Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863918And I stayed with OD&D because I still like it better than anything else I've tried.

Funny ol' world, innit?  You'd almost think different people like different things.

Also, "something better" did not arrive.  Something you personally liked better arrived.  There is a difference.

I seem to have forgotten the pedantic, "...in my subjective opinion."

Quote from: Phillip;863948That was poorly put and perhaps poorly considered.

There are in fact people -- including, apparently, you with Majestic Wilderlands -- who find it plenty worth pleasing a subset of people that happens to be smaller than some other set. This is simple to appreciate, since inherently the sum of any combination of Biggest Thing with anything else is greater than BT alone, and maximal diversity actually delivers maximal pleasing of people.

I believed I covered that point with this.

Quote from: estar;863911it applies even to specialized RPGs with a deliberate appeal to a narrow range of interest. In this case the number tell you how effective was the approach toward the target audience. If RPG A reached 500 out of a potential 1,000 customers, and RPG B reached 1,000 out of a potential 10,000 customers. Then I would say RPG A is more of a success as it succeeded in reaching more of it's intended audience.

And my Majestic Wilderlands would be an example of this.

Quote from: Bren;863927Which, oddly enough, you then agreed with in the exact same post.

So is it bullshit or isn't it?

An effective product is designed to appeal or to be useful to an audience. This can be accomplished because when you observe a mass of people certain behaviors or needs become apparent.

But it doesn't work to use those observations to predict whether whatever an author comes up with will work with with a specific individual randomly chosen out of that same audience.

However to make it more frustrating is not a either or situation. It is a continuum ranging from the product working for the individual 'as is' to it doesn't work despite it targeting the individual's interests.

I have to deal with this situation in my day job in developing metal cutting software targeted to the HVAC industry. Individual shops have quirks, for some the software works 'as is' for others it doesn't but most case lies in the frustrating in between. The trick to deal it with it is design in the right kind of flexibility.

The lessons I learned from this experience, and still learning, I applied to the Majestic Wilderlands which is why I believe it a major reason why it is a electrum seller.

Compared to other OSR products, my numbers tell me that I definitely in the ballpark in regards to the OSR. However it by no means perfect as other OSR products did better than me. So I pay close attention to see what will work to make my next product better.

The numbers are the primary feedback mechanism to gauge this.

Which is especially important in the case of Blackmarsh where the PDF is free. I have five thousand+ downloads. Even now there is rarely a day where it isn't downloaded multiple times by new customer. So again that tell me that I did something right for my target audience.

Quote from: Bren;863927I'm familiar with the 20 million Frenchmen argument. To use language you are familiar with, "Bullshit." That's the measure of its economic value. If that's your sole measure of value, then we don't have enough in common in our world views to be able to communicate on the subject of quality or value of a object in any meaningful way. Though you might want to try reading the points 3 + 4 which I included to address economic value.

Again what numbers help is whether the author made something appealing or useful to audience. It doesn't nothing to help the author figure it whether it is appealing, useful  or of value to a individual gamer.

When numbers are high it is a good indication that a lot of people found it of value. And that applies even when there is no economic value involved like with the downloads of my Blackmarsh.

And it be clear I am not saying or implying just because a product has X number that you SHOULD like it if you are part of the audience it targets. The only thing I can reasonably say is "You may want to take a look at it as many people who share your interests found it valuable."

Quote from: Bren;863927It was intended to help the halfwits who confuse popularity with quality and value. I was trying to separate the concept of popularity from that of quality or value. Since you didn't get it and neither did estar, it failed to universally achieve that aim.

I don't believe there is a simplistic answer to the balance, popularity, quality, usefulness, and value. However over the years, I have come to understand that popularity is a damn good sign of quality. Not the sole sign and it certainly doesn't means only popular products are quality products.

However when I see people try to make the point you are making about popularity versus quality, I smell elitism. Which I despise.

I have no problem with people making products that inherently can't be popular because they use expensive materials, appeal to a narrow interest, use time-consuming methods of labor, etc. What I have a problem with people thinking that is somehow "better". It not. It a choice of what audience you are catering too.

For example I don't think the Majestic Wilderlands is intrinsically better because it targets the OSR. It targets the OSR because around 2007 when I started developed I understand what that audience was looking for, I was having fun playing with the same rules, and had some specific ideas I wanted to share. I combined the three to produce my work. I spread the work among the people whom I thought it find it useful.

And the fact I achieved electrum along with the numbers I got on lulu indicate that I was successful in making something useful. If I had only gotten 50 sales since 2009 then I would have re-throught my approach and come up with something different.

Quote from: David Johansen;863986Yeah, numbers in RuneQuest can be a real kicker.  Don't expect your Rune Lord in his rune armor and with his rune sword and his divine magic to be immune to half a dozen punks with sticks.

Word. Not even rune punks with rune sticks. Just, y'know, punks. With sticks.

Quote from: The Butcher;864096Word. Not even rune punks with rune sticks. Just, y'know, punks. With sticks.

Closely resembles real life - seems weird to RPGers.

Quote from: estar;864047I don't believe there is a simplistic answer to the balance, popularity, quality, usefulness, and value.

And since you went with the simplistic answer, that means that even by your own criteria your "bullshit" response was...well bullshit.

QuoteHowever when I see people try to make the point you are making about popularity versus quality, I smell elitism. Which I despise.

Well ain't that just too damn bad. But then your argument smells. Of populism. The somewhat mindless equating of popularity with quality. And populists always rail against any and all perceptions of elitism. And of shilling. The crass insertion of self-promotion into every conversation not matter how irrelevant.

And again, go back and read parts 3 and 4 before you hypothesize what point you think I was making.

Quote from: David Johansen;863986Yeah, numbers in RuneQuest can be a real kicker.  Don't expect your Rune Lord in his rune armor and with his rune sword and his divine magic to be immune to half a dozen punks with sticks.

Numbers are huge in Runequest. That actually fits in with a more wargame/historical style of combat. Mutual support, protecting the flanks and rear, and limiting the number of attackers who can reach you matter in RQ. So it is more realisitic than it is Homeric.

(There are tweaks like first edition Stormbringer, multiple attacks and parries for weapon masters, that allow more heroic style combat and depending on how one treats critical and special hits, Shield-4 and Protection-4 make one close to immune to punks with sticks.)

The importance of keeping the odds even or in your favor wasn't a problem in RQ play for me, my concern occurred when one Runelord faced an opposing Runelord. There combat tended to stalemate until someone rolled an unusual result like a critical or a fumble. Given the odds of that were < 10% per attack combat ended up with a fairly high whiff factor per round. (With good armor and heavy magical protection even an un-parried normal hit was unlikely to do much damage, so even a special usually was insufficient to do much.)

QuoteThis is actually an artifact of the "free" base score of 10 everyone gets.   A 0 point GURPS character is actually a 600 point GURPS character so really it's 1100 point Conan verses 3700 points of Picts.

Not a GURPS player so I didn't know this. It makes sense though. Thanks for pointing that out.

Quote from: Bren;864211And since you went with the simplistic answer, that means that even by your own criteria your "bullshit" response was...well bullshit.

Well ain't that just too damn bad. But then your argument smells. Of populism. The somewhat mindless equating of popularity with quality. And populists always rail against any and all perceptions of elitism. And of shilling. The crass insertion of self-promotion into every conversation not matter how irrelevant.

And again, go back and read parts 3 and 4 before you hypothesize what point you think I was making.

And I disagree with what you said particularly in point #3.

This

QuoteThe number of people who like Tutti-fruitti ice cream is irrelevant to whether or not I like the flavor.

In my opinion doesn't follow from this.

QuoteFor any RPG X, the number of people who buy or play game X says nothing about the merit, suitability, or quality of game X. Yet people frequently post and act as if it does.

While it would follow from

QuoteFor any RPG X, the number of people who buy or play game X says nothing about the merit, suitability, or quality of game X for a individual gamer. Yet people frequently post and act as if it does.

The bold is what I added. And that would be a point I agree with.

Quote from: David Johansen;863986Honestly I've always wished GURPS would have hung a bit closer to its original form and not become so bloated.  Just a bit more realistic and detailed than TFT is my sweet spot but no, GURPS became the detail freak's wet dream.  Oh well, I still love it, but I think it could have a much more dominant place in the market with a little tweaking.

I think GURPS is still like that. What happened the core rule books have long lists (advantages, disads, skills, etc). Cull it down and you are back to a evolved version of what 1st and 2nd edition was.

The whole problem of 4th edition GURPS and even 3rd edition is that you have to do a lot of work to create a campaign compared to other RPGs.

Quote from: estar;864228And I disagree with what you said particularly in point #3.

What is it that you disagree with?

   If you disagree that the popularity of a thing is irrelevant to whether or not I like that thing, then, among other objections, that is inconsistent with what you wrote in other places.

   If you disagree that the number of people who buy or play game X says nothing about the merit, suitability, or quality of game X. Then make your case.

How does the number of people who buy or play game X determine its suitability for me? My claim is that it does not.

QuoteThis
"The number of people who like Tutti-fruitti ice cream is irrelevant to whether or not I like the flavor."


In my opinion doesn't follow from this.
"For any RPG X, the number of people who buy or play game X says nothing about the merit, suitability, or quality of game X. Yet people frequently post and act as if it does."

Nor would I expect it to follow since those are two different ways of saying more or less the same thing—that the popularity of a thing doesn't tell you whether or not you will like that thing.

The suitability of a thing for you is whether or not it is suitable for you, i.e. do you like it. So popularity does not equal suitability for an individual.

Now if I was talking about business cases and marketing (which points 1 and 2 were not), then the business (and its competitors)  care about the number of people for whom a game happens to be suitable because that likely affects sales. Popularity correlates to suitability. Hence (since popularity is much easier to measure than suitability) popularity is frequently used by businesses as a proxy for suitability. This tendency to identify one with the other is strengthen because from a business standpoint, popularity, i.e. number of units sold, is in the short term a really good proxy for suitability. In the short term, the business doesn't care if the product could be made more suitable as long as sales of the existing product are deemed sufficient, i.e. as long as the existing product is deemed sufficiently popular.

Which is more or less what I said in point 4.

Quote from: Bren;8639104. Obviously the number of people who buy game X is relevant to marketing and business decisions about game X, about products that support game X, and about games that may compete with game X. Therefore, the number of people who like Tutti-Fruitti ice cream is relevant to how easy it is to buy Tutti-Fruitti ice cream.

Clearly popularity and suitability are not the same thing. Which is why, in the long term, successful businesses look at the degree of suitability. Because if they don't, a competitor may create a new products that is more suitable for a larger number of people than the existing product and that new product may eventually become more popular (i.e. sell more units) than would the existing product.

RQ 2 has multiple attacks and parries for skills of 100 or more.  That's really the mechanism for dealing with those weapon masters with skills over 100.  If I could find the book I'd totally be running RQ 2 tonight.  As it is I may just run BRP Gold in Glorantha.  It's tempting.

I think the 600 point base character is one of the reasons new players have trouble balancing GURPS encounters.  Also, skeletons were ridiculously powerful in first edition if you dropped the template onto a 25 point fighting man.

Quote from: David Johansen;864282RQ 2 has multiple attacks and parries for skills of 100 or more.  That's really the mechanism for dealing with those weapon masters with skills over 100.

It's been a while since I ran the numbers, but my recollection is that it isn't advantageous to take two 60% attacks instead of one 120% attack. Ditto on parries.

Stormbringer 1 had different rules where you could parry and (I think) riposte multiple times against multiple attackers. Each attack or parry after the first was at -20% cumulative per additional attack. So, for the same 120% attack, the first attack is at 120%, the second would be at 100%, the third at 80%, the fourth at 60% etc. It made it less advantageous for weak opponents to gang up on tough ones. Especially someone with a demon weapon that might be doing hellacious damage on each hit.

Quote from: David Johansen;863986Yeah, numbers in RuneQuest can be a real kicker.  Don't expect your Rune Lord in his rune armor and with his rune sword and his divine magic to be immune to half a dozen punks with sticks.

Not immune, precisely; the longer a figure is played, the greater the likelihood of a one-in-a-thousand event having come up. However, if I've got 90% attack and parry and an opponent has 20%, that comes to 72/2 = 36 to 1 odds in scoring a hit. If he's doing 1d6+1 and I've got 8 points of armor, he needs a critical hit or impale to do anything; whereas if I'm doing 1d8+1+1d6 vs. no armor, anything I hit is usually out of action even with an ordinary blow.

A couple or three reduced quickly to lying in the dust bleeding their last tends to lead the rest to finding that they have somewhere else to be.

And it is even worse than Phillip mentioned since he stopped at the point of a significant hit. The Runelord can heal up some (if not all) of the damage that the pointy stick guy is likely to deal out while PSG will be lucky to have Healing-2 to stop any bleeding that the Runelord is likely to start.

Quote from: Tetsubo;863889Thanks for the thought. I just have no interest in the OSR movement. I started in 1978. Back when 'old school' was the only school we had. I abandoned it as soon as something better arrived. I've read numerous OSR systems and found them all wanting.

Well, Dark Albion isn't an 'osr system'.  It's a 275 page setting book. you can use it with any version of D&D you prefer.  It has a couple of little add-ons for rules (like tables for social class and character prior-history; and kickass medieval-authentic demon-summoning rules), and a few pages of appendices with some other house rules, but everything else in the book is system neutral.