TheRPGSite

At the risk of a slightly negative first thread I have to ask where has D&D gone?

It's been what three years an all we have are the three core books, a gazetteer and some realms specific monster manual (don't have yet).

Where is the settings support? The sourcebooks?

I wa thinking of returning to the DM armchair and looking for inspiration but nothing but tumbleweed.

People keep saying you can use your old edition material but that being the case I may as well just run basic or 2e.

I'm genuinely bewildered by WotC's plan, are they winding D&D down? It looks like there might be a handful of interesting 3rd party support but is it really worth investing in this edition if the owners aren't? Or should I stick with Mythras, my rebound RPG after 3e burned me out?

Some genuine questions in that mope

WotC is in the business of making money.
The existing material has to sell well before more products are released.
It is not like the old days when TSR was basically "the only game in town" if you wanted D20.
While there is demand, there may not be Enough demand.
=

Crawford has talked about how they want to avoid adding too much splat to the game and so unbalance or even break it the way the cleric, druid and endlessly buffed wizards did 3e (my examples not his). By avoiding this they are sparing us a new edition to clean up the overburdened mess in 3-4 years. They also want to keep the game accessible for new players.

Your summary of their releases leaves out 5 book length adventures, two of which (Out of the Abyss and Curse of Strahd) are excellent. And Volo's Guide to Monsters is not a 'realms specific monster manual.' It is all useable in any setting and includes some monster PC options.

As Greentongue says the RPG market is not huge. Better to release a few high quality books that sell well rather than a mountain of uneven material that leads to buyer burn out. Surveys show that homebrew and FR are massively dominant with only a very small number playing in GH, Dark Sun, etc. So while I love a number of those settings publishing for them is not very attractive financially.

And in terms of settings and adventures the OSR and DM's Guild is producing enough new good material to keep anyone satisfied.

'Is it worth investing in this edition if the owner's aren't?' They are focused on keeping D&D alive by attracting new players, bring back some old players and not strip mining their market. 5e is a very fine edition, my favorite since BECMI.

If you want to play or DM it will be a lot easier to find or form a group with 5e than any other edition. So if you actually enjoy playing as opposed to reading supplements and arguing about RPGs on the net, yes it is worth investing in.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950610At the risk of a slightly negative first thread I have to ask where has D&D gone?

It's been what three years an all we have are the three core books, a gazetteer and some realms specific monster manual (don't have yet).

Where is the settings support? The sourcebooks?

I wa thinking of returning to the DM armchair and looking for inspiration but nothing but tumbleweed.

People keep saying you can use your old edition material but that being the case I may as well just run basic or 2e.

I'm genuinely bewildered by WotC's plan, are they winding D&D down? It looks like there might be a handful of interesting 3rd party support but is it really worth investing in this edition if the owners aren't? Or should I stick with Mythras, my rebound RPG after 3e burned me out?

Some genuine questions in that mope

Are you talking about 5e? If so the plan is to produce far more GM facing books then Player facing books. It seems to working fine. New/Mid/Old School types seem to buy the books and I flat know a lot of people actually play the game regularly.

Just to be clear I'm talking specifically about 5e.

I'm not talking the 12 products a month of TSR or 3e days but something would be nice. I did leave out the adventures since they're not worth mentioning in this regard. They're all heavy FR and you can't enjoy reading an adventure the way I enjoyed reading the Rjurik Highlands.

The OSR stuff is nice but since again I'm on about 5e not really relevant.

YMMV but I like shiny new toys

I don't need tons of splat material to run games. The only 5E products I have are the core books and the DM screen. I have been running a Mystara campaign since 2014 without much of a problem. I have enough original B/X material to play with for years on end. I enjoy the fact that the current edition can be played & enjoyed without a constant barrage of "must have" supplements. It remains easy for interested newcomers to get into the game with just a PHB and some dice. If I happen to crave new abilities, classes, spells, etc. then we just make them up. I may end up picking up the Volos guide out of curiosity but the game doesn't come to a screeching halt without an avalanche of new splat.

Also, considering that all prior editions of D&D are available there has never been more to choose from in terms of supplemental material than now.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950617...They're all heavy FR and you can't enjoy reading an adventure the way I enjoyed reading the Rjurik Highlands.

The OSR stuff is nice but since again I'm on about 5e not really relevant...

Out of the Abyss and Curse of Strahd are the best adventures yet and far from being 'heavy FR.' CoS doesn't even take place in FR and OotA could be in any world's Underdark.

Converting from any edition besides 4e is so easy it can be done on the fly by a most experienced DMs. The differences between editions is massively overhyped.

Besides which most OSR setting material is system agnostic and so as useable for 5e as for B/X or 1e.

And finally even if one insists on 5e only there are fine adventures on the DM's Guild and several good settings converted to 5e like Scarred Lands, Thule or the upcoming Midgard. Or you can go for the 5e Adventures in Middle Earth although I'd prefer to play TOR in the original system.

The thing is 5e is much more solid about in game rules and not about exceptions like 4e or just crazy power and whatever like 3e. It's a lot like 1e/2e with tiny dashes of 3/4e. And I mean tiny.

The core set is great for what it is. Standard D&D experience and then some, but not too complex, nor innovative.

More recently picked up Volo's Guide. It's decent, but I would have preferred more monsters statted-out, rather than all the lore fluff. That stuff is okay for bathroom reading, but not as useful to me at the table.

Nothing else really holds interest for me, not enough to want to pay full price. Maybe Curse of Strahd. That looks good, but I already have Ravenloft in older editions.

I thought OotA looked cool, but been hearing that it's a bit of a slog?

PotA and SKT look good too, I just don't care about the Forgotten Realms that much.

I guess I've been in the hobby so long that I'm not really looking for "more of the same," rehashes of old stuff. Like TftYP coming out soon. All good adventures back in the day, sure.

I'm looking for stuff that's new, that opens up the game in new ways. 5e continues to go down the safe road. Which is a bit of a shame, because it's actually a robust system. I'd like to see the engine pushed into new genres.

So I look at Pathfinder, which is too complex for me to want to run straight. Thankfully it has Unchained which helps streamline things a bit. But Pathfinder system continues to add some pretty cool and fresh ideas to the game. I was impressed with Ultimate Campaign especially. At first I brushed off Ultimate Intrigue, but it continues to look, well, intriguing. Social rules up the wazoo (do we even really need them?) and... Batman!

Of course the OSR is a great source for innovative ideas (if not mechanics), but it's generally harder to seek out those books.

I also picked up AiME, but haven't gotten to run it yet. I recommend that one for sure.

I have to agree; what I'd really love to see is not necessarily a huge churn out of products, but at least one hardcover book (if not a classic boxed set) devoted to each of the classic campaign settings

Though a self-contained boxed set with all the rules needed to play specifically adapted to each setting is something that could be marketed to Toy and board game shops, even find initial funding with Kickstarters (maybe paired up with CMON for an included set of miniatures).

Quote from: Robyo;950624I thought OotA looked cool, but been hearing that it's a bit of a slog?

Funny I've heard others complain that there aren't enough encounters during travel. I'm not a fan of random enounters and just skip non-eventful travel. As usual it depends on how you play it, I'm never wedded to running it as written.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950617The OSR stuff is nice but since again I'm on about 5e not really relevant.

This is not the OSR but material specifically for 5e (http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?filters=0_0_45326_0_0) with over 1,084 products available. Then over on the DM's Guild there are 3,684 products (http://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45469_0_0_0_0_0&page=1&sort=4a#browselist).

I don't see the basis for your complaint.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;950628I have to agree; what I'd really love to see is not necessarily a huge churn out of products, but at least one hardcover book (if not a classic boxed set) devoted to each of the classic campaign settings

I wish. Planescape, Dark Sun, Spelljammer...only if they let third part publishers get their mitts on the settings.

Quote from: estar;950630This is not the OSR but material specifically for 5e (http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?filters=0_0_45326_0_0) with over 1,084 products available. Then over on the DM's Guild there are 3,684 products (http://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45469_0_0_0_0_0&page=1&sort=4a#browselist).

I don't see the basis for your complaint.

With respect to the people's products on the DMg guild quality is...haphazard at best or just plain tat.

I do like the look of some of the more professional publishing stuff though and if anything that's what will keep my interest. Things like AIME or Midgard which I can run or mine for ideas.

On a side note I remember really enjoying your points of light book.

I remember at the beginning of 5e Mike Mearls saying there would be support for those settings even if just PDF conversion documents...

Quote from: HorusArisen;950637With respect to the people's products on the DMg guild quality is...haphazard at best or just plain tat.

Yup which is why this list (http://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45469_0_0_0_0_0&page=1&sort=6a#browselist) handy. Generally the most popular on OBS sites is a pretty good guide to quality. Give you a decent starting point to look at the various reviews or google searches.

QuoteI do like the look of some of the more professional publishing stuff though and if anything that's what will keep my interest. Things like AIME or Midgard which I can run or mine for ideas.

The key thing to remember that the OGL and the Community Content allow for is diversity. Allow niches to be covered that are either too small or the publisher doesn't have time for. Also there is pent up desire by several author to publish for classic setting like Greyhawk so when they release permission for those setting then we will see a further expansion of the DM's Guild.

The age where an audience relied on the publisher for ALL support for a RPG product line is long gone.

QuoteOn a side note I remember really enjoying your points of light book.

Appreciate it, if you like those then you should get some use out of my Blackmarsh (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/89944/Blackmarsh) which is set in the same vague setting and done in the same style as the two PoL books. Oh and the download is free. Note that the south edge of Blackmarsh fits the northern edge of Southland and is set in the same time period.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950637With respect to the people's products on the DMg guild quality is...haphazard at best or just plain tat.

No more so than the material produced for OSR. There's a thread here where we discuss the better writers on the DM's Guild. M.T. Black, Jeff Stevens, Jason Thompson and Tony Petrecca are doing good work there.

The relative compatibility with AD&D means I have so much usable stuff that I have no idea what to do with it all. Maybe it's because I didn't get into the game until well after the TSR era came to a close, but I feel like there's a wealth of stuff available to me with 5e that there wasn't before. I'm currently running N1, I ran Keep on the Borderlands and the Lost City already, and I'm probably going to pick up the Greyhawk setting box sooner or later. In addition, I find it trivially easy to convert any AD&D monster that isn't in Volo's/Tome of Beasts/MM on the fly. So I'm just not feeling the shortage.

Both the volume and quality of official, WoC or directly licensed, 5E products are frankly pathetic. In the same time period they've published a few super shitty railroad adventure path books, the OSR community has cranked out dozens of amazing products. I think the worm has turned; pre-3E D&D (and its various knock offs and variants) is where the action is. I understand that 5E maintains a large body count because its run at lots of game stores and so forth. But it is withering away as a product line.

I run 5e with 3ePathfinder or OSR material. It's a much better system than 3e/pf and conversion is extremely easy.

Except for Call of Cthulhu, most of the games I like come nowhere near having the quantity of 'official' material D&D has... not that that has ever seemed to me like a huge liability.
I get that it's fun to having new stuff coming out for YOUR system, but that's more of a capitalist thing... the inbred desire to shop and buy to feel like you're taking part. But don't you make up your own stuff as well? Mix and match ideas from other media? From other games? Convert cool settings burdened with odious systems? How much 'hobby' is in your hobby?
It seems kind of... what's a nice word for being unimaginative?... to just rely on stuff other people make.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950610Where is the settings support? The sourcebooks?

I wa thinking of returning to the DM armchair and looking for inspiration but nothing but tumbleweed.

Try using your fucking imagination for a change.

Quote from: Voros;950647No more so than the material produced for OSR. There's a thread here where we discuss the better writers on the DM's Guild. M.T. Black, Jeff Stevens, Jason Thompson and Tony Petrecca are doing good work there.

Cool, thanks I'll check that out.

Quote from: estar;950645Yup which is why this list (http://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45469_0_0_0_0_0&page=1&sort=6a#browselist) handy. Generally the most popular on OBS sites is a pretty good guide to quality. Give you a decent starting point to look at the various reviews or google searches.

 The key thing to remember that the OGL and the Community Content allow for is diversity. Allow niches to be covered that are either too small or the publisher doesn't have time for. Also there is pent up desire by several author to publish for classic setting like Greyhawk so when they release permission for those setting then we will see a further expansion of the DM's Guild.

The age where an audience relied on the publisher for ALL support for a RPG product line is long gone.

Appreciate it, if you like those then you should get some use out of my Blackmarsh (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/89944/Blackmarsh) which is set in the same vague setting and done in the same style as the two PoL books. Oh and the download is free. Note that the south edge of Blackmarsh fits the northern edge of Southland and is set in the same time period.

I'll have a look if I can find some jewels in the rough :)

Quote from: Larsdangly;950657Both the volume and quality of official, WoC or directly licensed, 5E products are frankly pathetic. In the same time period they've published a few super shitty railroad adventure path books, the OSR community has cranked out dozens of amazing products. I think the worm has turned; pre-3E D&D (and its various knock offs and variants) is where the action is. I understand that 5E maintains a large body count because its run at lots of game stores and so forth. But it is withering away as a product line.

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong places with 5e. I'm seeing so much love for the OSR I'll have to take a second look

Quote from: Simlasa;950659Except for Call of Cthulhu, most of the games I like come nowhere near having the quantity of 'official' material D&D has... not that that has ever seemed to me like a huge liability.
I get that it's fun to having new stuff coming out for YOUR system, but that's more of a capitalist thing... the inbred desire to shop and buy to feel like you're taking part. But don't you make up your own stuff as well? Mix and match ideas from other media? From other games? Convert cool settings burdened with odious systems? How much 'hobby' is in your hobby?
It seems kind of... what's a nice word for being unimaginative?... to just rely on stuff other people make.

It's like buying a novel except for the games I love. Do I read Jim Butcher or just daydream?

I have folders of homebrew settings and campaigns and even two game systems but I don't have an editor, art budget or a professional to put it into something attractive.

Why am I buying the new Conan game if I can scribble doodles on a pad...because it's pretty and put together much better than I could do.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950664Try using your fucking imagination for a change.

Try using your manners, I suspect I'll succeed first.

Quote from: Larsdangly;950657Both the volume and quality of official, WoC or directly licensed, 5E products are frankly pathetic. In the same time period they've published a few super shitty railroad adventure path books, the OSR community has cranked out dozens of amazing products. I think the worm has turned; pre-3E D&D (and its various knock offs and variants) is where the action is. I understand that 5E maintains a large body count because its run at lots of game stores and so forth. But it is withering away as a product line.

   I don't think it's just pre-3E D&D. OBS lists 7648 Pathfinder items (and remember, that doesn't include Paizo's own support) and 7471 total "D&D OGL" items. The latter breaks down into 2021 "OSR", 5146 "3.x/d20/OGL" products (a lot of those are d20 Modern and non-D&D d20 systems like Spycraft or Monte Cook's World of Darkness), 458 4E/GSL, and 1110 5e-compatible items.

   Now, the tagging system's far from perfect, especially in subcategories. I expect the OSR is stronger than those figures show. But it's still interesting data.

I wish they'd get back to making modules - proper modules with maps, not terrible hard-back books with tiny map sections embedded in the text.  

Also I'd like to see Greyhawk make a comeback but I have it on authority that they're not going to do anything at all with it.  Oh well!

According to WOTC commentary they realized that theyd pretty much screwed things with the sheer number of add-on books for 3e and for 5e opted for a different approach. Older material is still compatible and quite a bit is still on shelves even now. So what they did was release an update in the form of "Adventurers Guide to the Sword Coast which is 90% background updates.

The other thing is that they have been releasing new material. Except its in the form of the Unearthed Arcana articles. Theres now quite a bit of extra material for 5e straight from WOTC for free to essentially playtest. Theyve done one for about each class now and just a week or so ago released a new one on traps.

Also they have this Adventurers League thing which unfortunately havent had any chance to really look at yet but apparently theres a dozen or two adventures for it now?

And theyve released I think 7 modules now? The Starter, the two-part Tiamat one, Elemental Evil, Underdark/Demons, Ravenloft, and the latest Giants one.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;950676I wish they'd get back to making modules - proper modules with maps, not terrible hard-back books with tiny map sections embedded in the text.  

Also I'd like to see Greyhawk make a comeback but I have it on authority that they're not going to do anything at all with it.  Oh well!

Exactly. I'm soooooo fucking sick of adventuring materials that are just tens of thousands of words, telling you a bunch of stuff that is totally irrelevant to what happens at the table, mostly horribly written, and accompanied by a lame map someone threw together on a cookie cutter computer graphics program. It is all shit. The reason people love playing OSR games has nothing to do with the system(s) or splat books or tomes full of campaign history blibber-blubber: it is because these games publish lots of adventures that are concise, focused on material you use while you play, and accompanied by well made, interesting maps.

What's the best place to see OSR products and reviews?

Quote from: HorusArisen;950671Maybe I'm looking at the wrong places with 5e. I'm seeing so much love for the OSR I'll have to take a second look

The issue is that this place LOVES the retro-heartbreakers, it's heavily biased towards them.  You're not going to find any opinion that doesn't gush their love of it.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950681What's the best place to see OSR products and reviews?

Best as in honest?  Not here, sadly.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;950690The issue is that this place LOVES the retro-heartbreakers, it's heavily biased towards them.  You're not going to find any opinion that doesn't gush their love of it.

Best as in honest?  Not here, sadly.

lol I took that as a given ��

Quote from: HorusArisen;950673It's like buying a novel except for the games I love. Do I read Jim Butcher or just daydream?

Not sure of your point there. Reading is a somewhat more passive activity than reading a book. I need more books to keep reading. I can keep running an RPG for decades with nothing more than a corebook of rules.

QuoteI have folders of homebrew settings and campaigns and even two game systems but I don't have an editor, art budget or a professional to put it into something attractive.

Why am I buying the new Conan game if I can scribble doodles on a pad...because it's pretty and put together much better than I could do.

I don't get this thinking either. What does it matter how pretty you can make it? Come time to play the game who cares if you dolled it up... as long as you have your thoughts organized and can run it with some creativity and verve.

Do you renounce all playful endeavors in favor of having some 'professional' do it instead?
"Hey kids, let's not go to the park and play football, the NFL do it sooooo much better than we can... let's just stay in and watch TV."

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950664Try using your fucking imagination for a change.

That's just crazy talk!

Quote from: HorusArisen;950674Try using your manners, I suspect I'll succeed first.

You'd be wrong.  We HAVE manners, we simply choose not to use them.

"Yes, Madam, and you are ugly.  Tomorrow I shall be sober, but you will still be ugly."

Quote from: Simlasa;950693Not sure of your point there. Reading is a somewhat more passive activity than reading a book. I need more books to keep reading. I can keep running an RPG for decades with nothing more than a corebook of rules.

I don't get this thinking either. What does it matter how pretty you can make it? Come time to play the game who cares if you dolled it up... as long as you have your thoughts organized and can run it with some creativity and verve.

Do you renounce all playful endeavors in favor of having some 'professional' do it instead?
"Hey kids, let's not go to the park and play football, the NFL do it sooooo much better than we can... let's just stay in and watch TV."

My point is that I enjoy reading good rolepay books as much as I enjoy a good novel. And by your logic I should just keep running games using 2e or even basic since I can do so for decades why bother with 5e or any other game at all?

The pretty book is for me, the games I run are for my players. No I don't renounce playful endeavours but I recognise that whilst I can draw a stick figure I'm no Rembrandt.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;950695You'd be wrong.  We HAVE manners, we simply choose not to use them.

"Yes, Madam, and you are ugly.  Tomorrow I shall be sober, but you will still be ugly."

Courtesy and good manners are the mask of civilisation, without which we are forced to look on our unfettered barbarism.

I choose to speak to others on the interweb as I would in real life not with disregard for their opinion or disrespect for their person but civil and without the use of foul language. Ymmv

Although I realise your being humorous  :D

Quote from: HorusArisen;950699My point is that I enjoy reading good rolepay books as much as I enjoy a good novel. And by your logic I should just keep running games using 2e or even basic since I can do so for decades why bother with 5e or any other game at all?

Nope. Nothing about you needing to stick with just one system, though you could. Just pointing out the inherent difference between RPG rulebooks (meant to enable activities above and beyond what's on their pages) vs. reading a novel (self-contained experience). If you're reading rulebooks like novels... well, that seems to me kinda like using your Ipad as a flashlight.

Overall expect the expansion treadmill to be nearly zero. If the current playtests are any indicator then there should be upcoming some sort of book with new classes in it at the very least. When? Who knows.

D&D supplements don't make an awful lot of money for WotC. The D&D brand does. As long as the D&D brand is recognised as the leading and original RPG, the marketing suits are going to be happy.

Moreover, if you follow the Adventurer's League, there are a ton of adventures out there.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;950705D&D supplements don't make an awful lot of money for WotC. The D&D brand does. As long as the D&D brand is recognised as the leading and original RPG, the marketing suits are going to be happy.

While I haven't ever heard any concrete evidence (besides a lack of expansions) that's what I've heard.  Keeping 5e small is decently profitable, while having expansions would add risk.  The theory is that they want to keep the D&D brand alive for things such as board games, video games, and potentially future movies to cash in on.  (hopefully future movies don't suck so much >.<)

Quote from: Simlasa;950703Nope. Nothing about you needing to stick with just one system, though you could. Just pointing out the inherent difference between RPG rulebooks (meant to enable activities above and beyond what's on their pages) vs. reading a novel (self-contained experience). If you're reading rulebooks like novels... well, that seems to me kinda like using your Ipad as a flashlight.

Ah your misunderstanding me in this instance I mean not rulebooks but sourcebooks. Not the PHB but the Rjurik Highlands for example. That said reading different rule sets can be interesting to me.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;950705D&D supplements don't make an awful lot of money for WotC. The D&D brand does. As long as the D&D brand is recognised as the leading and original RPG, the marketing suits are going to be happy.

Moreover, if you follow the Adventurer's League, there are a ton of adventures out there.

I've never really used published adventures.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950610People keep saying you can use your old edition material but that being the case I may as well just run basic or 2e.

Good idea. Run a B/X game.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;950711Good idea. Run a B/X game.

lol that's never a bad idea but I think I know now what I'll run for my group next.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950610I'm genuinely bewildered by WotC's plan, are they winding D&D down?

Yes and No.

Hasbro's idea of "profitable" is vastly different than Paizo or Goodman or any other publisher whose bread and butter is RPGs.

Also, WotC knows they have 3 types of D&D customers who effectively exist in different hobbies that are only tangentially related: (1) gamers who buy core books and homebrew; (2) the Living Campaign crowd, and (3) ex-gamers who read RPG stuff and quietly dream of actually play that never occurs.

Group 1 buys very little beyond core books.
Group 2 buys stuff for their Living Campaign involvement.
Group 3 buys anything.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950610It looks like there might be a handful of interesting 3rd party support but is it really worth investing in this edition if the owners aren't?

Only if you and your players love the game.

If you need a publisher who is invested in their product, then you have many others to choose from. I am no Pathfinder fan by any stretch, but its obvious Paizo is 24/7 focused on making their fans happy little repeat customers.

Quote from: Larsdangly;950680Exactly. I'm soooooo fucking sick of adventuring materials that are just tens of thousands of words, telling you a bunch of stuff that is totally irrelevant to what happens at the table, mostly horribly written, and accompanied by a lame map someone threw together on a cookie cutter computer graphics program. It is all shit.

Well that doesn't describe Out of the Abyss or Curse of Strahd. Or even the weaker adventure books they've released. Sounds to me like you're recycling complaints from 2e era, that were only half true even then.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950681What's the best place to see OSR products and reviews?

Tenfootpole (http://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/) reviews loads of material and isn't afraid to give out a bad review. Of course he has his biases that I don't 100 percent agree with but he's upfront about them so you know what you're getting from him and can read between the lines to see if you'd be into something he dislikes.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950701Although I realise your being humorous  :D

Thank Crom for small favors.  Seriously.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;950676I wish they'd get back to making modules...

All indications are that 'proper modules' don't sell. At least not well enough for a giant corporation like Hasbro.

Quote from: Voros;950733Tenfootpole (http://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/) reviews loads of material and isn't afraid to give out a bad review. Of course he has his biases that I don't 100 percent agree with but he's upfront about them so you know what you're getting from him and can read between the lines to see if you'd be into something he dislikes.

I'll check them out :)

Oh and another good source of reviews is Questing Beast (https://youtu.be/Yet76NDB6Ic) who does well presented video reviews that give you a good look at the actual hardcopy and art. And you know he is independent of this site as he gives Dark Albion a pretty negative review. :p

Quote from: Christopher Brady;950690The issue is that this place LOVES the retro-heartbreakers, it's heavily biased towards them.  You're not going to find any opinion that doesn't gush their love of it.

He says, rendering his own point false.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;950690Best as in honest?  Not here, sadly.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950692lol I took that as a given ��

Then why the fuck would you even come here, if you don't expect to get any honest information?

Quote from: Voros;950735All indications are that 'proper modules' don't sell. At least not well enough for a giant corporation like Hasbro.

Yeah, that Paizo...no money at all in modules...dunno what the fuck they are thinking.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;950690The issue is that this place LOVES the retro-heartbreakers, it's heavily biased towards them.  You're not going to find any opinion that doesn't gush their love of it.
Best as in honest?  Not here, sadly.

bullshit

*looks at watch* Oh, look, it's "Show us on the doll where old school touched you in a bad way" o'clock again.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;950757*looks at watch* Oh, look, it's "Show us on the doll where old school touched you in a bad way" o'clock again.

You watch MASH?  We have our own "5 O'Clock Charlie".

OSR Brady.

Quote from: CRKrueger;950748Yeah, that Paizo...no money at all in modules...dunno what the fuck they are thinking.

Until Paizo took off, 'adventures don't sell' was common wisdom across the industry. So, either the audience changed, Paizo did something differently, or both.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;950761Until Paizo took off, 'adventures don't sell' was common wisdom across the industry. So, either the audience changed, Paizo did something differently, or both.

Or the common wisdom was horseshit to begin with.  TSR in the 2e days released a ton of modules that were total shit, where the same person was writer and editor, etc.  3e created and cultivated a build culture focused on never-ending widgets delivered through the splatmill.

Bad adventures don't sell.
Splatbooks sell more =/= adventures don't sell.

But, Paizo did provide something different, not a series of adventures, but entire 1-20 prepackaged campaigns.

Goodman, on the other hand, simply makes money selling almost a hundred now individual adventures for 3 different versions of D&D and their own OSR game, without many splatbooks, so I think they prove the original "common wisdom" to be the horseshit it is, too.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950701I choose to speak to others on the interweb as I would in real life not with disregard for their opinion or disrespect for their person but civil and without the use of foul language.

Holy fuck! We plebs have been visited by a living saint! Or a self righteous assmunchkin. It's so hard to tell the difference.

Fortunately, I also don't differentiate my speech between the web and real life.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950664Try using your fucking imagination for a change.

Yes.

But its also normal for GMs to rely upon published settings.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950710I've never really used published adventures.

So you are looking for setting books to create your own adventures within the published setting?

I understand this, and you're in luck. With the advent of the DM's Guild, popular settings from 3e/D20/OSR publishers were revamped for 5e. You can easily research those and several have plenty of dead tree sourcebooks.

Scarred Lands is often highly recommended. They had a 2016 Kickstarter and its been talked about here.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?32627-Scarred-Lands-setting-5th-edition

If you haven't looked at Iron Kingdoms, its worth a look if you like fantasy & steampunk (notably better than Eberron). There is a metric fuckton of support and various bloggers yap about their 5e conversions.

By this time, I am sure every TSR setting has a 5e fan conversion somewhere on the web. The suckpit ENworld would a good source for those links, as they have an active 5e Only forum.

Quote from: CRKrueger;950748Yeah, that Paizo...no money at all in modules...dunno what the fuck they are thinking.

As I said, not enough for a giant corporation like Hasbro. To them Paizo's profits probably looks like the crumbs of small potatoes.

Quote from: CRKrueger;950762Goodman, on the other hand, simply makes money selling almost a hundred now individual adventures for 3 different versions of D&D and their own OSR game, without many splatbooks, so I think they prove the original "common wisdom" to be the horseshit it is, too.

In interviews Joseph Goodman has made it clear Goodman Games is a sideline to his real career that he runs for his love of RPGs. Hasbro is no Joseph Goodman. I suspect no one at Goodman Games makes a living on RPGs. Robert Schwalb's company is a one man band. Keep on comparing apples to oranges though if that makes you feel good.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950674Try using your manners, I suspect I'll succeed first.

He. Did. :-P Welcome!!

Quote from: Voros;950772As I said, not enough for a giant corporation like Hasbro. To them Paizo's profits probably looks like the crumbs of small potatoes.

Paizo has way more employees than WOTC's D&D division. I'm pretty sure Hazbro would shit itself, on TV, with flaming feet to have a Paizo under it. Hasbro might be giant, but that doesn't mean they just toss piles of cash at D&D on a whim (obviously). If I had to bet on it, I would think Pathfinder and accessories are making more money for Paizo than 5e is making for WOTC, even with higher sales volume. Shit, I don't play Pathfinder and I have a couple hundred tied up in pawns and mats. Seriously considering picking up the Bestiaries just for the damn sexy artwork!

The point is, that GOOD adventures do sell, and just because WOTC once decided on the "only source books" business model does not mean it is THE business model for publishing RPGs. "Modules don't sell" is a fucking myth perpetrated by WOTC as an excuse for a business model that has clearly been proven to be a shit philosophy by several other publishers now. The giant white horse they climb up on over and over about "we'll leave modules to the little guys" and then flip a bitch and decide most source books will be modules + settings just proves how asinine the myth is (and how little stock they actually had in the myth).

(edited for clarity)

Quote from: Voros;950773In interviews Joseph Goodman has made it clear Goodman Games is a sideline to his real career that he runs for his love of RPGs. Hasbro is no Joseph Goodman. I suspect no one at Goodman Games makes a living on RPGs. Robert Schwalb's company is a one man band. Keep on comparing apples to oranges though if that makes you feel good.

You think the WotC sales of D&D books vs. modules really matter to Hasbro?  Compared to Magic sales?  Compared to video game licensing?

The entire RPG industry is small potatoes compared to books, comics, movies, video games, etc.  Of course all that is smokescreen scaled up to compare to the GDP of a country when needed to prove whatever point it is getting made.

Modules sell.  We know this because people who make a lot of them continue to do so. Period.

Quote from: CRKrueger;950747Then why the fuck would you even come here, if you don't expect to get any honest information?

I took as given that there was clearly a lot of OSR love since till C Brady everyone was quite gushy about it. I don't have a bias either way but I don't engage in blind fellowship either.

I came here to engage with wonderful polite people like yourself :)

I suggest the OP check out A Red and Pleasant Land.  5e setting/sourcebook, reads well if that's as far as you get with it, eminently usable as well.  Not official WotC, but so what?

Quote from: Spinachcat;950768Holy fuck! We plebs have been visited by a living saint! Or a self righteous assmunchkin. It's so hard to tell the difference.

Fortunately, I also don't differentiate my speech between the web and real life.




Yes.

But its also normal for GMs to rely upon published settings.




So you are looking for setting books to create your own adventures within the published setting?

I understand this, and you're in luck. With the advent of the DM's Guild, popular settings from 3e/D20/OSR publishers were revamped for 5e. You can easily research those and several have plenty of dead tree sourcebooks.

Scarred Lands is often highly recommended. They had a 2016 Kickstarter and its been talked about here.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?32627-Scarred-Lands-setting-5th-edition

If you haven't looked at Iron Kingdoms, its worth a look if you like fantasy & steampunk (notably better than Eberron). There is a metric fuckton of support and various bloggers yap about their 5e conversions.

By this time, I am sure every TSR setting has a 5e fan conversion somewhere on the web. The suckpit ENworld would a good source for those links, as they have an active 5e Only forum.

Neither saintly or self righteous, just not rude.

Yes, I'm beginning to see there's a lot more support out there, would like it to be a bit more polished and professional and some of it is downright repetitive but I see for example Alea Publishing is thinking of going 5e. I hope that's the case as I loved the Feudal Lords setting.

I've glanced at Iron Kingdoms once or twice but seems a bit pricey to buy just to convert, what's the system like?

Quote from: Dave R;950799I suggest the OP check out A Red and Pleasant Land.  5e setting/sourcebook, reads well if that's as far as you get with it, eminently usable as well.  Not official WotC, but so what?

Thank you, I'll check it out :)

**as an added bonus it's one of the LotFP supplements I don't have

Quote from: HorusArisen;950798I took as given that there was clearly a lot of OSR love since till C Brady everyone was quite gushy about it. I don't have a bias either way but I don't engage in blind fellowship either.

I came here to engage with wonderful polite people like yourself :)

Issue with CBrady is that his thesis works out like this.
Poster: I love some of the adventures the OSR put out especially the ones put out by X
CBrady: You are an idiot for liking anything for an old broken game that being supported by a bunch of posers invoking Gygax's name like he is a god.

You compare this to somebody like tenfootpole who has panned over 2/3 of the adventures he reviewed. However he gives you the specifics of why they are bad and backs them with quotes.

I don't use the typical nomenclature and tribalism by claiming something is 'old school' or not, they're all variations on the various editions D&D.  Let everyone else make this false distinction and draw up battle lines, I'll play the games I like.

I rather enjoy Scarlet Heroes for example,and I hear Godbound is similar, if you like high powered play.  Swords and Wizardry is a little too basic for me, however.

If I have a complaint about 5e's business model, I'd have to say it's their focus on adventures over source books, but if it's what makes them money...  It's also not like I haven't made enough worlds in my lifetime.  What's a few more?

Quote from: HorusArisen;950798I took as given that there was clearly a lot of OSR love since till C Brady everyone was quite gushy about it. I don't have a bias either way but I don't engage in blind fellowship either.

I came here to engage with wonderful polite people like yourself :)

If that's the only part that you thought was self-evident, you could very easily have eliminated the "dishonest" part when quoting.

Many people consider it quite rude to be called dishonest, no matter how much of a polite facade the language creates. ;)

Quote from: CRKrueger;950808If that's the only part that you thought was self-evident, you could very easily have eliminated the "dishonest" part when quoting.

Many people consider it quite rude to be called dishonest, no matter how much of a polite facade the language creates. ;)

I don't think anyone is being dishonest just biased which is normal. I always tend to quote in full, just my way and no one can accuse me of editing their words.

This is a good site, people have strong opinions and their not afraid to offer or express them :)

Quote from: trechriron;950785Paizo has way more employees than WOTC's D&D division. I'm pretty sure Hazbro would shit itself, on TV, with flaming feet to have a Paizo under it. Hasbro might be giant, but that doesn't mean they just toss piles of cash at D&D on a whim (obviously). If I had to bet on it, I would think Pathfinder and accessories are making more money for Paizo than 5e is making for WOTC, even with higher sales volume. Shit, I don't play Pathfinder and I have a couple hundred tied up in pawns and mats. Seriously considering picking up the Bestiaries just for the damn sexy artwork!

I highly doubt that. Obviously, there isn't much data out there, but the only reports I've seen from FLGS are that total D&D revenue and total Pathfinder revenue tend to be roughly equal. That's across all SKUs, and they all have a lot more Pathfinder product in stock. This points to Pathfinder being a much lower-margin product than D&D.

By contrast, 5e is the best-selling WotC edition of D&D by all accounts (PHB sits at #60 on Amazon!) by running on a skeleton crew and outsourcing the accessories. This points to it being very high-margin product.

For a big corporation like Hasbro, low-margin products just don't make sense unless the volume is huge, and by "huge," I mean "bigger than the entire TTRPG industry."

QuoteThe point is, that GOOD adventures do sell, and just because WOTC once decided on the "only source books" business model does not mean it is THE business model for publishing RPGs. "Modules don't sell" is a fucking myth perpetrated by WOTC as an excuse for a business model that has clearly been proven to be a shit philosophy by several other publishers now.

When WotC took over TSR, they looked at the books and saw that books like Player's Option: Combat & Tactics outsold modules many times over. They didn't decide to base their business model on expansions in order win online arguments or for ideological reasons.

I could be wrong, but I heard somewhere they switched to adventures because 4e didn't make enough money to be considered a "franchise brand" by Hasbro. Franchise brands get bigger staffs, bigger marketing campaigns, frequent product refreshes, etc. Think Nerf. A comparatively small number of franchise brands bring almost twice as much revenue to Hasbro than all their games put together (and that includes Magic). D&D didn't hit that, so it got booted to a lower tier where they're expected to have a sustainable product, a higher margin, and do it with a smaller crew.

Obviously, splats are not nearly as sustainable as adventures.

I get what they're doing, because one part of this modest but solid lineup is that it can be evergreen. This could well be the last edition of d&d. OTOH, I think that there are a few general books that could still be made like Manual of the Planes, Deities and Demigods, maybe Fiend Folio. I think that would make a nicely complete set for any GM.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;950810When WotC took over TSR, they looked at the books and saw that books like Player's Option: Combat & Tactics outsold modules many times over. They didn't decide to base their business model on expansions in order win online arguments or for ideological reasons.

Player's Option is 2.5, the modules TSR was releasing at that point had been absolutely rancid for years.

The thing is, 'adventures don't sell' wasn't just a TSR/WotC thing--I heard it from people working for White Wolf and Hero Games, and I'm sure there were others. I suspect the change had to do with several factors: the graying of the hobby and the growing desire for 'pick up and play', the reduced publishing barriers (is anyone other than Goodman Games doing small adventures in print?) and perhaps the focus on longer-term value in modules with the new 'adventure path' model.

Quote from: CRKrueger;950748Yeah, that Paizo...no money at all in modules...dunno what the fuck they are thinking.

Though they don't sell as well as other Paizo stuff.

I just think that Paizo realized that even if they only broke even on adventures (I'd guess they still make a bit - but I have no clue) they were still well worth making because good adventures make people want to play Pathfinder in general and they'll then buy more of their other books.  Basically it works sort of like marketing which pays for itself.

I know quite a few people who primarily play Pathfinder for whom Pathfinder isn't their favorite system, but it's okay, and they really like the adventure paths.

Adventures don't sell...but selling only two adventures a year is a pretty big change from how it was done before. Looking at peak Amazon ranks for their post-launch adventures:

PotA: 156
OotA: 138
CoS: 107
SKT: 201

So a few years in, it does seem that this is a viable strategy. It was also received wisdom before that the "right" thing to do was drop an edition, then sell splats until you couldn't sell any more, then drop a new edition. But I think the OSR and the success of Pathfinder had to make them rethink it. Those showed that "new edition" doesn't always mean "better edition."

Quote from: HorusArisen;950610At the risk of a slightly negative first thread I have to ask where has D&D gone?

It has gone to a greater number gaming tables in my local area than I can remember it going to before. WotC seems to have really hit it out of the park in making D&D approachable and popular again.

Quote from: JamesV;950823I get what they're doing, because one part of this modest but solid lineup is that it can be evergreen. This could well be the last edition of d&d. OTOH, I think that there are a few general books that could still be made like Manual of the Planes, Deities and Demigods, maybe Fiend Folio. I think that would make a nicely complete set for any GM.

From the UA releases it looks like some kind of expanded character options are on the horizon but hopefully they keep it under control.

I agree completely that a new Legends and Lore would be most welcome to fill-out the very sketchy pantheon info in the PHB. A new Manual of Planes seems a sureshot hit as well.

They could keep putting out MM's or Fiend Folio without adding to system bloat as it is always good to have more monsters. Although almost inadvertent I think one reason for AD&D's success was that the MM was the first book to be released. Everyone loves monsters.

Quote from: Skywalker;950844It has gone to a greater number gaming tables in my local area than I can remember it going to before. WotC seems to have really hit it out of the park in making D&D approachable and popular again.

It's a great system and as a player I've loved playing but as a DM and consumer....it's a bit boring.

Part of that might be expectations, I was hoping for some long forgotten settings to be revisited and some new ones to enjoy, I'm old enough to remember how much I enjoyed 2e so with fifth I enjoy it, love the rules update from 3e (skipped 4th) but it's just not exciting anymore .

But remember that more than 50 percent of groups homebrew. They don't rely on WoTC to create adventures.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950851It's a great system and as a player I've loved playing but as a DM and consumer....it's a bit boring.

I don't agree. I don't equate spending more $ as more interesting. The fact that the products to date have been reliable in quality and usable without being a head ache has been great for me as a player and DM.

It also allows me to buy the likes of Adventures in Middle-Earth, which provides greater interest.

And here I am stripping options OUT of the PHB for my campaigns because I think 5e has TOO MUCH stuff, especially for complete newbies to the hobby. Next time I run I'm thinking about removing Backgrounds & bonds/flaws/ideals completely, and possibly skills, along with some of the races and perhaps even some of the classes. I might just rewrite the core rules to reflect all the changes I want to make (while preserving the mechanical core of 5e, folding in lots of the "hard mode" options from the DMG, and possibly switching to GP for XP and removing combat XP completely).

Quote from: Skywalker;950861I don't agree. I don't equate spending more $ as more interesting. The fact that the products to date have been reliable in quality and usable without being a head ache has been great for me as a player and DM.

It also allows me to buy the likes of Adventures in Middle-Earth, which provides greater interest.

The third party support is interesting but proves my point, extra material is interesting

Quote from: HorusArisen;950800Neither saintly or self righteous, just not rude.

Just think of us as that bunch of half-pissed old farts down at the local pub who use "manky bugger" as a form of address and "fucking wanker" as an endearment.

Hell, my real life brothers and I use "shit for brains" as an endearment to each other.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;950628I have to agree; what I'd really love to see is not necessarily a huge churn out of products, but at least one hardcover book (if not a classic boxed set) devoted to each of the classic campaign settings

Yeah, strictly speaking I don't need a new edition of any one campaign setting but fuck it, it would be nice if the kids coming into this hobby had their own boxed sets with lush world maps and fantasy gazetteers to fire up the ol' imagination like I had in the distant, exotic 1990s.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;950628Though a self-contained boxed set with all the rules needed to play specifically adapted to each setting is something that could be marketed to Toy and board game shops, even find initial funding with Kickstarters (maybe paired up with CMON for an included set of miniatures).

I wouldn't quite do it like this. But hey, could work. It sort of worked for WW back in the day, didn't it? You bought the same (admittedly simpler) ruleset with each fatsplat as a stand-alone game.

Quote from: Voros;950634I wish. Planescape, Dark Sun, Spelljammer...only if they let third part publishers get their mitts on the settings.

Didn't they outsource the Sword Coast book (or bits of it, anyway) to Green Ronin?

Quote from: S'mon;950658I run 5e with 3ePathfinder or OSR material. It's a much better system than 3e/pf and conversion is extremely easy.

I haven't run D&D5 yet, but if I ever do, I'm using it like I used Castles & Crusades: with AD&D1 and Palladium Fantasy material.

Quote from: Larsdangly;950657Both the volume and quality of official, WoC or directly licensed, 5E products are frankly pathetic. In the same time period they've published a few super shitty railroad adventure path books, the OSR community has cranked out dozens of amazing products. I think the worm has turned; pre-3E D&D (and its various knock offs and variants) is where the action is. I understand that 5E maintains a large body count because its run at lots of game stores and so forth. But it is withering away as a product line.

Agreed for the most part. The OSR's anarchic and decentralized nature ensures its continued vibrancy. I also believe Paizo is probably doing a better job of keeping the hardcore crunch crowd entertained, and a decent job of building IP as well (Golarion has novels, boardgames, and would have CRPGs too if they hadn't trusted you-know-who to develop their MMO).

I think D&D5 may coast along the power of the brand, even with the current, anemic release schedule, for a long time, in no small part owing to corporate upper-echelon apathy. The claims that D&D is "more valuable as an IP for electronic gaming" have been proven to be bullshit — where are the D&D-branded CRPGs? Neverwinter, a weak Diablo clone by all accounts, is all they've got to show since the end of the Atari suit. In terms of corporate management, I suspect this is only one step up from shelving D&D altogether.

But hey, D&D is still in print, in an edition that doesn't suck as bad as the last two, is much more casual-friendly (though still not as much as the TSR versions) and now stands a non-zero chance of getting a suite of digital tools that actually comes out and does not suck (http://www.dndbeyond.com). So I'm really, really hoping they don't screw this up.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950873The third party support is interesting but proves my point, extra material is interesting

It can be. But quantity isn't necessarily the key to it being so.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;950810When WotC took over TSR, they looked at the books and saw that books like Player's Option: Combat & Tactics outsold modules many times over. They didn't decide to base their business model on expansions in order win online arguments or for ideological reasons.

I could be wrong, but I heard somewhere they switched to adventures because 4e didn't make enough money to be considered a "franchise brand" by Hasbro.

This is much the same thinking that went into GURPS with their 4th edition focusing on the rule books rather than the setting books. This led to an overall drop in sales of GURPS books. The issue was that with no setting books nobody wanted to buy the rules. If you have 100 GURPS players, all 100 will buy the rules, but 100 won't buy GURPS Colonial America, maybe 10 of them will. But if there's nothing like Colonial America, the rules are just another generic rule set - and one with 576 pages. So though the setting books themselves don't make much money, and may even make a loss, they're necessary to get people to buy the core rules. The setting books are advertising for the rules.

Similarly, at the big gym I used to work at, they looked at the childcare they offered and found that it was making a loss. So they cut staff and hours. And gym membership dropped, as did personal training income. They wondered why. I could have told them: childcare at a gym looked at by itself will always lose money. But the women (it's always women) who put the kids in there pay gym membership, and many of them do personal training, too - "If I'm only here for 45 minutes twice a week, I'll get the most I can out of it - this my me time." They lost about 100 women members, which is over $100,000 in gym fees (about the centre manager's wage of $107k in fact) and another 10-15 PT clients, which is another $50,000 or so gone. Childcare didn't make money, but it enabled money from other things to be made.

In both cases the people in those businesses still don't recognise this, instead blaming "the market." But we expect this with management anywhere: "My success is due to my own brilliant decision-making, my failure is due to circumstances beyond my control." Being outside these organisations we can ignore this self-serving bullshit and look at things objectively.

Basically these guys are the same as someone selling hot chips who stops giving out salt and tomato sauce. "But salt and ketchup don't make me any money."

I'll also point out that that was the theory behind the OGL.  Wizards would put out relatively few adventures and focus on the money-making rules books, and they'd rely upon all of the fan-boy 3rd party people for adventures - most of whom did it as a hobby more than to make money anyway.

And as a result of that we have Pathfinder, which I believe is still selling more than 5e...? At worst a close competitor. And what do they put out? Settings and adventures.

So maybe if what you write is good, it'll sell. Radical concept.

I've no personal interest in PF, but it illustrates the idea well.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;950888And as a result of that we have Pathfinder, which I believe is still selling more than 5e...? At worst a close competitor. And what do they put out? Settings and adventures.

Pathfinder puts out one setting, and a bunch of adventures.  I'm not sure how this is some devastating critique of 5e's line of one main setting and a bunch of adventures.

Quote from: Dave R;950895Pathfinder puts out one setting, and a bunch of adventures.  I'm not sure how this is some devastating critique of 5e's line of one main setting and a bunch of adventures.

Don't think it was.  The point was, I believe, adventures sell just fine.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;950806I don't use the typical nomenclature and tribalism by claiming something is 'old school' or not, they're all variations on the various editions D&D.  Let everyone else make this false distinction and draw up battle lines, I'll play the games I like.

I rather enjoy Scarlet Heroes for example,and I hear Godbound is similar, if you like high powered play.  Swords and Wizardry is a little too basic for me, however.

If I have a complaint about 5e's business model, I'd have to say it's their focus on adventures over source books, but if it's what makes them money...  It's also not like I haven't made enough worlds in my lifetime.  What's a few more?

1: Same here. And for me I detest the "OSR movement" because so often its just a front for design theft and has become more and more a banner for flat out game theft with the serial numbers filed off.

2: Scarlet Heroes to me shows how to do this right.

3: WOTC has so far two sourcebooks. If this is their idea of sourcebooks then probably better that they passed this time around. They are though cranking out these little UA articles and theres that odd ongoing "Plane Shift" setting thing they have been releasing as PDFs, Instraad, Zendikar and Kaladesh so fat I believe. From the playtest material it seems they may be gearing up for a sourcebook. But could be it will just be all collected into a new UA PDF. Hard to say with WOTC.

Quote from: CRKrueger;950824Player's Option is 2.5, the modules TSR was releasing at that point had been absolutely rancid for years.

Not really. You still need the core game to play and TSR never switched over to using much of anything from it thereafter. It was just another in a long line of experimental add-ons to 2e. Its no more 2.5 than the Players Handbooks are.

Quote from: CRKrueger;950897Don't think it was.  The point was, I believe, adventures sell just fine.

They do when they're well-written. But my point was more that even if they don't sell well, they're necessary (along with setting books) to help sell the rulebooks.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950873The third party support is interesting but proves my point, extra material is interesting

Keep in mind that some of that third party stuff is still going through WOTC first, others they just license and are relatively hands off. Its an odd set up. But this has been WOTC's thing for a long time now.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950800I've glanced at Iron Kingdoms once or twice but seems a bit pricey to buy just to convert, what's the system like?

Iron Kingdoms was a d20 RPG for the WarMachine minis universe. I heard some mumblings about their own RPG system, but I haven't seen it.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;950810When WotC took over TSR, they looked at the books and saw that books like Player's Option: Combat & Tactics outsold modules many times over.

There are more players than GMs.

That's why Palladium makes all their books dual use. AKA, all the setting books have new toys for Players (classes, spells, guns, etc)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;950876Hell, my real life brothers and I use "shit for brains" as an endearment to each other.

And accuracy!

:)

Quote from: The Butcher;950877and now stands a non-zero chance of getting a suite of digital tools that actually comes out and does not suck (http://www.dndbeyond.com).

Has anyone been following this D&D Beyond thing?

Anyone part of any testing?

Any reason to believe it isn't 5e's vaporware?

Quote from: HorusArisen;950610At the risk of a slightly negative first thread I have to ask where has D&D gone?

Ha! Ha! (seriously, this made me laugh)

Where has D&D gone? Without reading further through this thread. There are a ton of resources, google it.

Quote from: CRKrueger;950897Don't think it was.  The point was, I believe, adventures sell just fine.

Sorta, the difference here is an AP for PF is 6 books long at 25$ a pop compared to a setting or splat book at 45$ a pop, but the manufacturing costs are almost the same.  At least according to the printer in my gaming group.
Kinda nifty to sell less but make more money.

What was hinted at before Paizo's one off modules don't sell very well compared to their APs

Quote from: Spinachcat;950920Has anyone been following this D&D Beyond thing?

Anyone part of any testing?

Any reason to believe it isn't 5e's vaporware?

It literally just launched. I signed up for the beta. We'll see. I heard the 4e online tools were pretty good.

Quote from: Omega;9508982: Scarlet Heroes to me shows how to do this right.

Kevin Crawford is truly talented and notably absent from any OSR drama. Focuses on just putting out good shit.

Quote from: The Butcher;950877Didn't they outsource the Sword Coast book (or bits of it, anyway) to Green Ronin?

They did, they've been using third party designers for a lot of the adventures. Which I think gives us some hope they may license them out for a book to someone. The surveys they did suggest something like only 5-10% don't use either homebrew or FR so it is definitely a niche thing. I wonder how Schwalb's rather awesome Dark Sun material for 4e actually sold?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;950900They do when they're well-written. But my point was more that even if they don't sell well, they're necessary (along with setting books) to help sell the rulebooks.

Yes. Big, mainstream games need a solid stream of support products to communicate to both types of customers (their retailers as well as their players) that the game is still "alive". So that they won't start looking for greener pastures.

Quote from: Spinachcat;950727WotC knows they have 3 types of D&D customers who effectively exist in different hobbies that are only tangentially related: (1) gamers who buy core books and homebrew; (2) the Living Campaign crowd, and (3) ex-gamers who read RPG stuff and quietly dream of actually play that never occurs.

(4) GMs of other systems

QuoteGroup 1 buys very little beyond core books.
Group 2 buys stuff for their Living Campaign involvement.
Group 3 buys anything.

Group 4 buys the occasional setting and module as idea mines.

GURPS sold sourcebooks way beyond their stable of GMs.
I bought more AD&D modules after I stopped DMing it, because no game I GMd afterwards had similar adventure support, plus my players already knew all modules of those other systems.

But group 4 is not big enough to actively plan and design for it.
Still, I wonder how many AD&D modules saw play with Rolemaster, GURPS, Warhammer, Runequest... Only one of three Dragonlance campaigns that happened in my vicinity used AD&D - and even that drifted to a houseruled RQ.

Quote from: Skywalker;950881It can be. But quantity isn't necessarily the key to it being so.

True but we're thre years in and I can count on two hands the professional books out, again I don't include adventures.

Contentious though it's been I'm glad I posed the question though or I'd not know about AiME or Midgard.

Quote from: Omega;950901Keep in mind that some of that third party stuff is still going through WOTC first, others they just license and are relatively hands off. Its an odd set up. But this has been WOTC's thing for a long time now.

I've no objection to professional third party material paper or PDF but even that's been scarce till now

Quote from: J.L. Duncan;950922Ha! Ha! (seriously, this made me laugh)

Where has D&D gone? Without reading further through this thread. There are a ton of resources, google it.

Professional, quality material? As already discussed I'm not a big fan of fan work it's inconsistent in quality.

However I've had some good stuff pointed out to me as available or on the way.

Quote from: Sommerjon;950923Sorta, the difference here is an AP for PF is 6 books long at 25$ a pop compared to a setting or splat book at 45$ a pop, but the manufacturing costs are almost the same.  At least according to the printer in my gaming group.
Kinda nifty to sell less but make more money.

I think that your buddy is exaggerating.  While the APs certainly don't cost $20 less to print, they definitely cost less.  Not only are they much shorter (Paizo has some of the longest splat books - much longer than old D&D stuff was), but they're also soft cover.  (hardcover alone adds close to a buck to printing costs)

Check PrintNinja's website.  They have an interesting calculator where you plug in page count, paper weight, and quantity etc. - and it pops out a cost & cost/unit.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;950694That's just crazy talk!

Yeah, the OP sounds like yet another dead-from-the-neck-up limp-dick who can't manage masturbation without the Swimsuit Issue spread out on the toilet seat.

For some reason Cubicle 7's Adventures in Middle Earth inspired me more than anything created lately by Wizards of the Coast. And I'm a fan of 5e so far. And I'm actually kind of bored of Tolkien.

I mean, once I started reading the Player's Guide, I couldn't stop. I finished reading it, cover-to-cover, including the fluff-prose, in one weekend. I honestly cannot remember the last time that I've read a RPG book like that.

Something about the added thought put into the Cultures, Journey and downtime rules. It is hard for me to explain, but I love their approach: so much that I want to use it for my own homebrewed setting some day.

Needless to say that I'm very excited for the Loremaster's guide. Much more than I've been excited for anything official for 5e. I mean, I get it: the core books are just a toolkit. I couldn't care less for the Forgotten Realms. But somehow AiME CLICKS for me. Really weird.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950975Yeah, the OP sounds like yet another dead-from-the-neck-up limp-dick who can't manage masturbation without the Swimsuit Issue spread out on the toilet seat.

How dare he have different consumer tastes than you!

You should make awkward metaphors which question his/her manhood!!!

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950975Yeah, the OP sounds like yet another dead-from-the-neck-up limp-dick who can't manage masturbation without the Swimsuit Issue spread out on the toilet seat.

Yeah don't get me wrong: with just the core books of 5e (the only ones that I value, personally) I've done wonders. I don't believe that one should NEED splat- or setting-books to kick start a good campaign.

I have limited spare time (actually, more like I'm just lazy) and I've re-skinned so many monsters from the Monster Manual that I don't feel that I need any other monster books, ever. Volo's Guide was kind of fun, though.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;950982How dare he have different consumer tastes than you!

Consumer tastes which drive the publication of a mountain of bullshit, most of it aimed at fucking collectors and shithouse readers.

Yeah, I'm fine pissing on those assholes.

And by the way, piss on you too, fuckstick.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;950971I think that your buddy is exaggerating.  While the APs certainly don't cost $20 less to print, they definitely cost less.  Not only are they much shorter (Paizo has some of the longest splat books - much longer than old D&D stuff was), but they're also soft cover.  (hardcover alone adds close to a buck to printing costs)

Check PrintNinja's website.  They have an interesting calculator where you plug in page count, paper weight, and quantity etc. - and it pops out a cost & cost/unit.

He meant that (manufacturing costs)6AP books = 1 splat/setting book

and once again proof that all RPG arguments, at their heart, are about badwrongfun.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950985Consumer tastes which drive the publication of a mountain of bullshit, most of it aimed at fucking collectors and shithouse readers.

Yeah, I'm fine pissing on those assholes.

And by the way, piss on you too, fuckstick.

Internet users: proving our maturity & decorum one post at a time!

(And why do you care?  Is someone holding you hostage and forcing you to read them?)

Quote from: Sommerjon;950986He meant that (manufacturing costs)6AP books = 1 splat/setting book

I gotcha - I misunderstood.

Though that seems like it might be an overstatement the other way.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950985Consumer tastes which drive the publication of a mountain of bullshit, most of it aimed at fucking collectors and shithouse readers.

Yeah, I'm fine pissing on those assholes.

And by the way, piss on you too, fuckstick.

For a guy who is too imaginative to need store-bought products, why do you care what gets published?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;950949(4) GMs of other systems

Group 4 buys the occasional setting and module as idea mines.

GURPS sold sourcebooks way beyond their stable of GMs.

I loathe GURPS with a passion and I even bought a shed load of GURPS sourcebooks.  They were (mostly) valuable resources and idea mines.

I haven't bought any D&D5e stuff and probably won't. I have enough earlier editions of D&D, and retro-closnes, and OSR, and BTW, to well and truly scratch my D&D itch, and I mostly favor other games that offer other experiences these days anyhow.  

So for me the question of where has D&D gone? is anwered by "right where it's always been, here on my gaming shelf".  Even in the heady days of AD&D 1e I didn't buy much beyond the core books.

Quote from: Spinachcat;950920Iron Kingdoms was a d20 RPG for the WarMachine minis universe. I heard some mumblings about their own RPG system, but I haven't seen it.

There are more players than GMs.

That's why Palladium makes all their books dual use. AKA, all the setting books have new toys for Players (classes, spells, guns, etc)


And accuracy!

:)

Has anyone been following this D&D Beyond thing?

Anyone part of any testing?

Any reason to believe it isn't 5e's vaporware?

Explains where the book budget has gone, didn't they fa to deliver something last year?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950975Yeah, the OP sounds like yet another dead-from-the-neck-up limp-dick who can't manage masturbation without the Swimsuit Issue spread out on the toilet seat.

Fairly sure I'm not your father...

Quote from: Necrozius;950981For some reason Cubicle 7's Adventures in Middle Earth inspired me more than anything created lately by Wizards of the Coast. And I'm a fan of 5e so far. And I'm actually kind of bored of Tolkien.

I mean, once I started reading the Player's Guide, I couldn't stop. I finished reading it, cover-to-cover, including the fluff-prose, in one weekend. I honestly cannot remember the last time that I've read a RPG book like that.

Something about the added thought put into the Cultures, Journey and downtime rules. It is hard for me to explain, but I love their approach: so much that I want to use it for my own homebrewed setting some day.

Needless to say that I'm very excited for the Loremaster's guide. Much more than I've been excited for anything official for 5e. I mean, I get it: the core books are just a toolkit. I couldn't care less for the Forgotten Realms. But somehow AiME CLICKS for me. Really weird.

I'm glad somebody pointed these out and if I hadn't already decided to go with Mythras I think I could get a lot of mileage running a Deverry inspired game with these. These SOUND like exactly the sort of books the publishers of D&D should be producing, but that's just my opinion.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;950982How dare he have different consumer tastes than you!

You should make awkward metaphors which question his/her manhood!!!

I wouldn't bother. The need to belittle or attack others usually stems from a deep rooted insecurity.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;950988Internet users: proving our maturity & decorum one post at a time!

(And why do you care?  Is someone holding you hostage and forcing you to read them?)

This is always the big point, if you don't want to buy or read something don't. Why begrudge others spending their hard earned money?

Quote from: HorusArisen;950998Explains where the book budget has gone, didn't they fa to deliver something last year?

Palladium's been struggling to get out their Robotech KS stuff for some time now.

Meanwhile....  The RPG market keeps tightening and tightening, and Palladium has been investing their books more in riding the zombie craze (about 1d6+10 years too late), the Rifter (pay fans a pittance to write for you!), and all sorts of Coalition stuff (likely to help cash in on the Savage Worlds: Rifts license some how) than anything else.

Can we please not use Paizo as an example of why adventures 'sell'.  They are a storefront that sells more than just it's own product.  From what I can see, they even sell board games and toys, which tells me that they are wisely diversifying their products, and it also tells me that if Pathfinder were to suddenly flop, they'd still be in the black, likely.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;950988(And why do you care?  Is someone holding you hostage and forcing you to read them?)

Quote from: Baulderstone;950992For a guy who is too imaginative to need store-bought products, why do you care what gets published?

Because that mountain of bullshit makes for dull, stupid gamers, and I don't want to get stuck across the table from one of you.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951012Because that mountain of bullshit makes for dull, stupid gamers, and I don't want to get stuck across the table from one of you.

Then do what most smart people do, game with your friends.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951012Because that mountain of bullshit makes for dull, stupid gamers, and I don't want to get stuck across the table from one of you.

And yet you want to chat with them on forums?

Well I see I'm quite late to this party, but anyways, Hi, OP!
Welcome to the board. I see you've gotten your fair share of introduction to the usual personalities and how things go around here (and some trial by fire).

As everyone has said, there is an explanation to WotC's decisions. No, they are not winding D&D down and it really shouldn't be bewildering. They are following a specific strategy which focuses on favoring an evergreen edition and not risking the brand. We can like it or dislike it, but it seems to be working for them (or at least they seem pleased with the results) so it is likely to stay this way for a while.

Third party expansions are a crap shoot, but frankly, averaged over the course of the game as a whole, so have expansions from the game producers, so the lesson is you always have to be discerning with your gaming purchases.

So not much to add there I guess.
As to this site, you've clearly noticed the trial-by-shittalking thing we've got going. I also would overall prefer a slightly more polite atmosphere, but consider it a small price to pay for uncensored thoughts being expressed.

Quote from: HorusArisen;951001I wouldn't bother. The need to belittle or attack others usually stems from a deep rooted insecurity.

I see you are capable of handling yourself fine. Although, if you are going to take the high road, then wouldn't this...

Quote from: HorusArisen;950999Fairly sure I'm not your father...

...be lowering yourself to his level?

It's totally up to you. Neither the 'rise above it' or 'give as good as you get' strategy seems to inoculate one from it here, I'm just pointing out inconsistent strategy.

Anyways, hope you like it here. Glad we could hear you mope. Sorry we can't change the WotC strategy, but glad we could suggest some good third-party material. Happy gaming!

Quote from: HorusArisen;951001I wouldn't bother. The need to belittle or attack others usually stems from a deep rooted insecurity.

Gronan and Black Vulmea have a point however on this site trying to argue how how they say their point will get you nowhere and you probably will get ridicule in return. If you disagree that the rpg industry is publishing a mountain of crap aimed at collectors and readers then form a coherent argument about why you disagree. If you want to spice it up with a few fuckwits and assholes feel free to dos but that not your style then don't sweat it.

Quote from: Dave R;950895Pathfinder puts out one setting, and a bunch of adventures.  I'm not sure how this is some devastating critique of 5e's line of one main setting and a bunch of adventures.

Pathfinder (currently*) has one setting, you're right.  And it has dozens of books covering regions, races, assorted odds & ends, monster manuals, etc. etc. etc. within that one setting.  And that's before we even get to modules and adventure paths (which are separate) or the non TTRPG merchandise (comics, card games, novels, etc.).

It's a fair statement that Paizo has managed to do nicely on the supplement treadmill for quite some time now.  

Quote from: Christopher Brady;951011Can we please not use Paizo as an example of why adventures 'sell'.

Well, they seem to have figured out how to make modules sell with their line of adventure paths.  And their module modules seem to be doing okay, given there's over a 100 of them.

(*depends on if you consider the upcoming Starfinder a new setting or not)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;951013Then do what most smart people do, game with your friends.

He doesn't have them.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;951016Well I see I'm quite late to this party, but anyways, Hi, OP!
Welcome to the board. I see you've gotten your fair share of introduction to the usual personalities and how things go around here (and some trial by fire).

As everyone has said, there is an explanation to WotC's decisions. No, they are not winding D&D down and it really shouldn't be bewildering. They are following a specific strategy which focuses on favoring an evergreen edition and not risking the brand. We can like it or dislike it, but it seems to be working for them (or at least they seem pleased with the results) so it is likely to stay this way for a while.

Third party expansions are a crap shoot, but frankly, averaged over the course of the game as a whole, so have expansions from the game producers, so the lesson is you always have to be discerning with your gaming purchases.

So not much to add there I guess.
As to this site, you've clearly noticed the trial-by-shittalking thing we've got going. I also would overall prefer a slightly more polite atmosphere, but consider it a small price to pay for uncensored thoughts being expressed.

I see you are capable of handling yourself fine. Although, if you are going to take the high road, then wouldn't this...

...be lowering yourself to his level?

It's totally up to you. Neither the 'rise above it' or 'give as good as you get' strategy seems to inoculate one from it here, I'm just pointing out inconsistent strategy.

Anyways, hope you like it here. Glad we could hear you mope. Sorry we can't change the WotC strategy, but glad we could suggest some good third-party material. Happy gaming!

Lol your right but it was too easy.
And external factors made me snippy. I wouldn't censor anyone as I've gained more from the disparate opinions here than on another site by a country mile but you can disagree with me to your hearts content without being foul or rude. I wouldn't tolerate it in person and I don't see that the anonymity of the internet should make it permissible. That said I'm 'aware' of who to ignore now.

I'm very pleased by some of the suggestions I think AIME is definitely on the buy list and I'm looking forward to picking it up. And even some of the OSR suggestions (via review) bare investigation.

Mope is over thread has pushed me into deciding what I want to run next :)

Quote from: estar;951017If you disagree that the rpg industry is publishing a mountain of crap aimed at collectors and readers then form a coherent argument about why you disagree.

Taken to one extreme, you have the people going out and buying every thing for every game.  Maybe they read it all (doubtful), maybe a lot of it sits on a shelf unread and unused (likely).  But if it makes them happy, and keeps the industry side of the hobby growing....  It's not a bad thing.

Taken to the other extreme, you have people inventing their own systems and running things free form.  They don't need someone else's rules or books at all.  If this was all the hobby consisted of, there'd be no shared hobby at all, and all you'd have are a bunch of people each playing their own games and not able to easily share or build off of one another because they can't really relate.  But if they're having fun, it's not a bad thing either.  

"The rpg industry is publishing a mountain of crap" is too subjective to be of any use.  I mean, -I- hate 95% of the stuff out there, and find it useless and derivative.  But if someone comes up to me and says they have fifteen different books/PDFs/notes/etc. on... kobolds... and has gotten good ideas out of each, or even just enjoyed reading them, I'm not going to say they didn't.  (and of course, like all good hypocrites, I'll happily say "that game is garbage" and go on a tirade as to why)

Quote from: estar;951017Gronan and Black Vulmea have a point however on this site trying to argue how how they say their point will get you nowhere and you probably will get ridicule in return. If you disagree that the rpg industry is publishing a mountain of crap aimed at collectors and readers then form a coherent argument about why you disagree. If you want to spice it up with a few fuckwits and assholes feel free to dos but that not your style then don't sweat it.

Lol no I think I know who's posts are worth just skipping over now.

You mentioned or I've read that the points of light books were now called Land of Adventure? Or am I having a senior moment? If you did where can I get that?

As to the RPG industry, no I think that there are a lot of great games out there and some fantastic material, I was mostly surprised that the latest edition of the first rpg was by comparison sadly lacking. And there's nothing wrong with pandering to collectors so long as your not rolling out tripe.

I've always preferred my own worlds and adventures but I find a lot of value in the ideas and works of others and for a home campaign I'm not above plagiarism ;)

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;950888And as a result of that we have Pathfinder, which I believe is still selling more than 5e...? At worst a close competitor. And what do they put out? Settings and adventures.

Pathfinder's getting relatively blown out by 5e. BUT it also appears that PF is still growing in absolute terms, so it seems that 5e has expanded the pie.

Personally, I hate splats. I got burned out on splats with 4e (go ahead, boo and hiss) when I realized that I'd thrown tons of money at the things and used maybe 5-10% of the total content I'd bought if that (several books just never got touched). And I'm saying that as someone who ran and played in multiple 4e campaigns across nearly the entire run of its existence. But adventures? If I buy an adventure, I will eventually use nearly all of the book, so it's a worthwhile purchase for to me. Splats seem like a better buy at first because in theory, they're usable forever, but in terms of actual page use, I get a better value out of modules and adventures.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950975Yeah, the OP sounds like yet another dead-from-the-neck-up limp-dick who can't manage masturbation without the Swimsuit Issue spread out on the toilet seat.

Only on an RPG site is "skilled at masturbation" a signifier of manliness.

Quote from: HorusArisen;951023Lol no I think I know who's posts are worth just skipping over now.

Oh don't skip over Gronan. He has valuable, if often curmudgeonly and semi-often potty-mouthed, insight.  Even Christopher Brady, whose gone hammer and tongs with him a half dozen times since I've joined, listens to his responses. BV, too, has useful things to say, even if his hostility dial goes all the way up to 11 (and all the way down to 9 1/2).

QuoteAs to the RPG industry, no I think that there are a lot of great games out there and some fantastic material, I was mostly surprised that the latest edition of the first rpg was by comparison sadly lacking. And there's nothing wrong with pandering to collectors so long as your not rolling out tripe.

Honestly, they can roll out tripe for all I care, especially if it's sitting on the collector's shelves. Lord knows there are lots of truly useless hunks of plastic in the shape of Star Wars characters sitting on collectors shelves (in their original packaging) that have value only because collectors want to take them off your shelf and put them on theirs. As long as
1) good games have good material written for them, and
2) people looking for that good material have some means of finding out what the actual good material is
then the system is working fine, as far as I am concerned.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;951024Pathfinder's getting relatively blown out by 5e. BUT it also appears that PF is still growing in absolute terms, so it seems that 5e has expanded the pie.

Which I'll just pop in and say is awesome.

It looks like Paizo still has the crunch-lovers mostly locked down, but 5e being lighter has been a combination of more newbie friendly & more likely to bring back old-timers who haven't played for a few editions.

Though - it's hard to tell how much of the expanded TTRPG market is 5e itself, and how much of it is trickle from the board game Renaissance - as it's much easier to convert a board game enthusiast to play a session or three of a TTRPG than it is a total non-tabletop gamer.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950999Fairly sure I'm not your father...

Oh, snaps!

For what it's worth, I feel what you're stepping in and would prefer a bit more stuff for 5e that isn't adventures. I create my own adventures and would love a single setting book for whatever settings they feel are worth it, preferably Eberron. I don't want a glut of stuff, just a decent sampling. But, if that doesn't happen there's a ton of resources, so making up my own things isn't a huge deal.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;951038Oh, snaps!

For what it's worth, I feel what you're stepping in and would prefer a bit more stuff for 5e that isn't adventures. I create my own adventures and would love a single setting book for whatever settings they feel are worth it, preferably Eberron. I don't want a glut of stuff, just a decent sampling. But, if that doesn't happen there's a ton of resources, so making up my own things isn't a huge deal.

Don't need a lot just some stuff to enjoy, but I'm definitely thinking of getting some of the better sounding 3rd party stuff.

Quote from: san dee jota;951015And yet you want to chat with them on forums?

No, I'd much rather chat with gamers who aren't dull or stupid, but an object at rest tends to remain at rest until a force acts upon it. I'm trying to overcome inertia.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;951016I see you are capable of handling yourself fine. Although, if you are going to take the high road, then wouldn't this...

Quote from: HorusArisen;951001I wouldn't bother. The need to belittle or attack others usually stems from a deep rooted insecurity.

...be lowering yourself to his level?

The holier-then-thou schtick is a refuge of feebs who can't actually engage.

Quote from: estar;951017Gronan and Black Vulmea have a point . . .

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear

Quote from: san dee jota;951022I mean, -I- hate 95% of the stuff out there, and find it useless and derivative.

Then you know exactly what I'm talking about, so stop braying at me like an ass.

Quote from: hexgrid;951027Only on an RPG site is "skilled at masturbation" a signifier of manliness.

And your reading comprehension is as shallow as your wit.

Quote from: HorusArisen;951040Don't need a lot just some stuff to enjoy, but I'm definitely thinking of getting some of the better sounding 3rd party stuff.

Admittedly, I haven't played much of 5th (I like it a lot, as far as D&D goes) and I'm not knowledgeable about third-party stuff.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;951024...so it seems that 5e has expanded the pie.

Believe it was the guy behind Pelgrane Press and 13th Age who noted that when D&D does well, everyone else in RPGs does better.

Quote from: san dee jota;951022"The rpg industry is publishing a mountain of crap" is too subjective to be of any use.  I mean, -I- hate 95% of the stuff out there, and find it useless and derivative.  But if someone comes up to me and says they have fifteen different books/PDFs/notes/etc. on... kobolds... and has gotten good ideas out of each, or even just enjoyed reading them, I'm not going to say they didn't.  (and of course, like all good hypocrites, I'll happily say "that game is garbage" and go on a tirade as to why)

My view is that what the industry does or doesn't do is a non-issue anymore. Technology and open content have produced a situation where anybody who thinks that the industry (or hobby) is doing it wrong has to be means to "fix" it and distribute that "fix" widely.

Granted the likelihood of one person knocking off Paizo and/or Wizards off the RPG perch is very unlikely but it is possible unlike the 80s and 90s when you had to order large print runs and place them in proper distribution. But then again the situation is such that you don't need to knock off Wizards or Paizo to be successful. It possible for a person to have modest success with a much small audience.

The result is increased diversity both in what is offered and in quality. Every niche of the hobby now has dozens of professionally produced products along with at least one or two gems.

For example gonzo fantasy or weird horror isn't a style of fantasy I care for. Yet both has had products released that fans of those genres consider as gems.

If you wanted to live in a second golden age of tabletop roleplaying this past decade is it and it shows no sign of abating.

Quote from: HorusArisen;951023Lol no I think I know who's posts are worth just skipping over now.

"whose"

No need to thank me... :D

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;951052Admittedly, I haven't played much of 5th (I like it a lot, as far as D&D goes) and I'm not knowledgeable about third-party stuff.

5th edition is actually pretty smooth, has a very 0D&D vibe to it, and I'm finding it ok as a player. So far we have only had one meltdown in our group over rules mechanics so it seems to be robust as well, and we haven't been hitting many snags. Other than being ridiculously miserly with exp, and treasure, 5e seems pretty good. (that just might be my GM though, not sure...)

Quote from: Voros;951078Believe it was the guy behind Pelgrane Press and 13th Age who noted that when D&D does well, everyone else in RPGs does better.

From what I understand that's true of the market leader in a lot of niche industries.  They're the flagship for the industry, so if they do well and are well thought of, it's good for the industry as a whole.

Quote from: HorusArisen;951023Lol no I think I know who's posts are worth just skipping over now.

That why we have a ignore button. However  before you do that I suggest reading through their posting history and learn just who they are before clicking it.

Quote from: HorusArisen;951023You mentioned or I've read that the points of light books were now called Land of Adventure? Or am I having a senior moment? If you did where can I get that?

No, that the last title I used to cover all the hexcrawls I wrote. I retrain the copyright to the text and maps of both Points of Light and of course Blackmarsh. My master plan is to write and release a series of them under the umbrella. I have a setting that I sketched out to give them all a sense of continuity. However it applied with a light touch. The focus is on fleshing out whatever that map section details and will not only jump around geographically but in terms of time period as well. The plan is to make each work stand alone but for those who care they can be pieced together to paint the picture of a larger world and its history.

The problem is that I write slow. Like G.R.R. Martin slow. I used to be frustrated about it but I just accepted it and moved on. To make progress I try to write or draw maps at least 1/2 hour a day. Usually during my lunch break. The project that furthest along is an extensive revision of my original Majestic Wilderlands Supplement. The deal is that I hand sell my books to stores in my area. While the guys at Swords & Wizardry are great I can't afford to hand sell their books to stores like I can for my supplements. Plus in the years since 2009, I continued to referee and found that I developed a lot of stuff. Stuff I think people would be interested in as a complete ruleset.

This brings an important point about my philosophy for publishing my stuff. I don't want to do what everybody else does. I am at the point where I could release a complete MW RPG. However it would be just like any other RPG. Just like with Points of Light I could have defined a setting and say this map is Map 21 of Northeast continent of the Land of Adventure. Or with the Majestic Wilderlands and made it just a setting guide. Or the back half of the Scourge of the Demon Wolf is a regional supplement. What foremost in my mind is utility. Why should somebody buy my book and is it useful for a given campaign? And just as important that I explain why I think it useful.

This take time to figure out and execute.

Anyway here is a link to something you may not have for the Points of Lights book/ Blackmarsh. I made a map that only joined Blackmarsh with Southland but the Wild North hexcrawl that was published in Fight-On #3. http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/01/blackmarsh-southland-and-wild-north.html

Finally I am writing this rather verbose answer not to tote my own horn, although there is a little of that :-), but in conjunction with some of the other posts with questions about publishing. I think the OSR and the hobby has room yet another X with X being rules, adventures, or whatever. If the written in a strong voice with a little bit of text of explanation of why the author is doing what he is doing.
As to the RPG industry, no I think that there are a lot of great games out there and some fantastic material, I was mostly surprised that the latest edition of the first rpg was by comparison sadly lacking. And there's nothing wrong with pandering to collectors so long as your not rolling out tripe.

Quote from: HorusArisen;951023I've always preferred my own worlds and adventures but I find a lot of value in the ideas and works of others and for a home campaign I'm not above plagiarism ;)

Which is why the key is diversity and thanks to technology and open content we have that. There just so much of it that it easy to think the hobby and industry are just the narrow slice that a person views. But it really that diverse.

Quote from: GameDaddy;9510975th edition is actually pretty smooth, has a very 0D&D vibe to it, and I'm finding it ok as a player. So far we have only had one meltdown in our group over rules mechanics so it seems to be robust as well, and we haven't been hitting many snags. Other than being ridiculously miserly with exp, and treasure, 5e seems pretty good. (that just might be my GM though, not sure...)

It works pretty good for me. My players are people I've played BECMI/RC and 1e with since the 80s and they like it just fine. Maybe some gripes about stacking multiclassing vs parallel system but that's only for the AD&D player. The best way to mitigate that is to stick with one class, since 5e doesn't require multiclass dipping for a viable build like 3.x/d20 did. The thing I find is I have to hold back. I mean, you know how easy it is to TPK players with goblins, without using special tactics or anything? I start off light, and have reinforcements at the ready in case the PCs slice through them too quickly. It really doesn't feel much different in play than older editions which is nice.

The rules are solid. Advantage/Disadvantage save a lot of time. Saving throws based on ability scores don't require much explanation for old timers, and the spellcasters don't gripe about weaponized cantrips. Ever. The main appeal to me is the ability to find new players who know the game. If you want something closer to an old school experience, just use the Basic Rules and SRD. Ignore Feats and maybe Backgrounds and stick with the four basic classes and races. The advantage to that approach is that the Basic Rules and SRD are free online. Throw in a website like Donjon (https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/monsters/) which works on a phone or tablet and building encounters becomes a snap.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950953I've no objection to professional third party material paper or PDF but even that's been scarce till now

Not as scarse as youd think. Wizkids is handling the minis. Gale Force is handling the DM screen and spell cards (and botched it here and there.) I think now three companies are writing modules and expansions and the Tarokka deck. Not sure if its Hasbro or WOTC who does the board game. and so on.

Unfortunately theres also some fake 5e material out there. Kobold was the first I ran into pulling that stunt.

Quote from: HorusArisen;950955Professional, quality material? As already discussed I'm not a big fan of fan work it's inconsistent in quality.

However I've had some good stuff pointed out to me as available or on the way.

The crazy thing is some of the non-professional stuff looks more professional that the professional stuff. Unfortunately there's rampant art theft going on to make some of those books look so good.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;950987and once again proof that all RPG arguments, at their heart, are about badwrongfun.

badwrongfun is badwrongfun you know... :eek:

Quote from: HorusArisen;951023As to the RPG industry, no I think that there are a lot of great games out there and some fantastic material, I was mostly surprised that the latest edition of the first rpg was by comparison sadly lacking.

And there's nothing wrong with pandering to collectors so long as your not rolling out tripe.

1: Loraine era TSR and then WOTC over did it and it created a backlash that still persists. WOTC for once actually payed attention and backed off on the splatmill. Wether or not they backed off on the edition treadmill is still unknown. But this IS WOTC so odds are 5e was doomed before playtest started.

2: There is everything wrong with pandering to collectors as other companies have found out the hard way. Pre-Loraine TSR understood that you needed solid modules and viable expansion books and thusly pretty much everything had alot of value to DMs who either arent good at making adventures or just wanted something to fall back on when they are caught blank. Or even just for some ideas to draw from.

Modules in particular should not be pandering to just the collector. Sorry. No. Im paying for an adventure to run the players through. Not your twenty page novella and then ten pages of adventure ideas... Save it for setting background books where it belongs. And on that subject. for fucks sake if you are going to turn your background into short stories. At least tell me about the damn place that is the subject. Adventurers Guide to the Sword Coast is currently way up there on my example list of background books that don't actually tell you much.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951012Because that mountain of bullshit makes for dull, stupid gamers, and I don't want to get stuck across the table from one of you.

Me? I'm not a fan of product line bloat either. I just don't buy it.

As for getting stuck across the table from dull and stupid gamers, I usually game with friends or friends of friends, and its been a reliable way to ensure the people in the game are entertaining.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;951096"whose"

No need to thank me... :D

Thank you ;)

BTW, before we go waxing on about the professionalism of the main industry players, take a gander at what you own, what you actually use and what in their catalogue you never picked up.

It's easy to get nostalgic about TSR or WW or WotC quality. There were some gems. Maybe many gems. But damn, when I look at stuff at the Acaeum its amazing how much drek they put out over the years, not just stuff I owned and sold, but stuff I remember looking at and going WTF.

Quote from: Voros;950933I heard the 4e online tools were pretty good.

They were fine. Nothing rocket science. Nothing any hobby programmer couldn't have cranked out.

But yet again, no mention of an online tabletop for D&D?

I didn't understand that mistake in 4e and it continues to make no sense.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;950985Consumer tastes which drive the publication of a mountain of bullshit, most of it aimed at fucking collectors and shithouse readers.

The fucking collectors and shithouse readers are paying the bills and keeping the lights on.

Quote from: hexgrid;951027Only on an RPG site is "skilled at masturbation" a signifier of manliness.

LOL!!!

Hexgrid, please post more often!

Quote from: estar;951094If you wanted to live in a second golden age of tabletop roleplaying this past decade is it and it shows no sign of abating.

Very true!

Quote from: Omega;9511491: Loraine era TSR and then WOTC over did it and it created a backlash that still persists. WOTC for once actually payed attention and backed off on the splatmill. Wether or not they backed off on the edition treadmill is still unknown. But this IS WOTC so odds are 5e was doomed before playtest started.

2: There is everything wrong with pandering to collectors as other companies have found out the hard way. Pre-Loraine TSR understood that you needed solid modules and viable expansion books and thusly pretty much everything had alot of value to DMs who either arent good at making adventures or just wanted something to fall back on when they are caught blank. Or even just for some ideas to draw from.

Modules in particular should not be pandering to just the collector. Sorry. No. Im paying for an adventure to run the players through. Not your twenty page novella and then ten pages of adventure ideas... Save it for setting background books where it belongs. And on that subject. for fucks sake if you are going to turn your background into short stories. At least tell me about the damn place that is the subject. Adventurers Guide to the Sword Coast is currently way up there on my example list of background books that don't actually tell you much.

1: I enjoyed the 2e settings, Birthright and Darksun are still my favourites.

2: I did say as long as your not rolling out tripe. For example I have high hope for Mophidius and the Conan line.

Some, but not much of the nonprofessional stuff is good but most is just house rules. It's not minis and screens I enjoy, it's the written word. :)

Quote from: Spinachcat;951179The fucking collectors and shithouse readers are paying the bills and keeping the lights on.

Something I learned a long time ago when I helped friends put on shows, if only the people who care about the band and music show up you're fucked. You need the casuals, friends, people just there to drink and fuck to show up to make money.

Quote from: Baulderstone;951154As for getting stuck across the table from dull and stupid gamers, I usually game with friends or friends of friends, and its been a reliable way to ensure the people in the game are entertaining.

And gamers clutch their pearls about why the 'hobby' doesn't 'grow.'

Hiding in little insular groups, afraid to go out and meet people for fear of being judged or unwilling to take risks on other human beings - don't ever utter a fucking peep about what 'game companies' should be doing to expand the market,

Wait, are you suggesting that gamers, as a whole, are too reticent on sharing their opinions about what the gaming companies 'should' be doing? Every experience I've had on the internet, at the FLGS, on social media, or anywhere else informs my impression that if you stick 5 gamers in a room you'll come out with 6 incompatible, passionately held ideas regarding "what gaming needs to do to save itself."

Quote from: Spinachcat;951179The fucking collectors and shithouse readers are paying the bills and keeping the lights on.

For the 'game companies,' perhaps, but if that's the case, pull the plug and let them die, gasping in their mediocrity and irrelevance. Let the creatives who do it for love and beer money dance on their fucking graves.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;951404Wait, are you suggesting that gamers, as a whole, are too reticent on sharing their opinions about what the gaming companies 'should' be doing?

Not at all - I'm saying that insular, chickenshit gamers who 'only play with friends' don't get to complain that game companies are doing enough to expand the number of roleplayers.

Yeah, I totally get your confusion - I worded that about as awkwardly as I could on that first pass, but whaddya want from a foul-tempered near-illiterate?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951405For the 'game companies,' perhaps, but if that's the case, pull the plug and let them die, gasping in their mediocrity and irrelevance. Let the creatives who do it for love and beer money dance on their fucking graves.

And that sort of mentality is what we dont need. Why the hell spit on the people who want to DM but just arent good at improving? For them modules and background books are useful or in a few cases even vital.

Quote from: Omega;951407Why the hell spit on the people who want to DM but just arent good at improving?

Or just don't want to spend hours on prep time before each session.  Those stupid jobs/kids/etc. keep eating up their important gaming prep time.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951403And gamers clutch their pearls about why the 'hobby' doesn't 'grow.'

Hiding in little insular groups, afraid to go out and meet people for fear of being judged or unwilling to take risks on other human beings - don't ever utter a fucking peep about what 'game companies' should be doing to expand the market,

No. As I said, I mostly game with friends, whether those fans were gamers or not. I've never hidden gaming from anyone in my various workplaces and non-gaming activities, which has allowed me to recruit a lot of people. I bring people into my games because they are fun, interesting people I want to hang out with, not because they are established gamers.

Do people joke about my gaming? Sure. I don't really care though. It's always good-natured, and once I have shown I can take a joke about it, people that might have felt self-conscious about it tend to be more open to it. Often its the people cracking the most jokes that end up at the table.

I stopped worrying about whether the hobby grows or how the industry does years ago because I am confident I will always be able to get a group together if I really want to game. I've been running a game for my nephews as well. Maybe they will continue with RPGs. Maybe they won't. I'd like it if they did, but I'm not going to despondent if they do other things with their life. I just don't feel I have an obligation push it on them. If people of future generations would rather do other things in their spare time, that's their business.

Quote from: Omega;951407Why the hell spit on the people who want to DM but just arent good at improving?

If the sword is too heavy, grow stronger.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;951409Or just don't want to spend hours on prep time before each session.

Random shit up.

I 'prep' every time I read a book, watch a movie, or listen to my children talking. The ability to improvise comes from a prepared mind.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951415Random shit up.

I 'prep' every time I read a book, watch a movie, or listen to my children talking. The ability to improvise comes from a prepared mind.

Unfortunately some of the most unimaginative people I have come across are gamers.

Quote from: Baulderstone;951410I bring people into my games because they are fun, interesting people I want to hang out with, not because they are established gamers.

Gold star for you, 'stones, but the willingness to take a chance on gaming with complete strangers offers an unlimited horizon.

I've played with people whom I wouldn't let within five miles of my family, because they're fun to play games with, not because I'm looking for life partners.

I game with Baulderstone. He is good people. Never seen him have any issue with new folks at the table. I don't mind playing with strangers myself, but my regular groups tend to be made up of people I get along with and who bring something to the table. Meeting new people and testing the waters with them is a good way to find such players. However getting along with folks is an important part of play for me. If someone gets on my nerves the whole time, I don't see the point in gaming with them.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951417Gold star for you, 'stones, but the willingness to take a chance on gaming with complete strangers offers an unlimited horizon.

I've played with people whom I wouldn't let within five miles of my family, because they're fun to play games with, not because I'm looking for life partners.

As far as getting more folks on board, I'm with Black. Hit some folks up and play. This is how I've discovered a few pearls who became staples of the home campaign. As far as long term play, it's about good and actual friends, because I play at my home, and I'm a bit picky. This will change in a few months. I'll be moving to another state, to a smaller home (we're downsizing), and will be losing the ol' group (unless we game online).  But I'm looking forward to starting fresh (again).

On a related note, we had "Fun Friday" at my current school just before the break, and I introduced some 9-year olds to the concept via the Dungeon! board game. They are one step away from being hooked FOREVER! :-)

Quote from: cranebump;951424As far as getting more folks on board, I'm with Black. Hit some folks up and play. This is how I've discovered a few pearls who became staples of the home campaign. As far as long term play, it's about good and actual friends, because I play at my home, and I'm a bit picky. This will change in a few months. I'll be moving to another state, to a smaller home (we're downsizing), and will be losing the ol' group (unless we game online).  But I'm looking forward to starting fresh (again).

On a related note, we had "Fun Friday" at my current school just before the break, and I introduced some 9-year olds to the concept via the Dungeon! board game. They are one step away from being hooked FOREVER! :-)

I had a similar experience with some friends I met via a religious group. They were total newbs and now they are totally hooked! We play most SAT nights. Our enthusiasm for the hobby and willingness to share that are more profound than ANY program a publisher could invent.

I like meeting new gamers because, as others have already pointed out, it broadens my perception of play styles... and I also learn about new things (usually behaviours) to avoid.

Also I love the look on new players' faces when they realise that GMs don't HAVE to be wholly antagonistic and railroad-y. When they realise that the GM (me) doesn't already have a pre-written book in his head about the campaign.

But yeah if a player is kind of an asshole, and they're no fun in-game AND out of it, screw them, they're out.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951406Not at all - I'm saying that insular, chickenshit gamers who 'only play with friends' don't get to complain that game companies are doing enough to expand the number of roleplayers.

Fair enough; I'm one of those insular chickenshit gamers, but on the other hand I don't give a splattering shit about game companies.  If every game company in the world closed tomorrow, I sincerely doubt it would affect my gaming at all.

Actually, I DO play with people I hadn't met before, but they're already gamers.  I don't try to make new gamers, just like I don't try to make new model railroaders.

Quote from: Necrozius;951431Also I love the look on new players' faces when they realise that GMs don't HAVE to be wholly antagonistic and railroad-y. When they realise that the GM (me) doesn't already have a pre-written book in his head about the campaign.

That's a great feeling, huh? I love it. :)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;951436Actually, I DO play with people I hadn't met before, but they're already gamers.  I don't try to make new gamers, just like I don't try to make new model railroaders.

I'm generally the same, but if it was a stone-set rule my wife wouldn't be gaming with me. :) If I meet a non-gamer who's interested in the hobby I'll game with them and teach what I can, but I won't chase down non-gamers and waste time proselytizing the hobby.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951417Gold star for you, 'stones, but the willingness to take a chance on gaming with complete strangers offers an unlimited horizon.

"Sometimes I just star roleplaying with random people on the bus... you'd be surprised how many take to it immediately... next thing you know we're out on the pavement shouting at all the orcs and dragons roaring down the street!"

I have a theory on openness and new people. My wife ran the fourth largest gaming meetup in the country for 13 years. My theory is based on that experience.

New people show up. They meet other cool new people to game with and then go form their own groups and we don't see them much anymore, except for cons or LARGE public parties. Except, for a few. Those people so odious that no one can stand to game with. They continue to hang around the public games, meetup after meetup, and you get to "enjoy" them over and over again.

I game with my wife, her sister and our circle of appropriately nerd friends. Actually my sister-in-law and her husband are bigger D&D fans than my wife, she prefers CoC. We started playing because her sister was interested in D&D and I had my previous 2e DM experience. Myself and a friend are the only ones with previous RPG experience at our table. Introducing people to the form is tremendously invigorating. I'm hoping to introduce some of my nephews and nieces as well, like they say the 'golden age of sci-fi is twelve years old.'

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951405For the 'game companies,' perhaps, but if that's the case, pull the plug and let them die, gasping in their mediocrity and irrelevance. Let the creatives who do it for love and beer money dance on their fucking graves.

I am unsure if the hobbyist publishers or the hobby will thrive if the game companies go under.

Quote from: cranebump;951424and I introduced some 9-year olds to the concept via the Dungeon! board game. They are one step away from being hooked FOREVER! :-)

Hail Satan!!

I've been playing with my group for a little over 24 years, I'll be sure to tell them we need to break up and play with other people :p

Back when we had a Gencon here in the U.K. and the makers of D&D remembered to publish sourcebooks and settings I played in some good, some bad games with people I'd never meet anywhere else even ran a few games. I've introduced a few friends and relatives some of whom even have their own groups now.

However fantastic my games are I still think it's the companies and the products they put out that are the big draw, my notepad and sketches (being generous) are no way as enticing as a well laid out book or box set. Particularly since I'm reaching a much smaller audience.

Quote from: Spinachcat;951550Hail Satan!!

Now, now, it's just a board game (now, please stay inside the pentagram while I read this passage).:-)

Quote from: bryce0lynch;951461I have a theory on openness and new people. My wife ran the fourth largest gaming meetup in the country for 13 years. My theory is based on that experience.

New people show up. They meet other cool new people to game with and then go form their own groups and we don't see them much anymore, except for cons or LARGE public parties. Except, for a few. Those people so odious that no one can stand to game with. They continue to hang around the public games, meetup after meetup, and you get to "enjoy" them over and over again.

I've seen that happen, all the good players get snapped up for private tables eventually and what's left to show up week in and week out are the dregs of humanity.

Quote from: Spinachcat;951550I am unsure if the hobbyist publishers or the hobby will thrive if the game companies go under.

Fuck 'em  all. I already have my copies of the games I want.

Great so the hobby can go the way of model trains and die with y'all.

I went to a model train convention this year, one of three held annually in the area.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;951729I went to a model train convention this year, one of three held annually in the area.

Cool.  And talk about 'vicious arguments over nothing...'

Just ask "Which is better, steam or diesel?"

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;951731Cool.  And talk about 'vicious arguments over nothing...'

Just ask "Which is better, steam or diesel?"

Maglev.

Well to be fair I doubt you'd find model train collectors declaring they don't care if anymore model trains are built.

Quote from: Spinachcat;951550I am unsure if the hobbyist publishers or the hobby will thrive if the game companies go under.

Seeing how my kids consume media, I think digital storefronts and print-on-demand are the stake in the heart of 'Big Gaming' - given how many extant game companies publish fucking coffee table books as roleplaying games, they're headed the route of the boutique publisher of 'exclusive volumes.'

Quote from: Spinachcat;951550I am unsure if the hobbyist publishers or the hobby will thrive if the game companies go under.

Contrarily, I think it could potentially be the best thing to happen to the hobby.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951777roleplaying games, they're headed the route of the boutique publisher of 'exclusive volumes.'

I'd be cool with that

There will always be somebody to fill in the vacuum if that were to happen.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951777Seeing how my kids consume media, I think digital storefronts and print-on-demand are the stake in the heart of 'Big Gaming' - given how many extant game companies publish fucking coffee table books as roleplaying games, they're headed the route of the boutique publisher of 'exclusive volumes.'

Nailed it.  The nice thing is I can buy the cool, interesting, off-beat game I am interested in as a pdf, or back it on KS, for a fraction of what a print version would cost me and then upgrade to print if I want to and when and if I actually get to play it.

There are even a few games I have ponied up the cash for the deluxe hardcover because they are gorgeous.  There are others that I will probably never buy in paper, and certainly would not have bought if that had been the only option.

And unless you count Cubicle 7 as "Big Gaming" I can't remember the last time I actually bought a book from a big gaming company.

RPGs have never been a particularly great way to make money and the internet has proably not helped with the marginal profit margins. But I wouldn't write off harcopies yet, many young people develop a taste for the physical since they're raised in a digital environment. Look at the current boom in board games.

Quote from: Voros;951835Look at the current boom in board games.

It's clear a lot of roleplaying game publishers looked at that boom, and filled up their games with tons of crap - tokens, cards, beads, whateverthefuckever - to make the experience of [strike]playing[/strike] owning them more like board games.

Added to the still-extant trend of game lines released like collectible card games - fuck you, FFG - and the boutique movement hit its stride.

Overlooked in this [strike]trend[/strike] race toward overpriced, overwritten monstrosities is, at the end of the day, no one needs any of that Bandini Mountain of bullshit to play a roleplaying game.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951838It's clear a lot of roleplaying game publishers looked at that boom, and filled up their games with tons of crap - tokens, cards, beads, whateverthefuckever - to make the experience of [strike]playing[/strike] owning them more like board games.

Added to the still-extant trend of game lines released like collectible card games - fuck you, FFG - the boutique movement hit its stride.

Overlooked in this [strike]trend[/strike] toward overpriced, overwritten monstrosities is, at the end of the day, no one needs any of that Bandini Mountain of bullshit to play a roleplaying game.

FFG broke my heart with X-wing.  The basic game is quick, playable, and fun, and the admittedly expensive components were well engineered to make it easy to play; it reminds me of many aircraft minis games circa mid 1970s but the components drastically streamlined the record keeping.

Then they shitted it up with all the bullshit cards to modify the craft, and the game no longer became about tactics, it became about deck building on your TIE fighter.

Quote from: CRKrueger;951747Maglev.

Lightning rail :D

Quote from: CRKrueger;950788You think the WotC sales of D&D books vs. modules really matter to Hasbro?  Compared to Magic sales?  Compared to video game licensing?

The entire RPG industry is small potatoes compared to books, comics, movies, video games, etc.  

RPGs are certainly up there with most parts of the modern non-RPG book industry, & definitely with comics. None of these compare to movies & video games.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951838It's clear a lot of roleplaying game publishers looked at that boom, and filled up their games with tons of crap - tokens, cards, beads, whateverthefuckever - to make the experience of [strike]playing[/strike] owning them more like board games.

Added to the still-extant trend of game lines released like collectible card games - fuck you, FFG - and the boutique movement hit its stride.

Overlooked in this [strike]trend[/strike] race toward overpriced, overwritten monstrosities is, at the end of the day, no one needs any of that Bandini Mountain of bullshit to play a roleplaying game.

Any examples beyond Star Wars dice?  I haven't noticed this at all.

Overwriting doesn't seem like much of an issue in 5e to me, or most other modern RPGs, where the emphasis on simple rules, quick chargen and getting a game to the table means that the books are way more concise than most of the games from the 80s or 90s.

Quote from: Voros;951867Any examples beyond Star Wars dice?  I haven't noticed this at all.

WFRP3ed tried it.  Changeling the Dreaming tried it.  There have been other games, but nobody has ever had major success with it.  

Star Wars gets away with it solely because of the license.

Now, there are companies selling things like class-specific spell cards, Drama Decks, etc. etc. etc.  But those are all such optional bits of bling, that I can only mention them for the sake of completion.  Like a collector would think.  :D

Quote from: Voros;951867Overwriting doesn't seem like much of an issue in 5e to me, or most other modern RPGs, where the emphasis on simple rules, quick chargen and getting a game to the table means that the books are way more concise than most of the games from the 80s or 90s.

Yeah.  I mean, there comes a point where I think people are bitching more because there's stuff out there they want and can't justify buying than anything else.  "People are buying stuff I don't like" just seems like a weird thing to get upset over.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951838It's clear a lot of roleplaying game publishers looked at that boom, and filled up their games with tons of crap - tokens, cards, beads, whateverthefuckever - to make the experience of [strike]playing[/strike] owning them more like board games.

Added to the still-extant trend of game lines released like collectible card games - fuck you, FFG - and the boutique movement hit its stride.

Overlooked in this [strike]trend[/strike] race toward overpriced, overwritten monstrosities is, at the end of the day, no one needs any of that Bandini Mountain of bullshit to play a roleplaying game.

Yeah, there's some games where I don't think they are so much meant to be played, as displayed, you know?

Quote from: RunningLaser;951888Yeah, there's some games where I don't think they are so much meant to be played, as displayed, you know?

This I agree with. There was a game on Kickstarter my friend pointed out by Monte Cook. Seemed ridiculously prop oriented.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;951461I have a theory on openness and new people. My wife ran the fourth largest gaming meetup in the country for 13 years. My theory is based on that experience.

New people show up. They meet other cool new people to game with and then go form their own groups and we don't see them much anymore, except for cons or LARGE public parties. Except, for a few. Those people so odious that no one can stand to game with. They continue to hang around the public games, meetup after meetup, and you get to "enjoy" them over and over again.

LOL. Yeah, there is some truth in that.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951838It's clear a lot of roleplaying game publishers looked at that boom, and filled up their games with tons of crap - tokens, cards, beads, whateverthefuckever - to make the experience of [strike]playing[/strike] owning them more like board games.

Added to the still-extant trend of game lines released like collectible card games - fuck you, FFG - and the boutique movement hit its stride.

Overlooked in this [strike]trend[/strike] race toward overpriced, overwritten monstrosities is, at the end of the day, no one needs any of that Bandini Mountain of bullshit to play a roleplaying game.

1: Not all that may now. Previously... maybee. But even now RPGs with widget toys are still rare. Sure you might get an attendant minis line. But even that is rare.

2: As of last check FFG doesn't do collectible card games. They make "Living Card Games" which is just a fancy way of saying "Core game with small cheap expansions that come out regularly and quickly." This to the point that they UN-CCGed Netrunner when they bout it up and turned it into a standalone game all in one box. (Think they did some LCG expansions?) I don't think they've put out an actual collectible since 2000? If ever?

3: Here too theres been a drift to less overwrought RPG books. Though there is still the mad drive some have to try and hardback everything. Even Hasbro hasn't gone too overboard so far. They experimented with their Lego knock-offs for D&D and barely note that the minis wargame they have WizKids doing is usefull for minis for 5e D&D.

Quote from: Omega;9519101: Not all that may now. Previously... maybee. But even now RPGs with widget toys are still rare. Sure you might get an attendant minis line. But even that is rare.

2: As of last check FFG doesn't do collectible card games. They make "Living Card Games" which is just a fancy way of saying "Core game with small cheap expansions that come out regularly and quickly." This to the point that they UN-CCGed Netrunner when they bout it up and turned it into a standalone game all in one box. (Think they did some LCG expansions?) I don't think they've put out an actual collectible since 2000? If ever?

3: Here too theres been a drift to less overwrought RPG books. Though there is still the mad drive some have to try and hardback everything. Even Hasbro hasn't gone too overboard so far. They experimented with their Lego knock-offs for D&D and barely note that the minis wargame they have WizKids doing is usefull for minis for 5e D&D.

What!?  Someone ranting on the internet doesn't know what they're talking about?  I'm shocked!  Shocked I say!

Quote from: Omega;9519101: Not all that may now. Previously... maybee. But even now RPGs with widget toys are still rare.

Most of the biggest releases of the last five years or so came with widgets. They sold for stupid prices to even stupider gamers.

Quote from: Omega;9519102: As of last check FFG doesn't do collectible card games.

Christ on a bloody tree, Omega, when did you become so gawdamn thick? 'LIKE a collectible card game,' meaning sold in incomplete fucking chunks.

Quote from: Omega;9519103: Here too theres been a drift to less overwrought RPG books.

The fuck there is. FATE Core is a gawdamn brick - it's 'lite' only in comparison to the rules-bloated horrors that gamers of the Aughts and early Teens were raised on.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;951931What!?  Someone ranting on the internet doesn't know what they're talking about?  I'm shocked!  Shocked I say!

When did you decide emulating Sommerjon was a good idea?

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;951931What!?  Someone ranting on the internet doesn't know what they're talking about?  I'm shocked!  Shocked I say!

Dude, it's velma, he has to look up to low hanging fruit.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951939The fuck there is. FATE Core is a gawdamn brick - it's 'lite' only in comparison to the rules-bloated horrors that gamers of the Aughts and early Teens were raised on.

But you must remember that Fate Core is explicitly a Toolkit game. The core of the system is actually very slim, but the book presents you with all the options you'd need to make it as detailed as you like. Fate Accelerated clocks in at less than 48 pages (or so, don't have my copy to hand).

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951939Most of the biggest releases of the last five years or so came with widgets. They sold for stupid prices to even stupider gamers.

Any examples?

Quote from: Voros;952120Any examples?

Mutant Year Zero had custom dice, cards, maps, etc.  Granted, it was all -optional- stuff.  And that's the way most of these "big releases" have been.
Outside of Star Wars (already mentioned), there really isn't anything major or well selling.

"But that Monte Cook game!"

Without looking it up, what is it called?  If you don't know what it's name is, is it a "big release"?  Besides, it was specifically targeting the exclusive collector with its specific exclusive nature.  It is -destined- to be forgotten as anything else, and I say it's less a game than a weird marketing experiment.  (I also predict a non-exclusive release version at some point.  If the market looks like it'd give half-a-shit about it anyway.)

I mean, Vulmea's whole problem seems to be "RPG companies are making stuff I don't like, and people are buying it, so I don't like them either."  At this point it's like someone shit out in the woods, and a guy is running through the streets screaming about it; yes we know it's stinky and bad, but we just choose to ignore it since it's not hurting anything and will decay and be forgotten in short order anyway.

Quote from: san dee jota;952131I mean, Vulmea's whole problem seems to be "RPG companies are making stuff I don't like, and people are buying it, so I don't like them either."  At this point it's like someone shit out in the woods, and a guy is running through the streets screaming about it; yes we know it's stinky and bad, but we just choose to ignore it since it's not hurting anything and will decay and be forgotten in short order anyway.

That's sure what it seems like.

And, without looking it up, wasn't Cook's new shiny called "Numenara?"

Quote from: cranebump;952140And, without looking it up, wasn't Cook's new shiny called "Numenara?"

Nope.  This was kickstarted last year.  (and yes, I had to look it up)

Invisible Sun. Way too many bits and knobs to it.

While I agree that they can be overdone - I can see why some TTRPG creators wanted to get into having extra props.  And not just from a cynical - making more $ perspective.

I have played board games which weren't hard to get into, but when I took a step back I realized that there was a lot going on there.  It was clever use of the 'bits and knobs' which made the game far less complex than if it was just a book of instructions.

TTRPGs can normally do this somewhat with a well designed character sheet, but there are limits.  I know that when I played D&D 4e for a short time, I used index cards for all of the powers, tapping & flipping them MtG style - and it made gameplay go far more smoothly.  (I think they had official cards - but I was still in college at the time so I didn't want to burn the $ - and I didn't play 4e for long anyway.)

Perhaps that's the answer.  Have the fiddly bits be default for play - but make it possible to play without them and/or have them be relatively easy to make DIY versions.

I think we should also keep in mind that 4e basically dropped a tactical nuke on 3rd parties, who are just now regaining their footing. Of course, Paizo has gone their own way and isn't coming back, but Kobold Press, Sasquatch Game Studios, and Frog God Games have been putting out a lot of work. I can't vouch for all of its quality, but I think we're starting to see that first tier of third parties start to differentiate itself.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;952169Of course, Paizo has gone their own way and isn't coming back

And quite a few followed in Paizo's wake and are going to stay over in Pathfinder's neck of the woods.

Quote from: san dee jota;952131I mean, Vulmea's whole problem seems to be "RPG companies are making stuff I don't like, and people are buying it, so I don't like them either."

Says the jackhole who claims to hate 95% of the useless, derivative stuff out there (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?36278-Where-has-D-amp-D-gone/page14&p=951022#post951022).

For someone who agrees with my basic premise, you seem to be strangely interested in coming at me because . . . what, it's cool to disagree with the angry guy? A word of advice: I'm a fucking monkey throwing my shit - if you pick it up and throw it back, guess what that makes you? A fuckwit throwing the monkey's shit back in the cage.

For the slow-on-the-uptake, I'll reprise. The OP's argument is WhizBros should be publishing more crap like source books and supplements for 5e D&D because reasons. Gamers-as-consumers, in my experience, makes for a pool of witless, talentless gamers - alternately, they're already witless and talentless which is why they need someone else to do their imagining for them, but either way, the effect remains the same. Personally I would like to see more gamers put forth the effort to make their own content - creativity is a muscle that gets stronger the harder it's worked, and who doesn't want to play with ripped, rock-hard gamers . . . yeah, maybe not the best analogy, but you get the point.

Should no one ever buy modules or splats? Of course not, particularly given some of the really intriguing stuff that's available out there right now, but in my experience the best shit that's being published is coming from the DIY crew, not 'Big Gaming,' and the DIY releases tend to come it drips, not a firehose. They leave mental space for gamers to fill in the blanks of their own campaigns. They inspire, rather than replace, imagination and the creative impulse because they are limited in their reach.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177who doesn't want to play with ripped, rock-hard gamers . . . yeah, maybe not the best analogy, but you get the point.

Well, you do live in Long Beach. :D

Quote from: CRKrueger;952182Well, you do live in Long Beach. :D

So close to the ocean I can see Ripples (http://www.clubripples.com/).

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177For someone who agrees with my basic premise, you seem to be strangely interested in coming at me because . . . what, it's cool to disagree with the angry guy?

It's fun to go after the guy who won't shut the hell up.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177A word of advice: I'm a fucking monkey throwing my shit - if you pick it up and throw it back, guess what that makes you? A fuckwit throwing the monkey's shit back in the cage.

Honestly, that's the most intelligent thing you've said.  And since you admit you have -nothing- to contribute but shit... ignore.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177creativity is a muscle that gets stronger the harder it's worked,

And as far as being a referee, practice makes perfect.  I personally am tired of the notion that a referee has to be some brilliant savant.  My first ever D&D dungeon level was shit, but my friends put up with it.  After 44 years of practice, I'm pretty good at it.

Granted, this forum is mostly blessedly free of the "But being a GM is HARD!" shit, but damn, it's a pervasive attitude.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177Of course not, particularly given some of the really intriguing stuff that's available out there right now, but in my experience the best shit that's being published is coming from the DIY crew, not 'Big Gaming,' and the DIY releases tend to come it drips, not a firehose. They leave mental space for gamers to fill in the blanks of their own campaigns. They inspire, rather than replace, imagination and the creative impulse because they are limited in their reach.

I agree that there's no need for the firehose approach to supplements that we use to see and it encourages DMs to create their own stuff or homebrew from bits and pieces of the huge back catalogue increasingly available. I think releasing adventures at a slower pace encourages people to actually play them instead of just collect them.

Have you read or played CoS or Out of the Abyss? I think they're both great toolkits for constructing adventures. We played CoS to completion but I've just been using bits and pieces of OotA. They're easily as good if not better than what the OSR has produced so far I think. DCO, Yoon-Suin and Hydra Cooperative are my favourite OSR settigs and adventures presently although I need to pick up Red Tide too. Want to get a Yoon-Suin campaign going, with some Oriental Adventure classes.

Still not seeing many examples of excessive swag attached to RPGs. Most RPGs are still distributed via pdf and even D&D has moved towards non-mini play as the default. Invisible Sun is the one big exception but that is such an outlier it is like using Kingdom Death as representative of board games.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951939The fuck there is. FATE Core is a gawdamn brick - it's 'lite' only in comparison to the rules-bloated horrors that gamers of the Aughts and early Teens were raised on.

Im probably one of the few people who has never actually seen FATE. Whats the page count then?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952211Granted, this forum is mostly blessedly free of the "But being a GM is HARD!" shit, but damn, it's a pervasive attitude.

True. But for some its just not their thing. But the main point was that there are DMs who just are not the creative types and never will be. One of our local DMs struggles with this at every turn. Modules and setting books remove some of the burden. Or at least put some blinders on the horse as it were so they can flex a little but not get paniced.

BX D&D is still my go-to to hand to a new DM as it gives you a skeleton framework to build on and make your own and the module pack in is fairly open ended and is a continuation of the rules section too.

I do not like Mystarra at all as it hammers down everything. It feels stifling and crowded.

Quote from: Omega;952242True. But for some its just not their thing. But the main point was that there are DMs who just are not the creative types and never will be.

Or just time constraints.

I'm a big believer in GM prep.  I've played in several games where the GM claimed that they could GM on the fly... and they were all terrible.  Maybe others can do it well - but I've never seen it.

Adventures do 95% of the prep for you and are big time savers.

I use to improv DM as a teen. Not sure how good it actually was. The players seemed to enjoy it but they were probably just glad to be playing D&D. But it has made me comfortable when things go 'off book.'

The GM for the ICONS & Mutants and Masterminds Third Edition group I was in would spend several hours each and every week preparing, only for us to throw everything completely off the rails and forcing her to improv.  I suppose that may be why we haven't seen her since September...

I tend to fall somewhere in the middle, I like a solid frame to hang things from but where it goes from there depends heavily on the players.

Are railroading GMs forcing players through their "chose your own adventure" story plots just the norm these days?

Because for me, being a GM means pretty much all improv, all the time.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;952261Are railroading GMs forcing players through their "chose your own adventure" story plots just the norm these days?

Because for me, being a GM means pretty much all improv, all the time.

I think that's what you get when the only inspiration their getting is scripted adventures. I was the same when I started but as I had more varied inspiration (settings) to choose from I got more inspired.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;952261Are railroading GMs forcing players through their "chose your own adventure" story plots just the norm these days?

Because for me, being a GM means pretty much all improv, all the time.

Prepping =/= railroading.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;952265Prepping =/= railroading.

Clarification:

Prepping for what the PCs will do in their adventures = railroading
Prepping the world for the PCs to interact with =/= railroading

A compromise that's worked wonders for me is ending each session with a round table discussion on what the party plans to do next. Once they all agree on their next destination or course of action, I make some basic prep for that.

I still improvise a hell of a lot (easy to do with my GM binder full of random tables), but detailing the world based on where the players choose to go has so far made everyone happy.

Edit: I also love my Paizo plot twist and chase cards. Not old school in any way but they're fucking fun to use for everyone at my table. Fuck the haters.

Quote from: Madprofessor;952266Clarification:

Prepping for what the PCs will do in their adventures = railroading
Prepping the world for the PCs to interact with =/= railroading

That's way too vague.

For example, let's say the PC's are traveling down a road.  And down that road are a couple of Inns and a bandit toll.  And because your players (which I may be making a massive assumption here that they're your friends, but bear with) Have been stopping at each spot to have a tipple and a fight,   And so you make out several NPC's who are there to get beaten senseless.  And lo and behold at all three establishments that's what they do!  These events were effectively preplanned, but the Players did them anyway, thinking they started it (This happened in a game I ran, one of the players was playing a Viking type who thought the best way to know a place was to lay out the establishment's patrons), so is that a Railroad?

How about the Bandit Toll across the road, in which the players CAN decide to get involved, finding out that this was an out of work merc army looking to feed themselves.  So you detail out the Captain, a couple of Lieutenants and make up the soldiers and goons.  Then on a whim you decide to stat out the camp and the various members there.  And lo and behold, just as you predicted the Players get involved!  Railroad?

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;952265Prepping =/= railroading.

granted, but thats not what I'm reading, based on the above posts

Quote from: Necrozius;952270A compromise that's worked wonders for me is ending each session with a round table discussion on what the party plans to do next.

+1 to this.

Besides - as long as it was a decent hook and fit the characters - how often do people totally ignore hooks?  They might not come at them how you expect - but it's rare in my experience for them to ignore one.

Quote from: Necrozius;952270A compromise that's worked wonders for me is ending each session with a round table discussion on what the party plans to do next. Once they all agree on their next destination or course of action, I make some basic prep for that.

I do the same, but even my basic prep has become less and less because my current players really, really, really hardly ever do what they say they're going to to from one week to the next. I finally just stopped prepping anything, and now just follow the course. The problem with this is that one of the players has a PC (we'll call me 'A') dead set on what they should do, two PCs (B&C) not really caring what they do (so they follow PC A), and the final PC/player (D) evidently getting fed up with PC A (while at the same time going along with it, as if he has to). All this, despite me basing everything on, "What do you do?" and reacting to it.

This came to a head last session, when player D got pissy about having to go along with player/PC A. I finally just flat out asked, "What the fuck is it you want to do? Because you can DO it, if you just say so. NO ONE IS STOPPING YOU. So, next time, just do what you think is right. I can follow anything you bring up."

I guess he didn't realize this, but, honestly, the campaign course has been set by them all along, with one exception where I manhandled them into exploring a tower that I just wanted to use because I had put so damned much time in prepping it, because they had TOLD ME THEY WERE GOING TO INVESTIGATE IT THE NEXT SESSION!:-/

That more or less convinced me not to get too hung up on detail. I have the big picture, and I can whip up adversaries on the fly. That, evidently, is all we need for this campaign.  I do know THIS, though--all those ignored hooks are gathering steam, and some of the stuff they ignored is going to create some deadly shit in short order. I'm following Dungeon World's "Front" concept, which is nothing more than advancing agendas based on whether they are dealt with or not. They're focusing on a really big threat right now, but a couple of the smaller ones are going to make things pretty crazy in base town.

Quote from: san dee jota;952144Nope.  This was kickstarted last year.  (and yes, I had to look it up)

Well, then I am so at a loss. Headed to the search engine...

Was it "The Strange?"

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177For someone who agrees with my basic premise, you seem to be strangely interested in coming at me because . . . what, it's cool to disagree with the angry guy? A word of advice: I'm a fucking monkey throwing my shit - if you pick it up and throw it back, guess what that makes you? A fuckwit throwing the monkey's shit back in the cage.

I wish more people listened to that advice. And not only in games, either:D!

(I also agree with your "creativity" comment, but it's not nearly as entertaining, or with such far-reaching applications:)).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952211And as far as being a referee, practice makes perfect.  I personally am tired of the notion that a referee has to be some brilliant savant.  My first ever D&D dungeon level was shit, but my friends put up with it.  After 44 years of practice, I'm pretty good at it.

Granted, this forum is mostly blessedly free of the "But being a GM is HARD!" shit, but damn, it's a pervasive attitude.

Tell me about it...

Quote from: Tristram Evans;952261Are railroading GMs forcing players through their "chose your own adventure" story plots just the norm these days?

Because for me, being a GM means pretty much all improv, all the time.

Come on, man, you know the answer varies from group to group, right? Right?
(I've found that the system you want to run to be a good predictor of that attitude, but that's neither here nor now, and it's purely anecdotal anyway. Let's just say Paizo-trained GMs are among the worst offenders, and leave it at that).

Quote from: Madprofessor;952266Clarification:

Prepping for what the PCs will do in their adventures = railroading
Prepping the world for the PCs to interact with =/= railroading

Yes, of course.

Quote from: cranebump;952277I do the same, but even my basic prep has become less and less because my current players really, really, really hardly ever do what they say they're going to to from one week to the next. I finally just stopped prepping anything, and now just follow the course. The problem with this is that one of the players has a PC (we'll call me 'A') dead set on what they should do, two PCs (B&C) not really caring what they do (so they follow PC A), and the final PC/player (D) evidently getting fed up with PC A (while at the same time going along with it, as if he has to). All this, despite me basing everything on, "What do you do?" and reacting to it.

This came to a head last session, when player D got pissy about having to go along with player/PC A. I finally just flat out asked, "What the fuck is it you want to do? Because you can DO it, if you just say so. NO ONE IS STOPPING YOU. So, next time, just do what you think is right. I can follow anything you bring up."

I guess he didn't realize this, but, honestly, the campaign course has been set by them all along, with one exception where I manhandled them into exploring a tower that I just wanted to use because I had put so damned much time in prepping it, because they had TOLD ME THEY WERE GOING TO INVESTIGATE IT THE NEXT SESSION!:-/

That more or less convinced me not to get too hung up on detail. I have the big picture, and I can whip up adversaries on the fly. That, evidently, is all we need for this campaign.  I do know THIS, though--all those ignored hooks are gathering steam, and some of the stuff they ignored is going to create some deadly shit in short order. I'm following Dungeon World's "Front" concept, which is nothing more than advancing agendas based on whether they are dealt with or not. They're focusing on a really big threat right now, but a couple of the smaller ones are going to make things pretty crazy in base town.

And that's also how you run a game with no need to prepare anything except the word.
Yet when I say that running a PbtA game is a good training exercise for new GMs wanting to run traditional games, for some reason, nobody believes me. Curious, that;)!

Quote from: AsenRG;952284And that's also how you run a game with no need to prepare anything except the word. Yet when I say that running a PbtA game is a good training exercise for new GMs wanting to run traditional games, for some reason, nobody believes me. Curious, that;)!

I have to agree with you. Interestingly, we're about to switch systems to something more traditional (where I can roll some dice for the first time in a year).:-) I'll be keeping the DW conceits while running a B/X/Microlite hack. Of course, I say that while actually wanting to run Allied Heroquest stuff, with my own creations (which I will affectionately call "Button Quest," since, having sold off my old HQ stuff long ago, those pesky greenskins, undead and etc. would all be replaced by buttons (I DID DL, print out and prep all the game's cards) Buttons away, sez Morcar/Zargon! :-)

Quote from: AsenRG;952284Come on, man, you know the answer varies from group to group, right? Right?

I just know from growing up, "railroading" was generally considered a derogatory term for the worst sort of GMs, slightly below even the Monty Hauls. And I never understood it as a playstyle, honestly, because it seems to directly conflict with what makes RPGs unique as games: the ability to do anything and be anyone, and the freedom to make choices for characters that isn't offered by gamebooks or videogames. Now I'm not going to decry "badwrongfun" or pull a Vulmea-in-monkey-mode, but it seems like the capacity of a GM to improv really defines their suitability to that role.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;952299I just know from growing up, "railroading" was generally considered a derogatory term for the worst sort of GMs, slightly below even the Monty Hauls. And I never understood it as a playstyle, honestly, because it seems to directly conflict with what makes RPGs unique as games: the ability to do anything and be anyone, and the freedom to make choices for characters that isn't offered by gamebooks or videogames. Now I'm not going to decry "badwrongfun" or pull a Vulmea-in-monkey-mode . . .

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/7b/5a/cc/7b5acc20a8f6b850e88dd1da19c0618b.gif)

Quote from: Tristram Evans;952299. . . but it seems like the capacity of a GM to improv really defines their suitability to that role. (emphasis added - BV)

Quoted because fuck yeah.

Quote from: cranebump;952278Well, then I am so at a loss. Headed to the search engine...

Was it "The Strange?"

Thought we established it was the super expensive Invisible Sun. The Strange and Numenera have been out for a while and are just hardcovers.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;952261Are railroading GMs forcing players through their "chose your own adventure" story plots just the norm these days?

Because for me, being a GM means pretty much all improv, all the time.

Off topic... But from what I've seen... No. Nor have they ever been prevalent. Just ever present.

Id lay a guess that most are fairly good at it that do and more importantly have players that like that style. But its the bad ones that stand out, Just like theres bad improv DMs.

As noted in an older thread here. There are players and player groups that despise improve style DMing even. They pretty much demand the DM railroad them. And that too has been around probably since right after the start.

I prep regardless because I don't trust my subconscious.

Sure I can improv. In fact, given the nigh infinite range of choice & coherent(-ish) consequences that may follow in Imagination Land, it's almost impossible not to be able to in some capacity. But if left to my own repeated GM-choice of "coherent(-ish) consequences" I don't trust myself to stay truly neutral, or not fall into predictable patterns.

So prepping content and running random content generators to color encounters are essential to me. Granted my dice are also cursed to make me sweat out every randomized content, taxing my improv further. But that strain is part of the challenge as a GM trying to stay lively yet impartial, and I may add part of the fun.

Improvisation and the ability of all participants to spontaneously create game content that is shared in the minds of everyone involved is the whole purpose of the tabletop rpg medium. Computer games do a much better job of presenting pre-scripted storylines to be followed & consumed. The graphics and cool visual effects just blow away even the most overproduced print product in sheer production value.

Outside of OSR publishers, the industry seems to have forgotten this primary purpose of the medium. When it comes to the meaning of "module" as it applies to adventure modules most mainstream publishers simply don't get it. I got a false sense of hope when the 5E starter set was released. There was an adventure included that featured an area map, and several areas of interest ready for exploration. I remember thinking as I flipped through it that perhaps hell HAD frozen over and WOTC finally remembered how to produce an actual module.

Sadly, the starter set would be the last proper adventure module WOTC would release for 5E. At least thus far.

I have never understood the desire to simply consume, rather than create, in a hobby that features creativity as its largest advantage over other entertainment mediums.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;951841FFG broke my heart with X-wing.  The basic game is quick, playable, and fun, and the admittedly expensive components were well engineered to make it easy to play; it reminds me of many aircraft minis games circa mid 1970s but the components drastically streamlined the record keeping.

Then they shitted it up with all the bullshit cards to modify the craft, and the game no longer became about tactics, it became about deck building on your TIE fighter.

Seconded, except my experience was with the Star Trek equivalent. Great foundation: turning radiuses, power management, cool minis. Then, suddenly, it became "which version of misc. Romulan pilot are you using", and this may as well have been a card game. In fact, removing the minis entirely and making the ships cards you move around would have probably worked better.

Good thing is, there's a reasonable game at the core, so if you ditch the cards and make a reasonable point buy system you can get back to having fun with these minis again.

Quote from: Voros;952329Thought we established it was the super expensive Invisible Sun. The Strange and Numenera have been out for a while and are just hardcovers.

I never saw the answer. That said, I have definitely not heard of IS.

Quote from: cranebump;952286I'll be keeping the DW conceits while running a B/X/Microlite hack.

A hack you did or one of the many M20 hacks available?

Quote from: cranebump;952408I never saw the answer. That said, I have definitely not heard of IS.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/invisible-sun

Defeats even my curiosity and the nuts price to have everything :eek:

I looked at the IS KS and said You've got to be kidding me. Then I backed the Kult KS instead.

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;952405In fact, removing the minis entirely and making the ships cards you move around would have probably worked better.

So basically Squad Leader in space?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;952404I have never understood the desire to simply consume, rather than create, in a hobby that features creativity as its largest advantage over other entertainment mediums.

Or to follow 'plot-lines.' Or to set up 'scenes.' Or to provide 'script-immunity.'

What makes roleplaying games great, in my experience, is all the many ways they aren't books, movies, televisions shows, plays, et al.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;952410A hack you did or one of the many M20 hacks available?

My own (I wrote one of the many Hacks in the big book [Omerian Tales]).

I call it an M20 Hack, but it's basically a hodgepodge of assorted shit I like from various games, specifically:

*4 base stats (Strength, Dex, Mind and Presence).

*Modern Mods (12=+1, 14=+2 and so on)

*Prime stat increase +1 every even level (increase a non-prme by +1 at odd levels)

*Stat 'Rating'=Mod+Lvl Bonus+Prime Bonus (see below).

*Prime Bonus=flat +2 to that stat's rating.

*Attack rolls=Use associated ratings (STR=all melee and thrown); DEX=bows and some small weapons; MIND=GUNS! (yes, there are guns). Damage Mod=Rating/2, round up.

*Race/Class, with the big four races, plus gnomes. Classes=no clerics. If you want to be "clericy," you play a Spellsword and flavor your spell choices.

*Cap at level 10 (currently--might go with 14 as homage to LL, etc.)

*Level Bonus (+1, increase by +1 every odd level)

*Skill pools, by Stat base (flat +2 on a skill, start with 3-4, get a new one every odd level)

*HP's based on Strength score ([Stat/2]*Lvl).

*Saves based on Stat scores (Bonus=Stat/2+LvlBonus+Prime Bonus). Save target is always a 20.

*Maneuver System very much like Fantasy Age (gain and use Maneuver Points on rolls totaling 20 or more). Fighters get +1 MP's when they generate. Spellcasters get +1 when they get Spell maneuvers. Humans get a flat +1 to all MP totals (their main bonus over the other races).

*Dungeon World style encumbrance, to include a modified version of how DW tracks ammo and "adventuring gear." Going over Encumbrance penalizes AC and MV.

*5E hit dice style healing, with a bonus to the roll equal to your Endurance skill rating. Healer's Bags allow re-rolls of 1's on Hit Dice rolls. HD return at 1 per day (currently...might change this).

*Group INISH roll, with some bonuses for groups who have Leadership/Tactics skills represented.

*Heavy gear drops you in your group's INISH order (i.e., if I wear plate, I can go no better than 3rd during my team's INISH).

*Spells: adapted version of Fantasy Age spells, with 3 ranks per spell, with adaptation of Savage World "trappings" called styles. Casters determine their "styles" (i.e., fire, air, force, spirits, etc.). Mastery of additional styles means you can use the same spell, say a Bolt, but, in one instance, cast it as a "Thunderbolt," if you had the force style or an "Ice Bolt," if you had the "cold" style.

*I'm using B/X monsters, though I'm actually modifying those, too, bit by bit, by bringing their saves into line with the "Target 20" save, and granting some of them their own Manuevers. A Dragon's Breath weapon is actually a maneuver, but, as stronger dragon's will generally breach the 20 threshold quite a bit, they'll be able to use their BW more than weaker ones. I've been bouncing back and forth between the Microlite-81 monster list and 5E monsters to create these. So far, I've gotten from Aaracockra to Elemental, Air.

The only thing semi-sorta close to original is how languages are obtained. You spend points equal to MIND score to purchase languages beyond those you know thanks to Race or Class. So, if I had a 12 Intelligence, I could get Sylvan for 7 points and Trail Runes for 5, spending all my points. Some races/classes have discounts on language purchase. Linguistics skill lowers cost, plus helps obtain new languages more easily later on.

So, not much of an M20 Hack is it? :-) It's basically a homebrew, but nothing I can consider really homemade. I borrowed all the good ideas. I've run a few scenarios involving single character combat at different levels versus various threats. When the current DW campaign capstones, my poor home group will have the ignominious pleasure of playtesting this thing. The good news is, if it's just shitty, I'll drag out Microlite Purest Essence (or Allied Heroquest, because I've been wanting to scratch the nostalgia itch).

I like to purchase/download one or two adventures of each RPG I own, just to get a better feel for the system and to see the publisher's vision of an adventure for their system and/or setting.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;952404I have never understood the desire to simply consume, rather than create, in a hobby that features creativity as its largest advantage over other entertainment mediums.

I started playing in a Pathfinder group because I needed contact with other people.

The Pathfinder "adventure paths" are... horrible.  I mean, actively dull, boring, and predictable.  Crom.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952439I started playing in a Pathfinder group because I needed contact with other people.

The Pathfinder "adventure paths" are... horrible.  I mean, actively dull, boring, and predictable.  Crom.

They make better reading material than adventures, I mined the first few and based a campaign idea on the Kingmaker one but I don't think I'd run one as is. I have the same problem with WotC's adventures it's all very, very scripted.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952424Or to follow 'plot-lines.' Or to set up 'scenes.' Or to provide 'script-immunity.'

What makes roleplaying games great, in my experience, is all the many ways they aren't books, movies, televisions shows, plays, et al.

You are preaching to the choir on this site:).
You might be out of luck with people that like Adventure Paths and are proud of having played them all;).

Quote from: DavetheLost;952417I looked at the IS KS and said You've got to be kidding me. Then I backed the Kult KS instead.

I hadn't even seen it, since I didn't really like Numenera, but when I saw the price, my reaction was the same.
Alas, it seems many people didn't get it as a joke.

Quote from: cranebump;952428My own (I wrote one of the many Hacks in the big book [Omerian Tales]).

I call it an M20 Hack, but it's basically a hodgepodge of assorted shit I like from various games, specifically:

*4 base stats (Strength, Dex, Mind and Presence).

*Modern Mods (12=+1, 14=+2 and so on)

*Prime stat increase +1 every even level (increase a non-prme by +1 at odd levels)

*Stat 'Rating'=Mod+Lvl Bonus+Prime Bonus (see below).

*Prime Bonus=flat +2 to that stat's rating.

*Attack rolls=Use associated ratings (STR=all melee and thrown); DEX=bows and some small weapons; MIND=GUNS! (yes, there are guns). Damage Mod=Rating/2, round up.

*Race/Class, with the big four races, plus gnomes. Classes=no clerics. If you want to be "clericy," you play a Spellsword and flavor your spell choices.

*Cap at level 10 (currently--might go with 14 as homage to LL, etc.)

*Level Bonus (+1, increase by +1 every odd level)

*Skill pools, by Stat base (flat +2 on a skill, start with 3-4, get a new one every odd level)

*HP's based on Strength score ([Stat/2]*Lvl).

*Saves based on Stat scores (Bonus=Stat/2+LvlBonus+Prime Bonus). Save target is always a 20.

*Maneuver System very much like Fantasy Age (gain and use Maneuver Points on rolls totaling 20 or more). Fighters get +1 MP's when they generate. Spellcasters get +1 when they get Spell maneuvers. Humans get a flat +1 to all MP totals (their main bonus over the other races).

*Dungeon World style encumbrance, to include a modified version of how DW tracks ammo and "adventuring gear." Going over Encumbrance penalizes AC and MV.

*5E hit dice style healing, with a bonus to the roll equal to your Endurance skill rating. Healer's Bags allow re-rolls of 1's on Hit Dice rolls. HD return at 1 per day (currently...might change this).

*Group INISH roll, with some bonuses for groups who have Leadership/Tactics skills represented.

*Heavy gear drops you in your group's INISH order (i.e., if I wear plate, I can go no better than 3rd during my team's INISH).

*Spells: adapted version of Fantasy Age spells, with 3 ranks per spell, with adaptation of Savage World "trappings" called styles. Casters determine their "styles" (i.e., fire, air, force, spirits, etc.). Mastery of additional styles means you can use the same spell, say a Bolt, but, in one instance, cast it as a "Thunderbolt," if you had the force style or an "Ice Bolt," if you had the "cold" style.

*I'm using B/X monsters, though I'm actually modifying those, too, bit by bit, by bringing their saves into line with the "Target 20" save, and granting some of them their own Manuevers. A Dragon's Breath weapon is actually a maneuver, but, as stronger dragon's will generally breach the 20 threshold quite a bit, they'll be able to use their BW more than weaker ones. I've been bouncing back and forth between the Microlite-81 monster list and 5E monsters to create these. So far, I've gotten from Aaracockra to Elemental, Air.

The only thing semi-sorta close to original is how languages are obtained. You spend points equal to MIND score to purchase languages beyond those you know thanks to Race or Class. So, if I had a 12 Intelligence, I could get Sylvan for 7 points and Trail Runes for 5, spending all my points. Some races/classes have discounts on language purchase. Linguistics skill lowers cost, plus helps obtain new languages more easily later on.

So, not much of an M20 Hack is it? :-) It's basically a homebrew, but nothing I can consider really homemade. I borrowed all the good ideas. I've run a few scenarios involving single character combat at different levels versus various threats. When the current DW campaign capstones, my poor home group will have the ignominious pleasure of playtesting this thing. The good news is, if it's just shitty, I'll drag out Microlite Purest Essence (or Allied Heroquest, because I've been wanting to scratch the nostalgia itch).

Sounds good to me. Though with that list, I was expecting Laughs At and Fears bonuses, too:D!

Quote from: AsenRG;952460Sounds good to me. Though with that list, I was expecting Laughs At and Fears bonuses, too:D!

Oh, don't tempt me...:-)

Quote from: cranebump;952463Oh, don't tempt me...:-)

You know you want to do it...;)

Quote from: Exploderwizard;952404Improvisation and the ability of all participants to spontaneously create game content that is shared in the minds of everyone involved is the whole purpose of the tabletop rpg medium. Computer games do a much better job of presenting pre-scripted storylines to be followed & consumed. The graphics and cool visual effects just blow away even the most overproduced print product in sheer production value.

Part of the problem is lots of players now first encounter the term "RPG" in a video game. I know that was the case for me. The first campaign I ever ran was 4e, and I ran it like it was a tabletop Final Fantasy game (which is pretty much exactly how 4e presented itself). We all had fun, but I didn't really start to understand how a table top game could be different from a pen & paper version of Dragon Age until I picked up the AD&D 2e books on a lark a few years ago. As I read them, I realized much of what they described fit nowhere in the video game-based framework I imagined an RPG was. What does it mean for a monster to have 10% chance of eggs in its lair? "Number appearing?" The Fighter gets a keep and an army? How does that fit into my story?

I've since read a lot of OSR material and radically altered how I run and play D&D. The 5e books are a big step in the right direction in terms of not presenting D&D as a pen-and-paper video game, but there are a few things they lack, like random encounter tables.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952439I started playing in a Pathfinder group because I needed contact with other people.

No gaming > Bad gaming.

And I thought you were the originator of that phrase!

Quote from: Tristram Evans;952261Are railroading GMs forcing players through their "chose your own adventure" story plots just the norm these days?

100% of the Living Campaigns - all the 5e and Pathfinder "official" campaign stuff in the FLGS.

Home games? Who knows? GMs who run adventures are a mixed bunch. Some expand beyond the product, others do not.

Quote from: Madprofessor;952266Clarification:

Prepping for what the PCs will do in their adventures = railroading
Prepping the world for the PCs to interact with =/= railroading

I am good with this definition.

Quote from: Necrozius;952270A compromise that's worked wonders for me is ending each session with a round table discussion on what the party plans to do next.

What a weirdo!! You talk to your players??? :)

Quote from: Celestial;952438I like to purchase/download one or two adventures of each RPG I own, just to get a better feel for the system and to see the publisher's vision of an adventure for their system and/or setting.

WOTC doesnt have a vision. At times they barely seem to know the system they themselves designed.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952439I started playing in a Pathfinder group because I needed contact with other people.

The Pathfinder "adventure paths" are... horrible.  I mean, actively dull, boring, and predictable.  Crom.

Apparently theres one or two really good ones. That DM I mentioned before who cant improv as a DM well likes them. To me they felt... ok. Id have to really read through one to get a better impression. But Im not fond of 3e at all.

Quote from: HorusArisen;952452They make better reading material than adventures, I mined the first few and based a campaign idea on the Kingmaker one but I don't think I'd run one as is. I have the same problem with WotC's adventures it's all very, very scripted.

So far I am more or less liking the 5e modules. They are a bit linear. But also give a fair amount of freedom on how to approach the problems. Theres usually some "world in motion" stuff going on at some point and the DM needs to remember that some of that wont happen if the PCs do things sufficiently differently. Or sometimes even a little differently.

Quote from: Omega;952526Apparently theres one or two really good ones. That DM I mentioned before who cant improv as a DM well likes them. To me they felt... ok. Id have to really read through one to get a better impression. But Im not fond of 3e at all.

My current Paizo AP campaign mashes up two of them - Rise of the Runelords (first & best) and Shattered Star. This forces me not to think in linear terms of Book 1-2-3-4-5-6 and treat the material as a resource not a script. I add in my own material, add in modules, and leave out stuff too.

Quote from: Omega;952530So far I am more or less liking the 5e modules. They are a bit linear. But also give a fair amount of freedom on how to approach the problems. Theres usually some "world in motion" stuff going on at some point and the DM needs to remember that some of that wont happen if the PCs do things sufficiently differently. Or sometimes even a little differently.

We've only played Tyranny of Dragons and whilst the DM is decent the adventure is pretty much tripe. If I'd try ro run it I'd have spent longer rewriting it than gaming.

Do they stop throwing as much of the monster manual in as they can in the other ones?

Quote from: S'mon;952536My current Paizo AP campaign mashes up two of them - Rise of the Runelords (first & best) and Shattered Star. This forces me not to think in linear terms of Book 1-2-3-4-5-6 and treat the material as a resource not a script. I add in my own material, add in modules, and leave out stuff too.

Rise of the Runelords and Kingmaker were the two I liked best. I liked a lot of the ideas from the paths but like you I mostly mined them. I tend to find it handy to have some prebuilt NPC's and location maps. And in fairness some of the modules are good evening fillers for a longer campaign.

*wouldn't mind seeing Golarion as a 5e settingi

I agree that the 5E modules are a little linear, but that's key to Adventure League play since you theoretically can go to any store with your character and just jump into a game there. If the modules were too wide-open then players would be at a totally different place when going from store to store. Having said that, I'm not sure how often folks store-hop and the AL also has a whole slew of one-shot adventures which get run in the store most weeks.

I've played parts of most of the new hardbacks and all have some good and bad points. The Tyrrany of Dragons sequence ("Hoard of the Dragon Queen" and "Tiamant" books) were pretty well done. Ravenloft was well done if you like that sort of thing; some of my players love it but others hate the darkness of the setting. We're playing in the Storm Giant one now.

The Goodman Games product line "Fifth Edition Adventures" is good if you like one-shots, but they aren't AL official so you can't use those characters in official games later. :-(

Quote from: finarvyn;952570I agree that the 5E modules are a little linear, but that's key to Adventure League play since you theoretically can go to any store with your character and just jump into a game there. If the modules were too wide-open then players would be at a totally different place when going from store to store. Having said that, I'm not sure how often folks store-hop and the AL also has a whole slew of one-shot adventures which get run in the store most weeks.

I've played parts of most of the new hardbacks and all have some good and bad points. The Tyrrany of Dragons sequence ("Hoard of the Dragon Queen" and "Tiamant" books) were pretty well done. Ravenloft was well done if you like that sort of thing; some of my players love it but others hate the darkness of the setting. We're playing in the Storm Giant one now.

The Goodman Games product line "Fifth Edition Adventures" is good if you like one-shots, but they aren't AL official so you can't use those characters in official games later. :-(

I've no interest in the adventure league, one of our group is talking up Princes of the Apocalypse but if the linearity is a standard of these adventures I may need to have a word with him.

Quote from: HorusArisen;952568We've only played Tyranny of Dragons and whilst the DM is decent the adventure is pretty much tripe. If I'd try ro run it I'd have spent longer rewriting it than gaming.

Do they stop throwing as much of the monster manual in as they can in the other ones?

1: Ive run or played through Tyranny three times now and each ones gone differently in some way. I think on its own its an interesting module despite the typos. But I think some of the DM advice is not that great or could have been better thought out. A few too many forced set pieces for my liking. Some I tossed out without any loss to the adventure and others I just let the players lay to ruin.

2: I dont think Tyranny was too bad. Some of the monsters fit. Others were kinda... there... yeah. The rest from what little I've seen were much the same. Im prepping to run Out of the Abyss later at a players request so reading through slowly. "Alice in wonderland!" yeah riiiight.

Tyranny is a pretty good product considering they were basically rebooting the game after years in the wilderness, and kobold press wasn't even working with finalized rules. The quality of the adventures has improved fairly steadily since then, although of course the format of a 15 -level campaign is inherently constraining.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952211And as far as being a referee, practice makes perfect.  I personally am tired of the notion that a referee has to be some brilliant savant.  My first ever D&D dungeon level was shit, but my friends put up with it.  After 44 years of practice, I'm pretty good at it.

Granted, this forum is mostly blessedly free of the "But being a GM is HARD!" shit, but damn, it's a pervasive attitude.

You're only pretty good at something after 44 years, yet you say it isn't hard to do? Well then, bless your heart.

Quote from: Madprofessor;952266Clarification:

Prepping for what the PCs will do in their adventures = railroading
Prepping the world for the PCs to interact with =/= railroading

Who determines which is the world versus what the players will do?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;952272That's way too vague.

For example, let's say the PC's are traveling down a road.  And down that road are a couple of Inns and a bandit toll.  And because your players (which I may be making a massive assumption here that they're your friends, but bear with) Have been stopping at each spot to have a tipple and a fight,   And so you make out several NPC's who are there to get beaten senseless.  And lo and behold at all three establishments that's what they do!  These events were effectively preplanned, but the Players did them anyway, thinking they started it (This happened in a game I ran, one of the players was playing a Viking type who thought the best way to know a place was to lay out the establishment's patrons), so is that a Railroad?

How about the Bandit Toll across the road, in which the players CAN decide to get involved, finding out that this was an out of work merc army looking to feed themselves.  So you detail out the Captain, a couple of Lieutenants and make up the soldiers and goons.  Then on a whim you decide to stat out the camp and the various members there.  And lo and behold, just as you predicted the Players get involved!  Railroad?

You shouldn't bring stuff up like this.  You'll make their head hurt.

Quote from: HorusArisen;952572I've no interest in the adventure league, one of our group is talking up Princes of the Apocalypse but if the linearity is a standard of these adventures I may need to have a word with him.

I can tell you that Into The Abyss has a section that's almost literally infinitely reusable, it's Chapter 2 or is it 3?  Where there's nothing but a series of small tables to determine where you are in the Underdark.  It also gives three encounters, but are unnecessary.  There's JUST enough there for the DM to expand or not on.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;952646I can tell you that Into The Abyss has a section that's almost literally infinitely reusable, it's Chapter 2 or is it 3?  Where there's nothing but a series of small tables to determine where you are in the Underdark.  It also gives three encounters, but are unnecessary.  There's JUST enough there for the DM to expand or not on.

After this thread I've decided to focus my game running energy and money on two other games but I'll mention this to the lads, I'm sure it'll be something they'll find handy and one was on about running the abyss game after mine.

Quote from: HorusArisen;952649After this thread I've decided to focus my game running energy and money on two other games but I'll mention this to the lads, I'm sure it'll be something they'll find handy and one was on about running the abyss game after mine.

Most of the adventures have some reusability, which is very important to me.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;952775Most of the adventures have some reusability, which is very important to me.

One of my favorite features of the early, 'classic' Traveller adventures is that each includes some thing - a starship, a base, a planet - which can be re-used, recycled, re-purposed, becoming part of the campaign.

I feel like I should step in and argue heatedly with someone, but I'm not sure who. It's the eternal dilemma of the crotchety old bastard - so many people to disagree with, so little time! :p

On the one hand, pure sandbox play gives me hives. As a player, I don't want to be told that I can do whatever I want, because I don't want to do anything. Doing something when you don't have to is strange and unnatural. I want the GM to have the courtesy to give me something I'm forced to react to. And as a GM, I have to struggle to stay awake during sessions when the players just poke around and don't get much of anything accomplished. I do realise that players occasionally want a session like that, so I try to provide them in the interests of creating an enjoyable experience, but I keep having to struggle to not tell the players to wake me up when they want to do something that isn't completely irrelevant.

On the other hand, I have absolutely no use for modules. The key to have a meaningful progression of events without having it feel like a railroad is to make sure that the PCs have strong and compelling in-character motivations for going along with it. And you just can't do that with a scenario that's meant for a generic group of 4-6 characters of level 3-5.

QuoteOn the one hand, pure sandbox play gives me hives. As a player, I don't want to be told that I can do whatever I want, because I don't want to do anything. Doing something when you don't have to is strange and unnatural.

Suiting up, grabbing your weapons, and heading out to the unknown because you heard those bastards out there have treasure they're not sharing with you is one of the most primal motive forces of civilization.

That said, I do think that in a sandbox, it's necessary to give players a poke. Some people will show up at the table, immediately start asking around for rumors, and head off in search of adventure. Others will say, "Okay, now what?" and be confused if you don't at least tell them they overhear some fellows talking about a mysterious beast terrorizing a local shepherd.

Quote from: Baeraad;952798On the one hand, pure sandbox play gives me hives. As a player, I don't want to be told that I can do whatever I want, because I don't want to do anything. Doing something when you don't have to is strange and unnatural. I want the GM to have the courtesy to give me something I'm forced to react to. And as a GM, I have to struggle to stay awake during sessions when the players just poke around and don't get much of anything accomplished. I do realise that players occasionally want a session like that, so I try to provide them in the interests of creating an enjoyable experience, but I keep having to struggle to not tell the players to wake me up when they want to do something that isn't completely irrelevant.

Sounds like that's a case of too little structure instead of too much. I can see that. Can you give a hypothetical boundary? Say your being DMed, and example A is too little structure, but example B is enough (maybe even an example C that is too much)?

QuoteOn the other hand, I have absolutely no use for modules. The key to have a meaningful progression of events without having it feel like a railroad is to make sure that the PCs have strong and compelling in-character motivations for going along with it. And you just can't do that with a scenario that's meant for a generic group of 4-6 characters of level 3-5.

One thing that the OSR has produced for me is a number of modules which are basically dungeon maps, populated with monsters, and pre-rolled treasure or treasure tables. That I can use. I can build the story that gets the party there (or throw it down as the dungeon relevant to the situation). That saves me time and effort. If, in sandbox mode, the party has to rescue the baron's nephew from a cult that kidnapped and brainwashed by, I can throw down a generic 'ancient temple' dungeon, replace the orcs inside with 'cultists' (quite possibly still using the orc stats), and go. Other than that, modules are usually only good for mining for ideas.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952780One of my favorite features of the early, 'classic' Traveller adventures is that each includes some thing - a starship, a base, a planet - which can be re-used, recycled, re-purposed, becoming part of the campaign.

In fact The Kinunir (Adventure 1) uses the same maps of the Kinunir class ships for 3 or 4 different adventures.

That's always been one of my favourite things about the early D&D adventures. Just simple effective maps that you can purloin for use again and again .

Quote from: Baeraad;952798As a player, I don't want to be told that I can do whatever I want, because I don't want to do anything. Doing something when you don't have to is strange and unnatural. I want the GM to have the courtesy to give me something I'm forced to react to.

You suck as a roleplayer and cannot satisfy a man or woman in bed.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? You're really incapable of roleplaying a character with ambition? A character who's self-directed? You can't imagine living in the game-world?

Quote from: Tod13;952840In fact The Kinunir (Adventure 1) uses the same maps of the Kinunir class ships for 3 or 4 different adventures.

Which ones?

Quote from: Baeraad;952798On the one hand, pure sandbox play gives me hives. As a player, I don't want to be told that I can do whatever I want, because I don't want to do anything. Doing something when you don't have to is strange and unnatural. I want the GM to have the courtesy to give me something I'm forced to react to.

In stories that's called an inciting incident and I agree its probably even more important for a sandbox because 90% of every sandbox setting I've ever read are stable and static and just like thermodynamics, objects at rest tend to stay that way. Without some type of dynamic stress on the system there's no motivation for taking much of any action.

Now this inciting event doesn't need to be particularly elaborate. It can be as simple as a local lord hiring you to clear out a dangerous region so it can be settled (perhaps with the promise of being made vassal-lords of the new territory as well). There's also nothing wrong with picking something personal to the PC's either. If a PC's family was slain by orcs then dropping a clue that an orc tribe is active in the area and their leader bears the markings of the one the PC saw run his mother through as a child then you've got a wonderful inciting incident perfect to get at least that PC willing to head out into the sandbox to find the murderer of their family.

A good sandbox setting will have one or more such inciting incidents built into their setting (villains amassing armies, social pressures and unrest, ill omens, etc.) and, at least in my experience, that's the thing that most sets the good ones apart from the mediocre and bad.

Quote from: Chris24601;952857A good sandbox setting will have one or more such inciting incidents built into their setting (villains amassing armies, social pressures and unrest, ill omens, etc.) and, at least in my experience, that's the thing that most sets the good ones apart from the mediocre and bad.

Part of managing a sandbox campaign is setting a interesting Initial Context for the characters. Choice is meaningless if it is the equivalent of throwing darts at a dartboard in the dark.

The most effective way of doing is to talk with the players both individually and as a group and weave to together a Initial Context from their responses. Usually the response are pretty basic and gives you a lot of latitude.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952853You suck as a roleplayer and cannot satisfy a man or woman in bed.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? You're really incapable of roleplaying a character with ambition? A character who's self-directed? You can't imagine living in the game-world?

Being told to throw darts at a dartboard in the dark isn't appealing to a lot of people. Out of the dozens of gamers I know only a handful would plunge into a campaign with nothing but a blank map.

It prevalent enough that it no use bitching about it, it is what it is. Not a flaw but reflect how most people function. It not that they need their hands held, they just need something more than a brief description or a blank map in order to weigh their initial decisions.

Nor they need a novel either. My experience at MOST it will be a page of general stuff and a page of specifics for their character. Usually a paragraph for both is sufficient.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952211And as far as being a referee, practice makes perfect.  I personally am tired of the notion that a referee has to be some brilliant savant.  My first ever D&D dungeon level was shit, but my friends put up with it.  After 44 years of practice, I'm pretty good at it.

Granted, this forum is mostly blessedly free of the "But being a GM is HARD!" shit, but damn, it's a pervasive attitude.

I concur, I also believe that what can be done by a person can be a taught by a person. Doesn't change the need to practice but it doesn't help start that practice on a solid foundation.

Quote from: Omega;952526Apparently theres one or two really good ones. That DM I mentioned before who cant improv as a DM well likes them. To me they felt... ok. Id have to really read through one to get a better impression. But Im not fond of 3e at all.

Kingmaker (http://paizo.com/pathfinder/adventurePath/kingmaker)

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952780One of my favorite features of the early, 'classic' Traveller adventures is that each includes some thing - a starship, a base, a planet - which can be re-used, recycled, re-purposed, becoming part of the campaign.

Which is why I took the time to write a supplement fleshing out the locales of the adventures for the back half of Scourge of the Demon Wolf. If you need a small crossroad hamlet, a medievalish village, a wandering beggar clan, or a homestead of mages. Scourge has you covered even after you run the adventure.

Quote from: Baeraad;952798On the other hand, I have absolutely no use for modules. The key to have a meaningful progression of events without having it feel like a railroad is to make sure that the PCs have strong and compelling in-character motivations for going along with it. And you just can't do that with a scenario that's meant for a generic group of 4-6 characters of level 3-5.

Why is it an impossible task to take a scenario that's meant for a generic group of 4-6 characters of level 3-5 and then tailor it to make sure that the PCs have strong and compelling in-character motivations for going along with it?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952853You suck as a roleplayer and cannot satisfy a man or woman in bed.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? You're really incapable of roleplaying a character with ambition? A character who's self-directed? You can't imagine living in the game-world?

Yes it is for the vast majority of RPGers out there.
Then you get the delusional ones who actually think they are playing a unique character full of self-directed ambition, when in actuality all they are doing is playing by rote.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952854Which ones?

What Tod13 means is that Adventure 1: The Kinunir has four adventures (or "Situations") inside of it. (And I know you know this.)

From the table of contents:

QuoteSITUATIONS.
The Scrap Heap
The Hunting Expedition
The Gash
The Lost Ship

Each of these situations uses the map of the Kinunir.

Significantly, early Traveller Adventures and Double Adventures were "Situation" based with details to inform and inspire the Referee's responses to PC actions and choices, and less about providing a linear series of events.

Quote from: estar;952858Part of managing a sandbox campaign is setting a interesting Initial Context for the characters. Choice is meaningless if it is the equivalent of throwing darts at a dartboard in the dark.

The most effective way of doing is to talk with the players both individually and as a group and weave to together a Initial Context from their responses. Usually the response are pretty basic and gives you a lot of latitude.

I was going to say something similar... but you got there first.

I would add: Rumor Tables. They are awesome.

The problem with "Okay, you have your characters, what do you want to do?" approach (which many people try, often in Traveller for some reason) is that the Players have no context for making decisions or taking actions. They don't know really what they can pursue or how to pursue it.

As Ester says, sitting down and talking is really terrific on this front -- and probably should be done no matter what so everyone is on the same page in any game.

But Rumor Tables offer another way in, this time in the context of the fiction. The Referee creates a list of things he cares about sharing with the Players about his setting -- details to investigate, treasures to loot, factions at hand, in ways that offer the Players locations and NPCs and objects to pursue with their PCs. Then the Players choose which ones they want to go after. Thus, the Players are making choices and yet they aren't throwing darts in the dark.

Note: in my games they can completely blow off the Rumors as well. But at least they are there if they want them.

Quote from: Baeraad;952798On the one hand, pure sandbox play gives me hives. As a player, I don't want to be told that I can do whatever I want, because I don't want to do anything. Doing something when you don't have to is strange and unnatural. I want the GM to have the courtesy to give me something I'm forced to react to.

You just functionally described my current group of players.  When faced with a sandbox they just sit there unmoving. Prod them with in character adventure hooks and they might move slightly. Come right out and tell them "You are doing this" and they will go along, until they don't.

Engage with the game world they do not. Play in character with actual character personalities they do not. Drive me to distraction they do.

Stuck with them I am, because I run a drop in game at our local public library.

Quote from: Baeraad;952798I feel like I should step in and argue heatedly with someone, but I'm not sure who. It's the eternal dilemma of the crotchety old bastard - so many people to disagree with, so little time! :p

On the one hand, pure sandbox play gives me hives. As a player, I don't want to be told that I can do whatever I want, because I don't want to do anything. Doing something when you don't have to is strange and unnatural. I want the GM to have the courtesy to give me something I'm forced to react to. And as a GM, I have to struggle to stay awake during sessions when the players just poke around and don't get much of anything accomplished. I do realise that players occasionally want a session like that, so I try to provide them in the interests of creating an enjoyable experience, but I keep having to struggle to not tell the players to wake me up when they want to do something that isn't completely irrelevant.

On the other hand, I have absolutely no use for modules. The key to have a meaningful progression of events without having it feel like a railroad is to make sure that the PCs have strong and compelling in-character motivations for going along with it. And you just can't do that with a scenario that's meant for a generic group of 4-6 characters of level 3-5.

So, you admit to doing it wrong, then:p?

Quote from: DavetheLost;952872You just functionally described my current group of players.  When faced with a sandbox they just sit there unmoving. Prod them with in character adventure hooks and they might move slightly. Come right out and tell them "You are doing this" and they will go along, until they don't.

Engage with the game world they do not. Play in character with actual character personalities they do not. Drive me to distraction they do.

Stuck with them I am, because I run a drop in game at our local public library.

Do you roleplay your NPCs in first person and force them interact with you in first person? That a trick that works for me.

Note that "acting" i.e. pretending to be a character with a different personality is not needed for this to work. The only thing I am focused on is getting them to interact with me as an NPC or several NPCs depending on the situation. Originally I did this to get the players to stop treating their characters like fucking game pieces and accordingly acting like mad dogs. "Oh a shopkeeper! Kill him! And grab his cash box!". Despite the immaturity of myself and my high school friends back in the day this was effective in making the players actually treat the NPCs as people.

And once they started to interacting with the NPCs some of the players actually gave a shit about what troubled them.

Quote from: estar;952860Being told to throw darts at a dartboard in the dark isn't appealing to a lot of people.

That's such bullshit, estar. How many sandbox referees hand their players a map and say, 'You are here. What do you do?'

At a barest minimum there's a campaign pitch - 'You're adventurers in a world of ruins, monsters, and treasure!' 'You're swashbucklers in the time of Louis XIV!' 'You're traders and mercenaries in the far future!' - but anyone with even a modicum of horse sense can manage something like, frex. the three paragraphs which set the stage for Keep on the Borderlands.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;952867What Tod13 means is that Adventure 1: The Kinunir has four adventures (or "Situations") inside of it.

Ahh, you're right, I misread that.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952882That's such bullshit, estar. How many sandbox referees hand their players a map and say, 'You are here. What do you do?'

At a barest minimum there's a campaign pitch - 'You're adventurers in a world of ruins, monsters, and treasure!' 'You're swashbucklers in the time of Louis XIV!' 'You're traders and mercenaries in the far future!' - but anyone with even a modicum of horse sense can manage something like, frex. the three paragraphs which set the stage for Keep on the Borderlands.

Agree with this, but think it's more apt to say the dart throwing isn't completely in the dark when you have a scenario. It's more like throwing at a dartboard when you have a flashlight.

And sometimes the players will insist on ignoring all your carefully prepared plot hooks to chase off after an artifact mentioned in a bit of overheard tavern gossip that was supposed to be just background color...

But even that bit of gossip does more to provide motivation than a map with a you-are-here dot on it.

Highwaymen are waylaying travellers at the crossroads, a royal courier dropped a sealed letter while changing horses, someone is in trouble and asks the PCs for help... Dangle a few of these hooks in front of the players and see which they bite. Of course you may also get lucky and have one or more players who give you a motivation along with their character "I want to slay the dragon and reclaim the halls of my father", "I want revenge on the six-fingered man".

A starting sandbox need not be a static environment.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;952825Suiting up, grabbing your weapons, and heading out to the unknown because you heard those bastards out there have treasure they're not sharing with you is one of the most primal motive forces of civilization.

Quite possibly, but I'm the descendant of a long line of people who didn't do that put stayed put instead. An absolute lack of adventuring is in my blood! :D

Quote from: Willie the Duck;952837Sounds like that's a case of too little structure instead of too much. I can see that. Can you give a hypothetical boundary? Say your being DMed, and example A is too little structure, but example B is enough (maybe even an example C that is too much)?

Er, I dunno. I guess something like...

A: "You are sitting in a nice cosy village where nothing in particular is happening. It's surrounded by savage wilderness full of horrible monsters. In which direction do you go out into it for no apparent reason?"

B: "When traveling to the city to look for work (because the problem with nice cosy villages is that they have limited employment opportunities, so you had to face the choice between risking becoming someone's food and not being able to afford your own food), you spot a group of goblins down in a gulch, worrying at some kind of chest. There is the wreckage of a wagon lying tipped over next to them, and immobile bodies - you're not sure if they're alive or not. The goblins haven't seen you yet. What do you do?"

C: "Actually no, it turns out that they have seen you. They rush up the hill to attack you. No, you can't run away, they run faster than you. No, they can't be reasoned with. No, you can't start a rockslide over them to give yourself time to escape. Look, just mindlessly roll attack at them already!"

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952853You suck as a roleplayer and cannot satisfy a man or woman in bed.

Quite possibly, but unless you were hoping I'd seduce you and now you're bitterly disappointed, I don't see why that's any business of yours. :p

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952853You're really incapable of roleplaying a character with ambition?

Yep.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952853A character who's self-directed?

YEP.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952853You can't imagine living in the game-world?

Oh, no, that I can do. And then I immediately imagine finding someone to tell me what to do, because I frankly have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing - in this world or any other! :p

Though alternatively, the GM can just tell me to make a character who wants a particular thing, because going after that thing will be the main activity of the campaign. And then I can do that. And then all is well.

Quote from: Sommerjon;952866Why is it an impossible task to take a scenario that's meant for a generic group of 4-6 characters of level 3-5 and then tailor it to make sure that the PCs have strong and compelling in-character motivations for going along with it?

It's not, technically, but if I have to go through the trouble of shoehorning character motivations into a scenario that didn't come with them pre-existing, I'm already past the point where playing a module is more work than coming up with something of my own.

On the other hand, I do like setting descriptions and generalised plot hooks. It's like the difference between a big pile of building blocks that you can use to construct your own stuff, and an already standing structure that you have to dismantle before you can make your own use of the materials.

Quote from: AsenRG;952874So, you admit to doing it wrong, then:p?

No, I admit that the rest of you are doing it wrong, on account of my approach being objectively correct and the one true way! :p

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952882That's such bullshit, estar. How many sandbox referees hand their players a map and say, 'You are here. What do you do?'

Keeping getting reports of people trying just that. So it isn't bullshit in my opinion. I will say it way way better than it was ten years ago. From the feedback I get the common problem is more subtle. The referee creating something that the players find uninteresting or boring. That is when it is a problem. A lot of people successfully run sandbox campaigns or more commonly a hybrid with some sandbox elements.
 

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952882At a barest minimum there's a campaign pitch - 'You're adventurers in a world of ruins, monsters, and treasure!' 'You're swashbucklers in the time of Louis XIV!' 'You're traders and mercenaries in the far future!' - but anyone with even a modicum of horse sense can manage something like, frex. the three paragraphs which set the stage for Keep on the Borderlands.

Sorry I disagree. For a minority yes that works. The majority need something a little more specific to engage their interested. For example You're swashbucklers in the time of Louis XIV!', fresh out of training with several opportunities joining the guard of various nobles knowing that with enough renown you can join the King's musketeers.

The players who are go-getters will ignore the obvious path and do their things but other players have a clear path as a starting point, Join noble guard, do well, join the King's Musketeers. At least in my campaign things diverge quickly from that however the vision of that path provides the crucial pull to get them over the initial hump of "What do I do with my character?"

Now you may think that the players are being putzs or that I am coddling them. Understand I been doing this for 30 years by trying things and seeing what works and what doesn't. Again you don't need hand your players a treatise on your setting but they do need more than just You're swashbucklers in the time of Louis XIV!'. In short when I did this it worked, multiple times over years, with player of wildly varying ages and backgrounds.

Quote from: Baeraad;952894Yep.



YEP.



Oh, no, that I can do. And then I immediately imagine finding someone to tell me what to do, because I frankly have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing - in this world or any other! :p

Wait. Do you really mean that you need someone to tellyou what to do in real life? It reads that way, but Im having a hard time believing it...:)
I mean, who told you to come to this forum and rile the sandbox-loving majority?

QuoteThough alternatively, the GM can just tell me to make a character who wants a particular thing, because going after that thing will be the main activity of the campaign. And then I can do that. And then all is well.

If you are that cooperative, would it work if I told you "you are a swashbuckler in 17th century Paris looking to uphold his honour, get famous, and seduce noblewomen just to spite those better off than him":D?

QuoteNo, I admit that the rest of you are doing it wrong, on account of my approach being objectively correct and the one true way! :p

You pass;).

Quote from: DavetheLost;952872You just functionally described my current group of players.  When faced with a sandbox they just sit there unmoving. Prod them with in character adventure hooks and they might move slightly. Come right out and tell them "You are doing this" and they will go along, until they don't.

Engage with the game world they do not. Play in character with actual character personalities they do not. Drive me to distraction they do.

Stuck with them I am, because I run a drop in game at our local public library.

I feel for you, man.  Where do you live?

Quote from: Baeraad;952894Quite possibly, but I'm the descendant of a long line of people who didn't do that put stayed put instead. An absolute lack of adventuring is in my blood! :D

What country do you live in?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952853You suck as a roleplayer and cannot satisfy a man or woman in bed.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? You're really incapable of roleplaying a character with ambition? A character who's self-directed? You can't imagine living in the game-world?

+1.

If you don't want anything get the fuck away from my table because I have a bunch of people who DO want to do things.

Quote from: DavetheLost;952872You just functionally described my current group of players.  When faced with a sandbox they just sit there unmoving. Prod them with in character adventure hooks and they might move slightly. Come right out and tell them "You are doing this" and they will go along, until they don't.

Engage with the game world they do not. Play in character with actual character personalities they do not. Drive me to distraction they do.

Stuck with them I am, because I run a drop in game at our local public library.

"Fuck you, I quit."

I had one player who would always create the most mundane and ordinary people as characters, and then try to avoid adventuring with them.  It really made the rest of us scratch our heads because he wanted to play. He just didn't seem to want to play an heroic adventurer in a game about heroic adventurers having heroic adventures.  At least he wasn't actively disruptive of the game, he was just sort of a non-entity.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952882That's such bullshit, estar. How many sandbox referees hand their players a map and say, 'You are here. What do you do?'

At a barest minimum there's a campaign pitch - 'You're adventurers in a world of ruins, monsters, and treasure!' 'You're swashbucklers in the time of Louis XIV!' 'You're traders and mercenaries in the far future!' - but anyone with even a modicum of horse sense can manage something like, frex. the three paragraphs which set the stage for Keep on the Borderlands.

The whole "static world" thing is complete 100% arse-gravy too.  There is no such thing as a static world.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952946"Fuck you, I quit."

Thankfully my daughter and a couple of others are great fun. But some of the rest of them...  I strongly suspect it is the pernicious influence of too many computer games and too much memorizing the D&D books vs actually playing the damn game.

Quote from: DavetheLost;952949Thankfully my daughter and a couple of others are great fun. But some of the rest of them...  I strongly suspect it is the pernicious influence of too many computer games and too much memorizing the D&D books vs actually playing the damn game.

"Those dang kids with their video games and their rock 'n roll!"

Quote from: finarvyn;952570I agree that the 5E modules are a little linear, but that's key to Adventure League play since you theoretically can go to any store with your character and just jump into a game there. If the modules were too wide-open then players would be at a totally different place when going from store to store. Having said that, I'm not sure how often folks store-hop and the AL also has a whole slew of one-shot adventures which get run in the store most weeks.

I've played parts of most of the new hardbacks and all have some good and bad points. The Tyrrany of Dragons sequence ("Hoard of the Dragon Queen" and "Tiamant" books) were pretty well done. Ravenloft was well done if you like that sort of thing; some of my players love it but others hate the darkness of the setting. We're playing in the Storm Giant one now.

The Goodman Games product line "Fifth Edition Adventures" is good if you like one-shots, but they aren't AL official so you can't use those characters in official games later. :-(

"Official games."

Quote from: AsenRG;952920Wait. Do you really mean that you need someone to tellyou what to do in real life? It reads that way, but Im having a hard time believing it...:)
I mean, who told you to come to this forum and rile the sandbox-loving majority?

Well, I'm exaggerating [strike]to annoy Black Vulmea[/strike] for effect. :p Of course I can do a few minor things on my own initiative. And having opinions on roleplaying seems to be one of the exceedingly few things that I'm actively driven to do. But it's true that for the most parts, my life goal is "don't die and don't get fired." And frankly, the second one is just because if I don't have a job, I can't afford to eat, and if I can't afford to eat, I will die, so really, "don't die" is about the extent of my personal ambition and always has been. Just how I'm wired.

Quote from: AsenRG;952920If you are that cooperative, would it work if I told you "you are a swashbuckler in 17th century Paris looking to uphold his honour, get famous, and seduce noblewomen just to spite those better off than him":D?

Sure, that I can work with. Likewise, I am very comfortable with Pendragon's "you're a feudal knight in medieval Britain. You need to embody some knightly virtues (you get to choose which exact ones) and gain Glory by serving your liege-lord and performing chivalrous deeds." Just as long as I get a basic motivation and some context to pursue it in, I'm pretty much fine.

Quote from: CRKrueger;952924What country do you live in?

Sweden. Tons of my relatives over the last several centuries emigrated to America. Per definition, I descend from the ones who wisely decided that that was too much risk and bother. My bloodline has been thoroughly pruned of all traces of derring-do! :D

BtW does a great job of creating relarionships between the characters as part of chargen and planting adventure seeds into their backgrounds and origins.

Quote from: Chris24601;952857In stories that's called an inciting incident and I agree its probably even more important for a sandbox because 90% of every sandbox setting I've ever read are stable and static and just like thermodynamics, objects at rest tend to stay that way. Without some type of dynamic stress on the system there's no motivation for taking much of any action.

 

Sandbox settings are not stories, they are somewhat static in that the status quo is usually stable until a bunch of wandering yahoos show up and start poking around. Whatever happened to adventurers seeking fortune & glory?

The default premise for the TSR era D&D adventurer was someone who wanted to be MORE than just some scrub wanderer with only a few meager possessions and a few coppers to rub together. Wanting it bad enough to go out and look for trouble when most sensible folks stayed home is what makes them ADVENTURERS. Hell, even Jeb the fat potato farmer can take up arms and defend the homestead when faced with complete destruction otherwise. Fighting when trouble finds YOU is fairly ordinary. Going out to some god forsaken hole in the ground populated by unimaginable horrors simply because they are there, and may have loot that will elevate your place in the world- thats an adventurer.

Removing treasure as an XP generator was the worst thing to happen to D&D.

Quote from: DavetheLost;952872You just functionally described my current group of players.  When faced with a sandbox they just sit there unmoving. Prod them with in character adventure hooks and they might move slightly. Come right out and tell them "You are doing this" and they will go along, until they don't.

Engage with the game world they do not. Play in character with actual character personalities they do not. Drive me to distraction they do.

Stuck with them I am, because I run a drop in game at our local public library.

Better players you need yes.

Quote from: Baeraad;952998Well, I'm exaggerating [strike]to annoy Black Vulmea[/strike] for effect. :p Of course I can do a few minor things on my own initiative. And having opinions on roleplaying seems to be one of the exceedingly few things that I'm actively driven to do. But it's true that for the most parts, my life goal is "don't die and don't get fired." And frankly, the second one is just because if I don't have a job, I can't afford to eat, and if I can't afford to eat, I will die, so really, "don't die" is about the extent of my personal ambition and always has been. Just how I'm wired.

I have to ask, Baeraad, is this how you always are, or is this just a specific time and place in your life? I certainly remember a period in my life (mid 20s) where I had been burned on love, my career wasn't taking off like I thought it was supposed to and my day-to-day job was fairly boring, and a lot of college friends had disappeared and not been replaced. I was just kinda coasting. In retrospect, I was probably a little depressed, but at the time I just thought of it as not having figured out my next direction in life. I'm sure it also affected how I gamed. You say it's just how you are wired, but do you think you'll feel the same way in 10 years? I don't want to extrapolate my life to everyone's situation, nor say you're doing something wrong if it works for you. It just doesn't sound satisfying to me not to have ambitions.

Quote from: DavetheLost;952872You just functionally described my current group of players.  When faced with a sandbox they just sit there unmoving. Prod them with in character adventure hooks and they might move slightly. Come right out and tell them "You are doing this" and they will go along, until they don't.

Engage with the game world they do not. Play in character with actual character personalities they do not. Drive me to distraction they do.

These players definitely sound like they are coasting. I'm not suggesting that you change for them, but have you asked them what they would like to do? Some change in style or even game (ex: they're settling for D&D but would really love a high-flying sci-fi campaign) that would make them take up the ball and run? What part of the gaming do they do? Fighting monsters that you throw at them I'll guess? It all sounds so strange to make the effort to come and game if you're not going to engage in the world.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;953025Sandbox settings are not stories, they are somewhat static in that the status quo is usually stable until a bunch of wandering yahoos show up and start poking around. Whatever happened to adventurers seeking fortune & glory?

Fine let's start a campaign, you are a 1st level Fighter out to seek fortune & glory. What do you do?

Quote from: estar;953052Fine let's start a campaign, you are a 1st level Fighter out to seek fortune & glory. What do you do?

I'll be the 1st level magic-user.

I go to the local pub to order the rare glass of wine while all the others get drunk on mead. I'm listening to the boisterous rowdy conversations trying to pick out some nugget of information that might lead to treasure.

If I have to, I will use my cantrips to amuse the locals and earn at least enough money for a small room and roasted potatoes. But one day these simpletons will tremble at my power.

Quote from: estar;953052Fine let's start a campaign, you are a 1st level Fighter out to seek fortune & glory. What do you do?

The clichés are always reliable: hire myself out to escort caravans, hunt down bounties, clear giant rats or slimes from the sewers etc...

Quote from: estar;953052Fine let's start a campaign, you are a 1st level Fighter out to seek fortune & glory. What do you do?

That pretty much was the startup for the players in the 5e multi-group campaign we are in.

The group of me Kefra and Jan formed as we looked too shady to join the other two groups. Might not have been too far off the mark either. heh-heh. Bemusingly apparently we are currently the most helpful group. The other two have been more aloof or something and pursuing their own agendas after some initial successes . While my group has been mostly troubleshooting for the area and continuing exploring the swamps as the two tend to co-incide.

We literally met up in a tavern and after some initial friction teamed up and off we went.

Quote from: estar;953052Fine let's start a campaign, you are a 1st level Fighter out to seek fortune & glory. What do you do?

That pretty much was the startup for the players in the 5e multi-group campaign we are in.

The group of me Kefra and Jan formed as we looked too shady to join the other two groups. Might not have been too far off the mark either. heh-heh. Bemusingly apparently we are currently the most helpful group. The other two have been more aloof or something and pursuing their own agendas after some initial successes . While my group has been mostly troubleshooting for the area and continuing exploring the swamps as the two tend to co-incide.

We literally met up in a tavern and after some initial friction teamed up and off we went.

Quote from: estar;953052Fine let's start a campaign, you are a 1st level Fighter out to seek fortune & glory. What do you do?

My fighter would eye every inhabitant of the room, measuring their worth in precious experience points!

My most recent 5e game started with the "Clearing out the cellar at the local tavern" cliche. Mind you, the tavern is in Sigil, and the cellar has portal to the para elemental plane of Ice that keeps the ale cold. And then  there's the Ice Penguins.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]787[/ATTACH]

Quote from: MonsterSlayer;953061I'll be the 1st level magic-user.

I go to the local pub to order the rare glass of wine while all the others get drunk on mead. I'm listening to the boisterous rowdy conversations trying to pick out some nugget of information that might lead to treasure.

There isn't a local pub in sight, you are standing in a grassy field. To the west there are snowcapped mountains to the west. To the north a low ridge of hills with scattered stands of trees. To the south the terrain is flat with more scattered clumps of trees, to the east the trees are more dense however it looks like a border around cropland rather than start of a forest.
 

Quote from: MonsterSlayer;953061If I have to, I will use my cantrips to amuse the locals and earn at least enough money for a small room and roasted potatoes. But one day these simpletons will tremble at my power.

Be aware that I am making a point about assumptions and context in regards to sandbox campaigns. The problem here is that the only I said prior to saying "Hey I am running a sandbox campaign." that is about people finding fame and fortune.

You assumed that you started in a settlement with a pub where you could go get information and impress the local. What you wrote is very reasonable given those assumption. However I had in mind a different starting point. But because I didn't lay that out first, what you wrote is irrelevant. Probably annoyed you a little and made you think "Rob being a bit of an ass for not telling me that I was in a field at the start."

While this is a simplistic example it does illustrates the importance of communication at the start of a campaign and why it is important to layout an initial context that more than just "Go forth and find fame and fortune." My opinion that most referee give a paragraph or two of general and personal information anyway in the course of talking up what the campaign is about. That most referees who are say "Well I all tell my players to go adventure and they are happy about it." are just saying bullshit.

My reason for emphasizing giving an Initial Context is not because people are doing it already, but to make it more of a deliberate action rather something that is ad-hoc. Circa 1980 I did this for the most part but I never thought about it much. So most campaign started off OK but a more than a few floundered or even failed. By the 90s I gained enough experience to realize that laying out the initial context was important to do right for the way I ran campaign. ANd it wasn't until around 2010 that I gave it a distinct name. Before I would called it campaign prep.

Half of the stuff I advocate for sandbox campaign, people do anyway and have been doing for years. It just putting it together in a coherent order make it easier for those who don't think about it or "get it" to learn how to use these techniques for themselves.

Quote from: Necrozius;953063The clichés are always reliable: hire myself out to escort caravans, hunt down bounties, clear giant rats or slimes from the sewers etc...

Quote from: Omega;953070That pretty much was the startup for the players in the 5e multi-group campaign we are in.

The group of me Kefra and Jan formed as we looked too shady to join the other two groups. Might not have been too far off the mark either. heh-heh. Bemusingly apparently we are currently the most helpful group. The other two have been more aloof or something and pursuing their own agendas after some initial successes . While my group has been mostly troubleshooting for the area and continuing exploring the swamps as the two tend to co-incide.

We literally met up in a tavern and after some initial friction teamed up and off we went.

Quote from: RunningLaser;953076My fighter would eye every inhabitant of the room, measuring their worth in precious experience points!

All reasonable but because I neglected to mention that you are starting in a field with mountains, hills, more field, and croplands around you all came up with wildly varying responses that don't quite pertain to what I just described in post #329

Again it not that the idea Initial Context is some kind of amazing revelation handed down from the Sandbox Gods. It just to point out that if you establish the Initial Context CONCISELY with some general and personal information that the chances of successfully igniting a sandbox campaign is that much higher. The point is to give enough information so that the players have some choices for the INITIAL decisions of what to do at the beginning of the campaign.

For a rare few it may be a novel (rolling eyes) but in my experience a paragraph of general information, and a paragraph specific to each player is sufficient.

Quote from: estar;953052Fine let's start a campaign, you are a 1st level Fighter out to seek fortune & glory. What do you do?

Where am I?  Do I live somewhere or did I spontaneously generate out of thin air?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;953025Sandbox settings are not stories, they are somewhat static in that the status quo is usually stable until a bunch of wandering yahoos show up and start poking around. Whatever happened to adventurers seeking fortune & glory?

The default premise for the TSR era D&D adventurer was someone who wanted to be MORE than just some scrub wanderer with only a few meager possessions and a few coppers to rub together. Wanting it bad enough to go out and look for trouble when most sensible folks stayed home is what makes them ADVENTURERS. Hell, even Jeb the fat potato farmer can take up arms and defend the homestead when faced with complete destruction otherwise. Fighting when trouble finds YOU is fairly ordinary. Going out to some god forsaken hole in the ground populated by unimaginable horrors simply because they are there, and may have loot that will elevate your place in the world- thats an adventurer.

Removing treasure as an XP generator was the worst thing to happen to D&D.

The very first Fafhrd & Grey Mouser story Fritz Lieber ever wrote was originally titled "Two Sought Adventure."

It begins with them seeing a ruined tower some distance away as they come up to a farm where they spend the night.  They ask the farmer about it and he says it's a horrible haunted dangerous place.  They decide to go there first thing in the morning.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;953085Where am I?  Do I live somewhere or did I spontaneously generate out of thin air?

But according to Exploderwizard I just gave you enough to start a campaign off with. ;) I am just following his wisdom.

Quote from: estar;953087But according to Exploderwizard I just gave you enough to start a campaign off with. ;) I am just following his wisdom.

No, you're being a asshole.

And I should know, because it takes one to know one, and I am their king.

Quote from: Baeraad;952998Well, I'm exaggerating [strike]to annoy Black Vulmea[/strike] . . .

All you worthless fucks who fall to quivering, whimpering pieces when I turn my fiery eye-beam on you? That's how to respond. Well played.

Now show that same sort of cleverness and initiative when you roleplay and you won't suck. As much.

Quote from: DavetheLost;952949. . . too much memorizing the D&D books vs actually playing the damn game.

Fuck those people sideways, vagally and annually.

Quote from: MonsterSlayer;953061I go to the local pub to order the rare glass of wine while all the others get drunk on mead. I'm listening to the boisterous rowdy conversations trying to pick out some nugget of information that might lead to treasure.

Or chat up merchants in the market about the wider world. Or make my obeisance to the local lord or burgher and talk current events. Or pay homage at the local temples and inquire about local lore. Or buy the merchants' drovers a round.

It's not fucking rocket surgery, estar.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;953085Where am I?  Do I live somewhere or did I spontaneously generate out of thin air?

On more serious note, if you were in my campaign I would start off by laying out the basic premise.

The campaign, using the OD&D rules with my Majestic Wilderlands supplement, takes place in a feudal kingdom. There are difference to due to magic but many things that were true of 12th to 13th century western europe are true here. While Christanity doesn't exist, the region is dominated by the worship of the goddess of honor and justice, Mitra and the local revere her as the patron of their people in a manner not unlike that of the Roman Catholic Church.

The kingdom is a few hundred years old but the ruins of much older civilization are present throughout the land. Most abandoned by the local demi-human cultures (elves, dwarves, halflings, and allied humans) during the rise of the present kingdom. Much of the eastern shore of the kingdom has been overrun by Vikings and the rest of the kingdom is riven by factions and noble in-fighting.

Given that situation and the rules we are using what would you like to play?

As a general note, if I pitched this and the players went meh. I would come up with something different until I found something they were interested. Then from there move on to the specifics.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;953090No, you're being a asshole.

And I should know, because it takes one to know one, and I am their king.

I concur that I was being an asshole to illustrate my point.

Is estar's point about the value of players of an RPG talking about the expectations of the game really controversial?

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;953097Is estar's point about the value of players of an RPG talking about the expectations of the game really controversial?

Yes, especially here.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;953097Is estar's point about the value of players of an RPG talking about the expectations of the game really controversial?

It more specific, some don't like the idea of a background writeup at the start of a campaign.

Quote from: estar;953100It more specific, some don't like the idea of a background writeup at the start of a campaign.

And that's how you end up with gonzo imploding partys

Quote from: HorusArisen;953101And that's how you end up with gonzo imploding partys

Or playing by rote.  

Quote from: Necrozius;953063The clichés are always reliable: hire myself out to escort caravans, hunt down bounties, clear giant rats or slimes from the sewers etc...

Quote from: estar;953096I concur that I was being an asshole to illustrate my point.

And you did, of course, note that I was including myself in that august body.  Just funnin' you a bit.

Quote from: estar;953094On more serious note, if you were in my campaign I would start off by laying out the basic premise.

The campaign, using the OD&D rules with my Majestic Wilderlands supplement, takes place in a feudal kingdom. There are difference to due to magic but many things that were true of 12th to 13th century western europe are true here. While Christanity doesn't exist, the region is dominated by the worship of the goddess of honor and justice, Mitra and the local revere her as the patron of their people in a manner not unlike that of the Roman Catholic Church.

The kingdom is a few hundred years old but the ruins of much older civilization are present throughout the land. Most abandoned by the local demi-human cultures (elves, dwarves, halflings, and allied humans) during the rise of the present kingdom. Much of the eastern shore of the kingdom has been overrun by Vikings and the rest of the kingdom is riven by factions and noble in-fighting.

Given that situation and the rules we are using what would you like to play?

As a general note, if I pitched this and the players went meh. I would come up with something different until I found something they were interested. Then from there move on to the specifics.

(thought I'd posted this, dunno what happened)

At that point I'd create a character (probably a fighter because I like fighters) and then, just like it says in OD&D volume 3, go to the taverns and buy rounds of drinks and tip bartenders to get rumors.

Quote from: HorusArisen;953101And that's how you end up with gonzo imploding partys

It can but it doesn't have to.

I have played a couple of survival style campaigns where you are pretty much dropped in with little background in a hex crawl.

One was a Day Z style and the other was basically ship wrecked and wash up on the Isle of Dread.

But I also note that there is a current active thread about perils of not allowing elves/dwarves in your campaign so I suspect some sort of campaign prep/background is expected normally.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;953117(thought I'd posted this, dunno what happened)

At that point I'd create a character (probably a fighter because I like fighters) and then, just like it says in OD&D volume 3, go to the taverns and buy rounds of drinks and tip bartenders to get rumors.

What I would propose is that your are a second son of a yeoman who hold land from the manor of Tenway. Tenway is held by Sir Anthony Tenway. So you got some training from your father who made it very clear that your alternatives are either to seek out mercenary/guard work or become one of Sir Anthony's serfs.

Your last job before the campaign start is acting as a guard for the construction site of a new crossroads inn. One thing you learn that to the east of you is the Plain of Cairns where there a lot of tombs and barrows left from long ago. The inn owners managed to clear out some of the ones nearby but considering the area covered by the Cairns about 25 miles by 25 miles there is a lot that were not explored. The contract has ended and you are left to figure out what you do next. Of course there is the newly built inn as well what I told you above.

I would then hand you this map (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Nomar_Region.pdf). Point that the inn is located at the crossroads on the road between Bellsdale and Pineshaw. I would have worked with the other PCs to contrive reasons why everybody happened to find themselves here at this particular time.

If you didn't like the above background details then we would talk it over and come up something. It could be more brief, more detailed or something of similar length. The only limitation I would place that it amounts to you being at this inn at the start of the campaign. Also depending on the level of interest expressed  I may supply a player with a writeup with additional info about specific details. Something like this (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Summary%20of%20the%20Halkmenan%20Rebels.pdf).

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952853You suck as a roleplayer and cannot satisfy a man or woman in bed.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? You're really incapable of roleplaying a character with ambition? A character who's self-directed? You can't imagine living in the game-world?

I dunno man, Gronan has never actually roleplayed, from what he's been saying on this bored, and he and his are having fun...  Maybe you're wrong?  Again?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;953085Where am I?  Do I live somewhere or did I spontaneously generate out of thin air?

Isn't that how you've been running your games, Mr. "I hate backstory"?

Quote from: Baeraad;952998Sweden. Tons of my relatives over the last several centuries emigrated to America. Per definition, I descend from the ones who wisely decided that that was too much risk and bother. My bloodline has been thoroughly pruned of all traces of derring-do! :D

Lol, fair enough.  You have a good point.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;953116And you did, of course, note that I was including myself in that august body.  Just funnin' you a bit.

Don't sell yourselves short, o' wise and crankified one. You have a prominent bust in our lobby (right next to Black Vulmea's full-length painting).:-)

Quote from: estar;953084All reasonable but because I neglected to mention that you are starting in a field with mountains, hills, more field, and croplands around you all came up with wildly varying responses that don't quite pertain to what I just described in post #329

Im on an open field with terrain in sight with nothing else to work off of? How did I get there? Why? I've never seen a campaign where you start off totally blank. ADDENDUM: Er... wait. I actually HAVE! silly me. Been decades... :o

But ok. First order of business is check gear. Assuming its all in order then look around for A: Signs of trouble and B: Signs of habitation (Which may also be trouble) and C: signs of potential water because if B isnt in sight then Im in trouble if I dont have any rations on me. To hell with adventuring. Survival first!

I break out Wilderness Survival and play that till I make it to civilization... :cool:

aheh... Actually something like this has happened to one of my Gamma World characters. Cropland was in sight and that suggested habitation so I headed that way first. One very strange adventure later...

Quote from: Christopher Brady;953126. . . Gronan has never actually roleplayed, from what he's been saying on this bored (sic) . . .

If you're defining 'roleplaying' as 'deep characterization' or 'talking in funny voices,' perhaps, but that's a cockeyed definition of roleplaying. As I've written elsewhere (http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2013/06/social-skills-and-roleplaying.html), "At its most basic, roleplaying answers the question, 'What will my character do now?'"

Quote from: Christopher Brady;953126Maybe you're wrong?  Again?

They build fucking libraries to hold the annals of all the times I've been wrong.

But 'I can only play if I'm spoonfed things to do by the referee' isn't one of those times.

Quote from: MonsterSlayer;953119I have played a couple of survival style campaigns where you are pretty much dropped in with little background in a hex crawl.

One was a Day Z style and the other was basically ship wrecked and wash up on the Isle of Dread.

But I also note that there is a current active thread about perils of not allowing elves/dwarves in your campaign so I suspect some sort of campaign prep/background is expected normally.

I do like the idea of open-ended sandbox campaigns with a focus on survival. As for the subject of not allowing Elves and Dwarves, I don't see why people get so worked up about it. If you're the GM and you don't want Elves or Dwarves or any other non-human as a playable race, you have the right not to use them. It's your campaign world, do as you want so long as the players and yourself have fun. Rule Zero is a GM's best friend.

Hell, I'm writing up rough outlines and jotting down ideas for a D&D campaign where the players are Sonic OC's instead of the typical Tolkien-style fantasy races. However, the standard character classes such as fighters, magic-users, clerics, and the like are still present.

So, for those who ask "Where has D&D gone?", all I have to say is that it's still around and you can play it in any form you desire. 5E is the current in-print edition, but there's plenty of 3e and 3.5 material laying around if you know where to look. Not to mention the fact that Pathfinder is still in print and easily accessible in ordinary bookstores like Barnes & Noble, and Pathfinder is essentially a retro-clone of D&D 3.5 at its most base level. You can even buy plenty of 4E back catalog material and play 4E if you're feeling masochistic enough.

If you want the feel of older editions of D&D, that's what the OSR is for. Plenty of retro-clones to fit your needs. And I do know Wizards of the Coast has released reprints and PDF versions of AD&D 1e and 2e, as well as D&D 3.5. Hell, even OD&D can be officially purchased in PDF form for around ten bucks. Most of the OSR material does have the advantage of being free or very cheap though.

Counting retro-clones, I own nearly every edition of D&D. I have second-hand copies of both the 1e and 2e AD&D core rulebooks, the core materials for 3.5 AND Pathfinder (the 3.5 books are reprints from when 4e was discontinued and they were promoting 5e), old 4e material I bought in 10th Grade (it was 2008 so I had no real idea of how bad 4e was nor was Pathfinder an option), and of course, 5e. I also have OD&D in the forms of the Delving Deeper PDF and the PDF for Microlite74 Basic (which I later printed out and put in a generic three-ring binder) and B/X in the form of a hard copy of Basic Fantasy.

The sky's the limit and D&D is essentially what you make it out to be as a GM.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;952869I was going to say something similar... but you got there first.

I would add: Rumor Tables. They are awesome.

The problem with "Okay, you have your characters, what do you want to do?" approach (which many people try, often in Traveller for some reason) is that the Players have no context for making decisions or taking actions. They don't know really what they can pursue or how to pursue it.

As Ester says, sitting down and talking is really terrific on this front -- and probably should be done no matter what so everyone is on the same page in any game.

But Rumor Tables offer another way in, this time in the context of the fiction. The Referee creates a list of things he cares about sharing with the Players about his setting -- details to investigate, treasures to loot, factions at hand, in ways that offer the Players locations and NPCs and objects to pursue with their PCs. Then the Players choose which ones they want to go after. Thus, the Players are making choices and yet they aren't throwing darts in the dark.

Note: in my games they can completely blow off the Rumors as well. But at least they are there if they want them.

I've had some success with feeding each player one or two rumors before the first session begins rather than dumping them out during the session. It gives everyone at least one piece of knowledge about the world, which makes them seem more like they live there. It's also makes that first conversation between the PCs more interesting when they all have something of interest to share that the others don't know, especially if you have the rumors can interlink. The wizard has heard the location of a ruined tower he wants to check out for loot. It's in a forest that the ranger has heard is haunted by deodands. Obviously, you don't want to go overboard with the interlinking in a sandbox. It you have 10 rumors and the all basically relate to a journey to the ruined tower, it's all just one hook.

If you want to really have fun with it, make sure anyone low Intelligence gets nothing but false rumors.

Inevitably, some of the players will never think to mention the rumor they know, and will forget it, but you can always feed it back into the world later. When it happens, you might even have the forgetful player remark, "I've heard about that!" which makes it feel more like a fact and less like some plot hook you just invented.

Quote from: Baulderstone;953166I've had some success with feeding each player one or two rumors before the first session begins rather than dumping them out during the session..

That's exactly how I began my Lamentations of the Flame Princess game (https://talestoastound.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/rumor-tables-for-my-lamentations-of-the-flame-princess-campaign/). It worked out really well... for many of the reasons you articulated.

When I start my Classic Traveller game I'll be doing the same thing. I want the PCs to be in motion. These are rumors they have heard, but don't have to pursue. But either way they now have information in-character, with a sense the world and ethos and conceits passed on to them even before they have to start making decisions in character. The rumor table helped define so much and get us on the right footing.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;953137If you're defining 'roleplaying' as 'deep characterization' or 'talking in funny voices,' perhaps, but that's a cockeyed definition of roleplaying. As I've written elsewhere (http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2013/06/social-skills-and-roleplaying.html), "At its most basic, roleplaying answers the question, 'What will my character do now?'"

I concur. If a player want to act as a different personality I will be glad to support that but my campaign works just as well with the player just playing a version of themselves with the character's abilities. The key technique for me is roleplaying in first person as opposed to third person roleplaying.

Quote from: Omega;953136Im on an open field with terrain in sight with nothing else to work off of? How did I get there? Why? I've never seen a campaign where you start off totally blank. ADDENDUM: Er... wait. I actually HAVE! silly me. Been decades... :o

I concur, I am exaggerating to make points about setting up a good initial context. My reply to Gronan about who his fighter is and what he was doing is what I actually do.

Quote from: estar;953174... The key technique for me is roleplaying in first person as opposed to third person roleplaying.

That is the height of fun for us, when the players get into a parley and negotiation with an NPC or monster and it is in first person.   Their negotiation with Hafrung Helleyes, then later Xor being my favorites of all time.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;953137If you're defining 'roleplaying' as 'deep characterization' or 'talking in funny voices,' perhaps

Actually, even then he'd be wrong.

Which should surprise NOBODY, considering the source.

Quote from: estar;953052Fine let's start a campaign, you are a 1st level Fighter out to seek fortune & glory. What do you do?

Where am I?
Am I alone?
What stuff do I have?
Is there breathable air?
Am I currently on fire?
How did I get here?
Are there gremlins living in my hair?
Do I have hair?
What is the air speed velocity of a laden swallow (African or European)?

These are all important questions that need answers.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;953214Where am I?
Am I alone?
What stuff do I have?
Is there breathable air?
Am I currently on fire?
How did I get here?
Are there gremlins living in my hair?
Do I have hair?
What is the air speed velocity of a laden swallow (African or European)?

These are all important questions that need answers.

Sure they are absolutely important questions in order for a campaign to be launched. However the sum of the answers your question amounts to an initial context or if there action involved an inciting incident. Something that you criticized Chris24601 for.

Sure sandbox campaign are not stories, however elements of story and structure are useful for PLANNING out the motivations, schemes, and plots of the NPCs. Particularly in terms of characters, who they are and what drives them. What makes it different is that while for a story-game or a referee railroading this work is part of the execution of the campaign. In a sandbox it just a structure that will be altered, it useful in the same way a battle plan is useful to a general leading an army.

But as history shown if a general sticks to the plan regards of changing circumstances then likely he will lose the battle. A referee doing the equivalent is railroading his players.

I know i been harping on this recently but the difference between plot in the hand of a sandbox referee and in the hands of a railroading referee is that the sandbox referee is willing to let his players "trash" his work. If the referee isn't willing to do that or is not comfortable, then all this stuff we talk about isn't going to matter regardless of particulars.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;953214Where am I?
Am I alone?
What stuff do I have?
Is there breathable air?
Am I currently on fire?
How did I get here?
Are there gremlins living in my hair?
Do I have hair?
What is the air speed velocity of a laden swallow (African or European)?

These are all important questions that need answers.

Clearly a noob you are sir.  The most important question is "What is my favorite color?"

Quote from: estar;953218Sure they are absolutely important questions in order for a campaign to be launched. However the sum of the answers your question amounts to an initial context or if there action involved an inciting incident. Something that you criticized Chris24601 for.

Indeed. Games are not stories, but they do have certain story-like structures; such as a need for some type of action to provide an initial context to the actions of the main characters (i.e. the PC's).

Where did you come from and what's going on around me are just the most basic levels of that. Every inciting incident in fiction provides motivation to the main characters for what comes next. Similarly, in a sandbox the PC's need some sort of motivation, either in their backstory or at the start of the campaign to explain why they don't just take up some safe and mundane occupation that keeps a roof over their head and food in their bellies.

Take Jack and Beanstalk as a simple example. The inciting incident of that adventure was that his family's crushing poverty finally reached the point where he had to take the family cow to market and sell it so he and his mother wouldn't starve. If not for that incident then Jack has no motivation to do anything other than keep living on his farm and doing boring mundane stuff.

Why are the PC's willing to risk the dangerous and unknown wilds of the sandbox? Unless there's a reason behind that decision the campaign is going to feel hollow and gamist ("we're exploring the wilds and risking our lives because that's what the game is about.").

It can be something generic; you've been hired by a Lord to tame this uncharted land so that he might add it to his dominion. How do you proceed?

It could be something specific at the level of the party; your village was completely destroyed by raiders who made off with all the crops and the PC's are the only survivors; your starting equipment is everything of value you've managed to scavenge from your destroyed homes, but winter will be here soon, you don't have enough food to last out the winter if you stay and you also have no idea what lies beyond the edges of once-sleepy village. What do you do?

It could be something specific to each PC; the baker is looking for ingredients to a spell so that he and his wife can have a child, Cinderella has dreams of visiting the prince's festival, Red wants to deliver food to her sick grandmother and Jack has to go sell his beloved cow to keep himself and his mother from starving... so each has their reasons to go forth and risk the dangers of the Woods.

Now it could be that the GM just farms that work off to the players; each of you needs to figure out a reason whey they'd be willing to risk exploring the wilds around your starting community. But the GM needs to be clear about that because where I've seen a lot of sandboxes go awry is that the GM leaves this as an entirely unstated assumption on their part and the players just mill around waiting for something to happen.

Quote from: Chris24601;953380*edited for [strike]brevity[/strike] sanity*

And thank you for watching Pretentious Douchebag Theatre.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;953387And thank you for watching Pretentious Douchebag Theatre.

To translate from Vulmea-speak.  The problem is, in your examples you're still assuming a specific plot hook and there doesn't need to be one.
Because I'm not the first-born and I don't want to be a X.
Because I want to get rich or die trying.
Because I want some Grade-A trim.
Because bones heal and chicks dig scars.
Because that stupid Old Geezer keeps filling my head with stories about the Good Ol' Days.
Because I have that same gene that every explorer has.
Because my friend is going, what the fuck else am I going to do?
Because...why the fuck not?

It's not my job to tell a player how to dream up a character who has a motivation to get off his butt and leave the house. If you can't imagine what sort of person might want to explore the ruins of a lost tomb and see what lies beneath the soil, you have a piss-poor imagination, and spoon-feeding imagination to you is not going to cure that.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;953397It's not my job to tell a player how to dream up a character who has a motivation to get off his butt and leave the house. If you can't imagine what sort of person might want to explore the ruins of a lost tomb and see what lies beneath the soil, you have a piss-poor imagination, and spoon-feeding imagination to you is not going to cure that.

According to the Code set down by the pirates Morgan and Bartholomew.

The pirates clearly have their shit together.

Quote from: Chris24601;953380Take Jack and Beanstalk as a simple example. The inciting incident of that adventure was that his family's crushing poverty finally reached the point where he had to take the family cow to market and sell it so he and his mother wouldn't starve. If not for that incident then Jack has no motivation to do anything other than keep living on his farm and doing boring mundane stuff.

Why are the PC's willing to risk the dangerous and unknown wilds of the sandbox? Unless there's a reason behind that decision the campaign is going to feel hollow and gamist ("we're exploring the wilds and risking our lives because that's what the game is about.").

So, what motivates Jack, then?  Poverty may put Jack on the road with the cow, but it clearly doesn't motivate him to trade that cow to a sketchy traveler for beans that may or may not be magic.  The strange looking traveler doesn't claim that the beans will bring wealth (in some versions he claims they're magic, in others he does not), so the smart and safe choice would be to take the cow to market and sell it.  Why does Jack trade the cow for possibly magic beans instead?

The next morning, Jack sees the beanstalk outside his window and he decides to climb it.  Why does he do that?  It's not for riches or food, as Jack doesn't know those things are up there yet.  So what is it that actually motivates him?

In the story, those two decisions are the ones closest to the decision to become an adventurer, and Jack makes those decisions despite his poverty, not because of it.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;953397It's not my job to tell a player how to dream up a character who has a motivation to get off his butt and leave the house. If you can't imagine what sort of person might want to explore the ruins of a lost tomb and see what lies beneath the soil, you have a piss-poor imagination, and spoon-feeding imagination to you is not going to cure that.

Woah there fella.  There are charts out there that can easily tell me what I am suppose to imagine.   No need to get all uppity.    Charts telling someone what to do isn't exclusive to DMs.

Quote from: The Scythian;953456So, what motivates Jack, then?  Poverty may put Jack on the road with the cow, but it clearly doesn't motivate him to trade that cow to a sketchy traveler for beans that may or may not be magic.  The strange looking traveler doesn't claim that the beans will bring wealth (in some versions he claims they're magic, in others he does not), so the smart and safe choice would be to take the cow to market and sell it.  Why does Jack trade the cow for possibly magic beans instead?

The next morning, Jack sees the beanstalk outside his window and he decides to climb it.  Why does he do that?  It's not for riches or food, as Jack doesn't know those things are up there yet.  So what is it that actually motivates him?

In the story, those two decisions are the ones closest to the decision to become an adventurer, and Jack makes those decisions despite his poverty, not because of it.

Why the fuck are you encouraging him?


Well played, though.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;953477Why the fuck are you encouraging him?


Well played, though.

I'll take this one a step further.

"Just because!" or "To see whats there!" is one of the three biggest motivations for adventurers in the real world and fantasy. The others being wealth or to help someone.

Why go exploring some dungeon probably full of traps and/or monsters? For some its for the wealth, for some its for knowledge, for some its because the damn things there and curiosity is an irresistible magnet.

Boredom can be another trigger. Or dissatisfaction with their current lot in life. Or just for the excitement.

As for Jack and the Beanstalk. Why did he sell the cow for a handfull of beans? Because hes a moron? Because he was told(in some versions) they are magic? And what good would selling the cow have done other than to stave off the inevitable anyhow? As for why climb it? Well hes just been beaten for screwing up and this is his literal last chance. Its a giant BEAN stalk. So maybee he reasons there are giant beans up there? Or just plain ol' curiosity. Or because hes been told they are magic so who knows what is up there? Later it is established his mom is viciously greedy and keeps sending him up there to steal more stuff. Otherwise he'd likely have not gone up again. Which is a recurring theme of some of these stories. The hero/heroine gets a reward and is happy with that. But someone elses greed forces them right back into trouble.

All of this talk about motivation to adventure reminds me of a common saying around these parts....

"Hey Watch This!"

Really what else do you need to stick your sword down a goblin hole and stir crap up?

Like watching people philosophize about why some say, "hold my beer..." :confused: