.  A lot of people have made conjectures.  Some of those are smart people, and some of them have pieces of the puzzle.  But there has never yet been a comprehensive, accurate survey of the books industry-wide.  Too much of the "evidence" is anecdotal, of the "The company I worked for had $X in sales in 1994 ... (as far as I know, and it's not like the books were ever reviewed by an independent auditor)" kind.

Quote from: RPGPundit;864002First, your stats don't sound like they make sense to me.  Although I guess maybe it might work if (almost) all your sales are happening only on DTRPG and you're talking quite high hundreds.

Second, you're saying "order of magnitude". I don't think you know what that means. Either that, and you do know what it means and you're using it wrong on purpose.

On DTRPG the difference between Copper and Electrum is the difference between the top 12.34% of all products on the site and the top 3.43% of all products on the site (with Silver being products in the top 10.09%).  So trying to make it sound like if you've sold 900 books on DTRPG that means Lords of Olympus must have sold 90 is ridiculous and stupid of you to attempt.

I'll note that on RPGnow, Other Worlds is only Copper rated, which is the same as Dark Albion even though Dark Albion has been out for a few months while OW has been out for years now. Arrows of Indra is also Copper rated, but it switched distributors and as a result of this had all its previous sales WIPED, before which it was Silver.  That means that as a product, Arrows got all the way to Silver, then from absolute zero got all the way back to Copper again.  The values mean something else there compared to DTRPG too; Copper is top 9.4%, while Silver is top 5.56%.

So again, that means Arrows of Indra became one of the top 5% of all products for sale on the entire site, then from nothing and more than a year after its first release got all the way back to being one of the top 10% of all products for sale on that entire site. It did close to the same thing on DTRPG, getting to copper after having all its sales figures wiped.

And Dark Albion is right on your book's heels after about 6 months of life compared to your book's years.

Oh, and yeah: Dark Albion on either of those sites? That's just the PDF. It doesn't even count the Hardcover sales, from Lulu, or the Softcover sales, from Amazon.
I can tell you this: Dark Albion has been by far the best selling RPG book I ever wrote; followed by its predecessor AoI, followed by its predecessor LoO.  Every single product I make does better than the last one.

Keep trying then, maybe next time you'll get there. ;)

You're right that apparently I don't know what order of magnitude means, I thought the key to the sales bands used that phrase but it does not. My bad. What I meant was simply that they are progressively harder to achieve, which is true, especially given that a lot of products on there are shovelware that probably only sell a handful of copies.

Like you, the majority of my sales come through OBS. Like you, the majority of my sales came in the first few months of the product being available. Like you, I also sell through other sources, including Lulu, a couple of stores, and IPR.  

Who knows, maybe your combination of these things works out higher than mine, and the DTRPG standings are not the true picture. I fucking hope so for your sake if RPGs represent a third of your income. But even if so it is amusing that it is this close, for all three books. According to your review Other Worlds isn't even an RPG! :D

Quote from: Tod13;864058That's what I meant by Luddite, I didn't mean it in a negative sense.

Then you are not using the word as it is commonly used.

Quote from: Ravenswing;864061Much of the problem is the famously opaque economics of the industry.  A lot of people have made conjectures.  Some of those are smart people, and some of them have pieces of the puzzle.  But there has never yet been a comprehensive, accurate survey of the books industry-wide.  Too much of the "evidence" is anecdotal, of the "The company I worked for had $X in sales in 1994 ... (as far as I know, and it's not like the books were ever reviewed by an independent auditor)" kind.

These conversations are so conjectural that to me they always seem a lot more like two little kids arguing about whose dad is the toughest or whether Superman is stronger than the Hulk than they seem like a business case study.

Quote from: soviet;864088Keep trying then, maybe next time you'll get there. ;)

You're right that apparently I don't know what order of magnitude means

Wow. Well, ok.

QuoteLike you, the majority of my sales come through OBS.

Lords of Olympus is sold through Precis Intermedia's web store, I can't say for sure what percentage of it's sales are from there, and what are from OBS, but I suppose it's likely OBS is a majority, though not likely to be a huge majority.

As I said (and you ignored) for Dark Albion, NONE of the print sales are from OBS (which only deals with the Albion PDF at this time). I can't say for certain if the majority of sales of Albion have been PDF rather than print (though that seems plausible given pdf is cheaper), much less if the actual profits are more from the PDF than the Print sales, but a very significant percentage of Albion's sales are NOT from OBS's storefronts.

QuoteLike you, the majority of my sales came in the first few months of the product being available.

That's pretty much true of any book in the hobby. However, given how quickly my games have caught up to yours in the comparatively shorter time they've been around, it seems pretty clear to me that their ongoing sales are better than yours.

Arrows of Indra, for example, that got back to Copper after having had to start back from zero a year after it was first released.

And Other Worlds isn't an RPG. But non-RPGs have their own little fandom of course, and someone can make a decent bit of money exploiting that.

Quote from: Bren;864114These conversations are so conjectural that to me they always seem a lot more like two little kids arguing about whose dad is the toughest or whether Superman is stronger than the Hulk than they seem like a business case study.

Yep.
As Pundit just so nicely demonstrated.

Quote from: Simlasa;864137Yep.
As Pundit just so nicely demonstrated.

But apparently with even more bruised egos.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;864201But apparently with even more bruised egos.

Humans tend to be even more defensive of their babies than of their parents.

Quote from: RPGPundit;864127Lords of Olympus is sold through Precis Intermedia's web store, I can't say for sure what percentage of it's sales are from there, and what are from OBS, but I suppose it's likely OBS is a majority, though not likely to be a huge majority.

As I said (and you ignored) for Dark Albion, NONE of the print sales are from OBS (which only deals with the Albion PDF at this time). I can't say for certain if the majority of sales of Albion have been PDF rather than print (though that seems plausible given pdf is cheaper), much less if the actual profits are more from the PDF than the Print sales, but a very significant percentage of Albion's sales are NOT from OBS's storefronts.

Wait, I thought you said that OBS had a monopoly over the hobby, to the extent that you cannot run a viable RPG business without being on there and being removed from it is the same as being censored? Now you're saying it might not even be half of your sales?

Quote from: soviet;864577Now you're saying it might not even be half of your sales?

That isn't what he said. He said non-OBS sales were a "very significant percentage."

Quote from: Bren;864589That isn't what he said.

Um, yes it is. Read again.

Quote from: soviet;864577Wait, I thought you said that OBS had a monopoly over the hobby, to the extent that you cannot run a viable RPG business without being on there and being removed from it is the same as being censored? Now you're saying it might not even be half of your sales?

It is the print and pdf division. I can't speak for Lords of Olympus, but with all of our print books, including Arrows of Indra, print sales are usually at least half of the pie (it is a little hard to judge because print sales tend to be really big the first few months in comparison to PDFs, then slow considerably, whereas PDFs are more even over time for us---though that first month you have a bit of a boom). OBS is essential for the PDF end of things (at least for us, that is where over 90% of our PDF sales come from). They are also complimentary. Being on OBS is important to your print sales because of the awareness it creates (especially in the first day of release).

Quote from: soviet;864590Um, yes it is. Read again.

I quoted what he said. So yes, what I quoted is indeed exactly what he said.

What words did you read that you think support your claim?

Quote from: Bren;864606I quoted what he said. So yes, what I quoted is indeed exactly what he said.

What words did you read that you think support your claim?

...you DO realize who is on the other end of this conversation, don't you?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;864610...you DO realize who is on the other end of this conversation, don't you?

No, not really.

Quote from: Bren;864606I quoted what he said. So yes, what I quoted is indeed exactly what he said.

What words did you read that you think support your claim?

Quote from: RPGPundit;864127Lords of Olympus is sold through Precis Intermedia's web store, I can't say for sure what percentage of it's sales are from there, and what are from OBS, but I suppose it's likely OBS is a majority, though not likely to be a huge majority.

Likely
Not definitely
Thus might not be

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;864610...you DO realize who is on the other end of this conversation, don't you?

It's the guy who got you your last ban at rpg.net (or at least was one of the people who reported your post, I suppose). :D

Quote from: soviet;864614Likely
Not definitely
Thus might not be

Brett is somewhat rare in that he has his own storefront and from what I can tell he's been pretty successful with that. When folks say that OBS is important and 90% of PDF sales, that doesn't mean there are not exceptions. But they are still exceptions. Just like plenty of vendors out there have found a way to be successful without Amazon. Doesn't diminish Amazon's near monopoly status (and therefore its ability to impact content anytime it lays down guidelines). We had this conversation a while back, I still think it is difficult to deny the impact that OBS has on content or to not see it as a near monopoly. There are exceptions but the vast majority of publishers (myself included) get a large majority their sales from OBS. I also don't think it is a stretch to say that the announcement of new guidelines made anyone on there think twice about the content of future releases.

Quote from: soviet;864614Likely
Not definitely
Thus might not be

You are correct that he didn't explicitly contradict the interpretation you put on what he did say, but then he couldn't flatly contradict that interpretation because, as he said, he doesn't have the sales figures.

What he did say is that his estimate is that sales from OBS are a majority of his sales. That is not the same as him saying that his estimate is that sales from OBS are a minority of his sales. Hence, my statement that he didn't say the latter, since he did, in fact, say words equivalent to the former.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;864618We had this conversation a while back, I still think it is difficult to deny the impact that OBS has on content or to not see it as a near monopoly.

Not at all difficult. Just close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and loudly chant "LA...LA...LA...I can't hear you!"

Quote from: soviet;864577Wait, I thought you said that OBS had a monopoly over the hobby, to the extent that you cannot run a viable RPG business without being on there and being removed from it is the same as being censored? Now you're saying it might not even be half of your sales?

If you were actually in business, and not a dilettante, you'd get that "losing half your sales" means you would almost certainly be out of business.