Quote from: Mistwell on May 24, 2021, 02:37:13 PM
And, again, your theory is complete nonsense lacking even a shred of evidential support and in the realm of lunatic conspiracy theorist screaming about the end of the world on the street corner.

If you'd actually payed attention to sales then you would not be so effortlessly putting your foot in your mouth trying to white knight for WOkeTC. again.

Keep struggling.

All that said. The other reason Tasha and probably now Wokenloft sell is as noted earlier in the thread. That Tasha had a new class and new class paths. And Wokenloft here also has new class paths. Not sure how many. But thats bound to attract a few extra sales just for those.

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on May 24, 2021, 06:18:33 PM

Quote from: jhkim on May 24, 2021, 06:11:51 PM

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on May 24, 2021, 05:28:46 PM
All that said, if the line didn't grab you, it didn't grab you. A lot of people didn't like the weekend in hell thing (which is very black boxed set). Domains of Dread provided an approach that allowed for more steady campaigns with characters from Ravenloft (personally I liked the run the "Campaign in Hell", so I didn't use native characters as much. But DoD is pretty well regarded among many fans. Black Box for me is more about the tone, the mission statement, the way it just hit my like a shovel the first time I read it (and I kept wanting to re-read it). But its tone put some off.

Just to clarify, I loved the hell out of the first two modules - but I disliked the boxed set and the later modules. So I'd be mining the books for material to use in a game that doesn't have the Demi-plane of Dread. Looking at my collection, I've also got Darklords and the Gothic Earth Gazetteer. I found Darklords had some interesting ideas, but it was too tied into the Demi-plane of Dread concept to be very useful to me.

I've run Ravenloft and Ravenloft 2 multiple times - three or four times at least. I also ran a non-D&D based gothic horror campaign, using a variant of the Ars Magica system.

That may point to a difference in taste. I came to Ravenloft by way of Knight of the Black Rose and the black box (I read Knight of the black rose and immediately bought black box and feast of Goblyns, then worked my way back to the original module from there: so I started more as a fan of the setting. So I read the black box and was like "this is great: I want more of this".

You might check out the Masque of the Red Death boxed set if you haven't already. The gazetteers were quite dry in my opinion, but the boxed set was pretty interesting in its initial presentation (they were good in terms of content, i just found them oddly dry compared to the boxed set---but that might just be my memory). I had some fun running that one from time to time. Also the gothic earth concept worked really well from what I remember.

Jumping (back) on the Masque of the Red Death bandwagon. If you haven't seen it before, take a look - the 2e boxed set is available in pdf on DMsGuild, and the 5e sourcebook is as well.

With regard to sales numbers, a bad addition to a successful series usually sells well.  People buy it in the expectation that it will be like previous products.  You see the effect in the next one in the series, where people either give it a pass expecting it to be bad like the last one, or give it a critical look before making a purchase.  Decent sales numbers in this case does not provide evidence that people like the product.

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on May 24, 2021, 07:38:41 PM

Quote from: Pat on May 24, 2021, 07:25:52 PM

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on May 24, 2021, 06:18:33 PM

You might check out the Masque of the Red Death boxed set if you haven't already. The gazetteers were quite dry in my opinion, but the boxed set was pretty interesting in its initial presentation (they were good in terms of content, i just found them oddly dry compared to the boxed set---but that might just be my memory). I had some fun running that one from time to time. Also the gothic earth concept worked really well from what I remember.

I really liked Masque of the Red Death, as well. The main problem is the mechanics aren't great, but the setting works really well.

I wasn't terribly impressed with I6 Ravenloft, so I ended up skipping the 2e campaign setting. As a result, I came to the setting relatively late. But at the turn of the millennium, the Kargatane started publishing netbooks, which they made available on the web for free. These weren't small books; they were massive tomes. And they were just dripping with style. They showed me the potential of Ravenloft, and to a lesser degree Gothic Earth. So I began picking up the Ravenloft books, starting with the Van Richten Guides, which I generally quite liked, though I recognize their flaws.

Netbooks here:
http://www.kargatane.com/

I don't remember a whole lot about the Gothic Earth mechanics, but I do recall liking how they handled firearms for some reason (it just had a nice feel to me). Overall though I think it was more about setting than mechanics. I couldn't' honestly weigh in on them in terms of quality without reading and running it again (been a while).

I think with Ravenloft there are a few types of fans. I always liked the bare bones style of black box, which the Van Richten books helped illuminate in an interesting way. But mainly I liked to expand and create the bulk of the setting myself (my view is everyone's Ravenloft should be different---which I think fits the demiplane's nature). The kargatane stuff definitely is interesting and lots of people like it, for me that stuff developed the setting too much for my taste (the development wasn't itself bad, but it created too much lore for what I was looking for: I always looked at the entries in the box sets as the base and anything as as purely optional, with most of the blanks being filled in by me). DoD is probably a nice middle ground between those two extremes. The 3E books though really didn't fit my taste (and the WOTC 3E book was what got me to stop buying books just because WOTC released something new). A lot of people did like them. I found them a touch emo, and not as in touch with the classic horror charm (I think for me the moment I realized that line wasn't for me was when I saw a troupe of bards in the background in an image and I realized they were basically a 90s-00s band ported into ravenloft and given wooden instruments--complete with swooping bangs over one eye).

Firearms weren't bad. I liked the broad categories. The most fundamental problem is AD&D's proficiency system doesn't work well in a skill-heavy game, combined with some weirdness with the magic.

I have a different approach. Since I started at the periphery and only later got the core rules, I don't consider even the core to be inviolate, much less than unofficial fan-produced Karagane netbooks. One of the most important elements of the gothic horror is mystery and suspense, which doesn't work well with a rigidly defined canon. Each campaign needs its own secrets. That's the virtue of the netbooks, beause they gives the DM more options to plunder to build a unique campaign. I seem them as treasure chests to steal from, not straight jackets.

Quote from: Omega on May 24, 2021, 09:35:22 PM

Quote from: Mistwell on May 24, 2021, 02:37:13 PM
And, again, your theory is complete nonsense lacking even a shred of evidential support and in the realm of lunatic conspiracy theorist screaming about the end of the world on the street corner.

If you'd actually payed attention to sales then you would not be so effortlessly putting your foot in your mouth trying to white knight for WOkeTC. again.

Keep struggling.

I actually pay attention to sales. I quoted them to you directly. If you are seeing anything different then let's see it. Put up or shut the fuck up already, yah nutter.

Quote from: Mishihari on May 24, 2021, 10:14:22 PM
With regard to sales numbers, a bad addition to a successful series usually sells well.  People buy it in the expectation that it will be like previous products.  You see the effect in the next one in the series, where people either give it a pass expecting it to be bad like the last one, or give it a critical look before making a purchase.  Decent sales numbers in this case does not provide evidence that people like the product.

Here is a review compilation. Universally positive. And this is after Tasha's, which you guys also claimed was woke, and which also had and continues to have phenomenal sales.

Quote from: RandyB on May 24, 2021, 09:44:23 PM
Jumping (back) on the Masque of the Red Death bandwagon. If you haven't seen it before, take a look - the 2e boxed set is available in pdf on DMsGuild, and the 5e sourcebook is as well.

OK, that bandwagon is big enough to convince me. I picked up the 5e sourcebook from DMs Guild in PDF.

On initial skimming through, I quite like the class split of Scion / Shepherd / Sleuth / Soldier / Stalwart - and the clash with the selection of Archetypes. It looks like a decent attempt to keep the flavor of classes rather than just giving up and having dull generics like D20 Modern or True20, which I saw as just wannabe-skill-based.

I like the setting - I tend to prefer historical settings for RPGs in general though not for D&D. I'm tempted to go earlier than 1890s, though, in keeping with what I think of as the classic gothics.

Quote from: Omega on May 24, 2021, 09:37:47 PM
All that said. The other reason Tasha and probably now Wokenloft sell is as noted earlier in the thread. That Tasha had a new class and new class paths. And Wokenloft here also has new class paths. Not sure how many. But thats bound to attract a few extra sales just for those.

Yes, someone had a brilliant idea with 5E.  Including about 5 player options in a splat book ensures it's not just the DMs buying the titles.

Quote from: Mistwell on May 24, 2021, 11:54:25 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on May 24, 2021, 10:14:22 PM
With regard to sales numbers, a bad addition to a successful series usually sells well.  People buy it in the expectation that it will be like previous products.  You see the effect in the next one in the series, where people either give it a pass expecting it to be bad like the last one, or give it a critical look before making a purchase.  Decent sales numbers in this case does not provide evidence that people like the product.

Here is a review compilation. Universally positive. And this is after Tasha's, which you guys also claimed was woke, and which also had and continues to have phenomenal sales.

"You guys?"  I don't think I claimed anything here.  I was just pointing out an error.  And the most relevant predecessor would be the previous Ravenloft, not Tasha's, though yes, that has some relevance.

Quote from: Mistwell on May 24, 2021, 11:54:25 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on May 24, 2021, 10:14:22 PM
With regard to sales numbers, a bad addition to a successful series usually sells well.  People buy it in the expectation that it will be like previous products.  You see the effect in the next one in the series, where people either give it a pass expecting it to be bad like the last one, or give it a critical look before making a purchase.  Decent sales numbers in this case does not provide evidence that people like the product.

Here is a review compilation. Universally positive. And this is after Tasha's, which you guys also claimed was woke, and which also had and continues to have phenomenal sales.

I am sure there is a market for it, and I doubt WOTC intentionally shoot itself in the foot over this stuff (maybe creative people on design teams would, but this is still a money making company). I think the question is how many people do they lose with this stuff, and how many do they bring in. I don't really know the answer, maybe there are enough young people coming into RPGs, who are on board with this kind of messaging, that they can jettison older fans and younger people who find the messaging heavy handed. How well or how badly it does, isn't something that especially concerns me. However I do think a lot of media companies have made strange decisions while trying to navigate the weird cultural climate we are in. I find it especially perplexing coming from the point of view where I want diversity in the hobby, I like seeing things like more writers from different backgrounds and generally like transgressive entertainment, but find there is something very victorian in the approach I am seeing (and not in a good 'victorian horror' type way). I also think there is a difference between being openminded and wanting to see diversity and veering into pandering, into just checking off the boxes on a list, etc. What I am seeing seems very heavy handed in this respect to me (it reminds me a bit of well intentioned 'very special episodes' when we were kids: where problems being addressed are a bit exaggerated and the tone is very much talking down to you like you are a child). But all that doesn't mean the content can't be good. There are all kinds of books and movies I like that have heavy handed political messages, political messages I don't agree with, that I still thoroughly enjoy because the art and the craft are there (300, Starship Troopers the novel, etc). I think a much bigger issue with the new stuff is they seem to be going completely against the foundations the line was built on: multi-genre horror instead of pure classic and gothic horror (again any old fan can tell you how much the text of the early Ravenloft made this extremely explicit), abandoning things like old movie tropes, nerfing horror (scaring characters rather than players), etc. Maybe this is stuff newer fans want (I don't know I am not a young person so I can't really say there). For me, the stuff I am seeing looks very unappealing overall. That is fine, that doesn't bother me if they want to make a version of Ravenloft I don't like. I do dislike the climate they are creating though, where any objection to it, sort of gets you placed in the bad/evil person camp (a bit like how Disney used its political messaging as shield when it put out Last Jedi---and I wasn't someone who universally disliked that movie: just found it a puzzling use of a middle film in a trilogy despite finding most of it pretty entertaining).

My 4 year old told me to put away my POD copy of the 2e Ravenloft boxed set because it was too scary.  I flipped through the new book on the weekend and I didn't see any art that would upset my 4 year old.  It failed the horror test so I put it back on the shelf.

Best thing is to vote with your wallet.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on May 25, 2021, 10:31:05 AM
Best thing is to vote with your wallet.

people do and 5e keeps chuggin along, they hate this.

Quote from: This Guy on May 25, 2021, 12:04:26 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on May 25, 2021, 10:31:05 AM
Best thing is to vote with your wallet.

people do and 5e keeps chuggin along, they hate this.

I'm under no illusions that the 5e juggernaut won't stop because a few OSR guys are not buying them. But I'm going to support as many indie OSR devs as I can.

If nothing else - even just for my own sanity.