Unfortunately, you just have to suss out the clues that are usually present in any conversations or posting about games looking for players and vice versa.  The types of people who inject real world current day (or at least their highly biased one sided willfully blind view of them) tend to do it in their day to day activities and online postings.  It's the basis of the virtue signal phenomenon in society as well as similar to when poisonous insects and animals display bright unnatural (for the environment) colors in nature.

I can only recently (since the pandemic started) speak to looking for a game online but things I look out for digitally as red flags are pronouns in the bio, declarations of immutable phsyical characteristics whether genetic or acquired as advertisements, flags signifying support the "current thing" whether geopolitical or calendar based, specific statements about performative friendliness to certain groups (which usually goes hand in hand with toxity to others), overt declarations of politics (I've seen people actually advertise pro-socialist and anti-fascist statements in their LFG posts), lengthy "safety tool" and/or diversity checklists that are required reading/filling out prior to joining, and "no asshole" rules which frequently (but admittedly not always) means they're also an asshole who will accuse you of it if you disagree with their overt injections into the game.  I've seen all of the above over the past couple of years and avoided those LFG posts for the same reason.

If you post online that you're looking for the opposite then you're just likely to attract those same types like flies to a grill on a hot summer day.  As evidenced by threads on other forums like enworld and rpg.net, they will purposefully post crap in your announcement just to torpedo the chances of success with unnecessary drama in a campaign that they never had any intention of joining.  You'll unfortunately have to weed them out reading the tea leaves in conversations pre-game looking for hints of the same red flags I posted above. 

It's sad that you're pretty much forced to do this just to have some apolitical escapist fictional entertainment nowadays. 

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 11:34:57 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 10:59:31 AMI would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.  WoD-alikes just aren't really the thing any more.  A company called Fen Orc makes a series of Black Hack hacks along these lines but I don't know much about them.  They have some silver and electrum sellers so they have gotten some traction anyway.

I'm not looking for a heartbreaker, I'm looking for games in the urban fantasy genre. I don't actually like WoD/CoD because they're bad microfiction pretending to be games, which the fans don't actually play anyway.

Urban fantasy is still a thriving literary genre. It's oversaturated. I'm really surprised there's zero spillover into ttrpgs.

Do you mean that the most recent versions of WoD games don't get play, or that the old WoD games don't get played much now? I might accept either of those, but in the 90s and perhaps a little after that, the original WoD games were heavily played in several areas I lived.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley on May 13, 2024, 01:35:44 PMLike it said in the subject. The IDW comics they chose to base the Transformers RPG on was the most political and "woke" period in the history of those comics.

I went through that period of IDW's comics and almost quit them repeatedly. Transformers has always been political. But dragging real-world earth politics into the picture ruined things.

The problem with basing the RPG on that period of comics is that they pretty much torpedo all other interpretations of characters except the party line focused on in those comics. That being, the Autobots being a spoiled upper class that is desperate to hold onto power.

That's not something I want to play. So for me, the Transformers RPG was a waste of money.

Well, you certainly showed them (IDW) by repeatedly continuing to buy them despite how bad they were.  Companies will never learn a lesson unless their customers do first.  Knowing it was so bad so recently and that the RPG license was likely acquired a while back when they were still in control/the current thing, did you do some research on the RPG to see if it was more of the same before buying it?   It may sound like harsh words from a stranger online but I'm a fellow (former) fan of many properties that have been utterly ruined over the past decade by woke nonsense that will never be taken back and had to learn the same lesson myself.  Trust but verify doesn't work with the woke; it's more like verify and assume until proven otherwise.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 10:45:00 AMSorry for the angry ranting. I'll try to be calmer in the future.

I don't have anything against a writer writing anthologies set within a shared universe, and I don't have any respect for corpos that make everything about "The Message", but I've gotten very frustrated with the actual execution and fandom interactions.

Nobody is Tolkien. Eventually the lore becomes so bloated that it becomes a hindrance and even the writers get bored of it and want to do something new. Old Star Trek and Star Wars had continuity errors and expanded universes that were absolute nightmares. Tolkien knew when to stop, but everyone else is content farming.

Hasbro reboots Transformers all the time and that's not a bad thing. If they didn't have the freedom to experiment with reboots, then the IP wouldn't have what it does now. Much of the IP is composed of elements that were introduced in reboots. It's an example of how reboots can be a good thing. And the reboots canonically share a multiverse too, before Hollywood drove multiverses into the ground.

Anyway, I get bored of the same thing for years and years. I get exasperated with the declining quality caused by this content farming. Maybe I'm just in the mood for something different. Well, there's not much else because these de facto monopolies have killed the competition. In recent decades I've noticed that people in general are stupider, less creative, and lazier with every passing year. It creates this frustrating cycle: indie creators work for years only to fail because fans just jump on the big creator bandwagon, big creators inevitably shit the bed because corpos don't give a shit about art, fans have no options, indie creators scramble to take advantage of the vacuum, fans complain indies don't have decades of lore, all the while the quality overall declines.

The indies would have decades of lore ready and waiting if fans had supported them when they were still publishing decades ago. Now many of those indie creators are too old or dead to make things anymore, and the younger indie creators don't have the upbringing and wealth of experience and learning their predecessors did. The fans have no one to blame but themselves for putting all their eggs in one basket.

That's why I prefer multiverses. Every setting inevitably goes through shit phases due to writer burn out, lack of hindsight, or whatever, but having a bunch of settings gives you options when that happens. That's why fantasy gaming hasn't turned to 100% shit like scifi and scifantasy has: although D&D dominates, there are thousands of published settings that can easily substitute for Faerun or Golarion.

But the scifi and scifantasy genres are not unsalvageable. The fans can still make their own stuff if they have the conviction and work ethic, or support those who do. Most of the indie creations from yesteryear are locked in copyright jail, but you can still take inspiration. But it will be a long and hard road. Rome was not built in a day.

They don't do a Battletech reboot because reboots inevitably alienate as many as they please. Instead, they encourage you to find a place in the Battletech timeline that you like and explore it. My favorite time period(s) for Battletech range from 3049-3081 (Clan Invasion through Jihad). I'm not a huge fan of the original (late) Succession Wars period, and I really don't find Dark Age/ilClan very appealing (but there are a few good bits in there too), so I don't put much of my effort into exploring that part of the timeline. If others like those periods, so be it, that doesn't infringe on my enjoyment of the parts I like. This is largely because the Battletech rules change very little from one period to another, and the biggest impact would be on a Battletech RPG. I'd certainly play a Battletech scenario even in a time period I don't really like, but I wouldn't run (and probably wouldn't play) a Battletech RPG outside of the periods I like.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on May 14, 2024, 03:23:35 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 10:59:31 AMI would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.

All except #OnyxPath themselves, who are working on a new line called #CurseBorne.

They still suck at actual game design tho and none of the teasers explain what the fuck curseborn is. I'll take Urban Shadows over that shit any day of the week.

Quote

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 07:14:33 PMThere's been precisely zero conspiracy thriller rpgs released in the last decade to my knowledge, which is weird because cryptids are more popular than they've ever been, the government has publicly acknowledged UFOs, the WEF is openly trying to conquer Earth, Resident Alien is airing on Syfy, and the X-Files is getting a reboot.

That's entirely due to the industry being dominated by left wing ideologues who view any 'conspiracy theories' as an alt-right thing despite having plenty of their own.

The old conspiracy theories were political for their day (there's a documentary book called Necronomicon is something that documents the 60s–90s conspiracy craze and it's wild!), but now come across as quaint and inoffensive for the most part. Roswell grays, Satanic cults, New World Order, cryptids, psychic powers...

I miss that

Sorry for the angry ranting. I'll try to be calmer in the future.

I don't have anything against a writer writing anthologies set within a shared universe, and I don't have any respect for corpos that make everything about "The Message", but I've gotten very frustrated with the actual execution and fandom interactions.

Nobody is Tolkien. Eventually the lore becomes so bloated that it becomes a hindrance and even the writers get bored of it and want to do something new. Old Star Trek and Star Wars had continuity errors and expanded universes that were absolute nightmares. Tolkien knew when to stop, but everyone else is content farming.

Hasbro reboots Transformers all the time and that's not a bad thing. If they didn't have the freedom to experiment with reboots, then the IP wouldn't have what it does now. Much of the IP is composed of elements that were introduced in reboots. It's an example of how reboots can be a good thing. And the reboots canonically share a multiverse too, before Hollywood drove multiverses into the ground.

Anyway, I get bored of the same thing for years and years. I get exasperated with the declining quality caused by this content farming. Maybe I'm just in the mood for something different. Well, there's not much else because these de facto monopolies have killed the competition. In recent decades I've noticed that people in general are stupider, less creative, and lazier with every passing year. It creates this frustrating cycle: indie creators work for years only to fail because fans just jump on the big creator bandwagon, big creators inevitably shit the bed because corpos don't give a shit about art, fans have no options, indie creators scramble to take advantage of the vacuum, fans complain indies don't have decades of lore, all the while the quality overall declines.

The indies would have decades of lore ready and waiting if fans had supported them when they were still publishing decades ago. Now many of those indie creators are too old or dead to make things anymore, and the younger indie creators don't have the upbringing and wealth of experience and learning their predecessors did. The fans have no one to blame but themselves for putting all their eggs in one basket.

That's why I prefer multiverses. Every setting inevitably goes through shit phases due to writer burn out, lack of hindsight, or whatever, but having a bunch of settings gives you options when that happens. That's why fantasy gaming hasn't turned to 100% shit like scifi and scifantasy has: although D&D dominates, there are thousands of published settings that can easily substitute for Faerun or Golarion.

But the scifi and scifantasy genres are not unsalvageable. The fans can still make their own stuff if they have the conviction and work ethic, or support those who do. Most of the indie creations from yesteryear are locked in copyright jail, but you can still take inspiration. But it will be a long and hard road. Rome was not built in a day.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 14, 2024, 02:32:03 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 14, 2024, 12:33:50 AM

Quote from: Zelen on May 13, 2024, 09:22:41 PMMy stance is that lore is incredibly important, but anyone who cares about lore at this point should see the writing on the wall for Battletech.

It's a lot less damaging for "the lore" to accept a spin-off with renamed factions + characters that keeps the underlying themes, tone, style, than to continue on supporting a game/IP which is compromised by malicious actors whose expressed goals are to subvert that story/setting.

What part of the Battletech story/setting has been subverted? How has it been subverted, and what do you believe is the "writing on the wall" and anyone should see?

Oh I don't know, maybe go buy the Battletech Pride Anthology 2023? Since you seem determined to play defense for Catalyst and want to give them money.

OK, I'll give you that product. However, I still don't see how the story/setting is subverted by that. It's not as if the three setting pieces done in recent years (Dominions Divided, Empire Alone, and Tamar Rising) show any evidence that they are trying to 'subvert' the setting into anything it hasn't been in it's 40+ years.

If you want to go political, then things like Shattered Fortress show that "utopian socialist societies" like the Republic of the Sphere are full of corruption (dark deeds done in the name of the "greater good" and will self-destruct without constant application of these terrible measures).

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on May 12, 2024, 04:58:33 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 04:57:42 PMI tried to watch this, because I understand the appeal of Studio Ghibli, but as soon as the chode started talking about his ADHD and his ass burgers, I'm done.

If that pissed you off, there's more where that came from!

Disinterest is more accurate than anger. It lets me know the vlogger is a useless poon with nothing to say.

Quote from: Crusader X on May 11, 2024, 11:02:07 PMAny word on when this new edition is coming out?

The best I can say is it is expected to be by the end of the year. The publishers are just considering their best options for printing and distribution. 

Quote from: Omega on May 14, 2024, 06:36:04 AM

Quote from: Votan on May 13, 2024, 08:36:17 PMSo clever sculpting but if they wanted to highlight cool female characters, the Red Box has Aleena, who is both memorable and taught players important lessons about the way that the game was meant to be played. Sure, the character has a typical female presentation, but that isn't necessarily a bug in a game about heroic fantasies. Archetypes are good, right? Right? Or am I too old fashioned?

Some years back there was much bitching by the woke about how she was "Sexualized" and "pornographic" even. Because these idiots have no clue what those words even mean.

Aleena? Elmore has done quite a bit of cheesecake art but Aleena wasn't one of them. She was depicted wearing full chainmail. I guess where leftists are concerned, a female drawn with actual female body proportions is pornographic. Remember these are the people who can't even define what a woman is.