Another day, another conspiracy....one lone voice stands amongst the herd.

I cast thee out satan!

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;584125Who cares, as long as it's fun?  I think you will boil in rage at that, Pundit.  I challenge you to *try* the game.

Have a beer, my friend.  Other people's fun is never bad.

CB

In this case, Crane and Andy K apparently are too scared to even want to risk sending me the game.

RPGPundit

Quote from: vytzka;584217It is actually neither. Neither side is being fooled because the game has both of those things.

(it is seriously hard to sum it up any better than that)

Wait and see.

Except that this will fail to satisfy either crowd; if indeed the game is somehow "equally weighted", which I doubt.

RPGPundit

Quote from: GrimGent;584219Also, keep in mind that Andy K was also involved with publishing the previous translated RPG from Japan, Maid, and that's not exactly heavy on "storygamish" elements, either.

It was of interest to him because it hit a number of the right buttons for the hipster Storygaming Swine anyways, of the kind of things they think RPGs are supposed to be turned into: most prominently, it was sexually degenerate, but also didn't emphasize combat (emphasizing instead bizarre pedophilic sado-masochistic dom/sub relationships, underaged girls in transparent maid uniforms, young girls getting broomsticks shoved up places, etc), and featured a subject they knew regular gamers would hate.

In other words, it was Andy K's labour of love to "freak the mundanes" and hope to trick stupid people into thinking that his being controversial is the same as his being brilliant, which obviously it isn't.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;584516Except that this will fail to satisfy either crowd; if indeed the game is somehow "equally weighted", which I doubt.

This again assumes that the two sides are somehow mutually exclusive, which IME is not true of a vast majority of RPGers. RPGs have been successfully mixing the two concepts for decades.

FWIW I don't think TBZ is equally weighted. I would guess its closer to 80/20 to 90/10 in favour of conventional RPG mechanics and approach.

My understanding and how it was explained to me by Andy, and ultimately I believe it based on what I've seen of other Japanese TRPGs, is that Japanese games have a tendency to use a lot of terms that unfortunately have translations into English that've become landmines in certain types of forum discourse.

It's not that they're storygamey at all, anymore than, say, White Wolf games, so much as they use a different set of terms that when directly translated tend to make it sound storygamey to English speaking audiences who're used to those terms being abused to high heaven.

Japanese RPG gaming is a lot more explicitly linked to genre emulation, there's a lot of stuff that's aimed heavily at emulating manga and anime as well as console RPGs, and so that results in them using a lot of terms and concepts like scenes and references to theatre and drama and such, but it comes from an entirely independent evolution from those terms abuse since the rise of Storygaming in English language RPGs.

Quote from: RPGPundit;584515In this case, Crane and Andy K apparently are too scared to even want to risk sending me the game.

RPGPundit

I can buy you a PDF if Andy still takes money from backers for extra stuff, and if you promise to stop freaking out before you read it.

Quote from: Skywalker;584546This again assumes that the two sides are somehow mutually exclusive, which IME is not true of a vast majority of RPGers. RPGs have been successfully mixing the two concepts for decades.

Also, no one could claim that AD&D was a "forgian" game system, and yet, that didn't hinder the "evolution" of Dragonlance becoming a proto storygame, leading to adventure paths like the Dark Sun modules and Pathfinder.

Long before storygaming people were drifting AD&D into scenic and railroady play, or feeling superior for having "deep, conflicted characters" and not going into mere dungeons.*

But that works both ways. I'd do the same with storygames.
If I would play Sorcerer I'd throw out the whole humanity, kickers, and bangs, and use the cool "successes as a currency" chain mechanism ("any success you have on one test carry over as bonus dice to any related action that follows it"). For me, Sorcerer would be a WoD light.

If there were rules like "players ask for scenes" or "players have to roll whether their character is allowed to enter a scene" in TBZ I'd just ignore them and use the system for pure, unadultered world simulation. (An orc is an orc is orc, not an allegory for something, not a balanced encounter, and not a moral dilemma.)
All that I would allow would be a bit genre simulation, like "the villain is able to deliver a huge speech and still retain surprise", but again, that would go both ways and players could use that as well to have their characters act like in their favorite anime.


* It's one of my theories that storygaming was only a natural evolution/split from Gygax/Arneson style role-playing, and that players more inclined to play games from an "authorial p.o.v." would of course use the available tools for their preferred playstyle - before eventually designing tools that were a better fit, and (arguably) a new hobby.
But that's a topic for another thread.

Quote from: RPGPundit;584518It was of interest to him because it hit a number of the right buttons for the hipster Storygaming Swine anyways, of the kind of things they think RPGs are supposed to be turned into: most prominently, it was sexually degenerate, but also didn't emphasize combat (emphasizing instead bizarre pedophilic sado-masochistic dom/sub relationships, underaged girls in transparent maid uniforms, young girls getting broomsticks shoved up places, etc), and featured a subject they knew regular gamers would hate.

In other words, it was Andy K's labour of love to "freak the mundanes" and hope to trick stupid people into thinking that his being controversial is the same as his being brilliant, which obviously it isn't.

RPGPundit

Why on earth is this a problem? YOu are the only one whining like this...again.

Quote from: vytzka;584684I can buy you a PDF if Andy still takes money from backers for extra stuff, and if you promise to stop freaking out before you read it.

I don't review PDFs. But if someone sent me one, I'd certainly read it and probably have something to say about it.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;584829I don't review PDFs. But if someone sent me one, I'd certainly read it and probably have something to say about it.

RPGPundit

Alas, I just checked and it was too late to get another PDF level pledge in so we'll have to listen to you talk out of your ass about conspiracies for a while now (at least until everybody else gets their PDFs and see how ridiculous this is).

Quote from: RPGPundit;584515In this case, Crane and Andy K apparently are too scared to even want to risk sending me the game.

RPGPundit

I'm not.  When it hits Drivethru, I'll be happy to buy you a PDF copy for review.

That is, if he doesn't first.

Also, for the record, TBZ really isn't a story game, from what I've seen so far. I just think you're grinding your axe against Crane.  

CB

Quote from: RPGPundit;584829I don't review PDFs. But if someone sent me one, I'd certainly read it and probably have something to say about it.

RPGPundit

So, in effect, you are reviewing the game, just not owning up to the fact that you are reviewing it.

Man up.  Read the PDF and do a review, instead of hiding behind this "I need a print copy" nonsense. Show us that you're the swine crushing Pundit that we all know and love.

WTF does Crane have to do with it anyway?

I thought this was all AndyK's baby?

Quote from: J Arcane;585037WTF does Crane have to do with it anyway?

I thought this was all AndyK's baby?

He is doing the layout.

Richard