No More Massive Tomes of Rules

[Celebrim]

The abject, sneering disdain toward game designers here. How dare these nincompoops try to entertain you!

The ones that do it well have my undying respect and gratitude. There are books on my shelf I treat as treasures. If a game designer can save hours of my time, well that money is well spent. The ones that don't do it well, I wonder why they expect me to pay for their crap.

 

[Autumnal]

I am constantly surprised that more game companies don't make epubs.

The problem is simple: they don’t sell for beans. I spent years talking with Fred Hicks of Evil Hat and looking at their sales data, and the evidence was really undeniable. If you have a game that sells hundreds to thousands in print and/or PDF, the epub will sell dozens. If you bundle it with the PDF like Kevin Crawford does, people won’t download it; if they do, they’ll trash it right off.

I’d love to know how Osprey’s Kindle option for RPGs does. Not much better, I’m guessing.

Those of us who love our epubs love them a lot, but we a very tiny minority of people in gamerdom, and there’s no noticeable trend of increased epub usage among gamers.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

If a game designer can save hours of my time, well that money is well spent.

All you want out of an RPG product is...to save you time? GMing is just an optimization problem? This thread is really shining a light into some dark corners.

The ones that don't do it well, I wonder why they expect me to pay for their crap.

The gall of those RPG fat cats, expecting people to buy what they make!

 

[Reynard]

I mean think about it, would you really want to be inventing the rules of the in fiction zero-G Luna rules football and the meta-rules for arbitrating the fiction of the game on the fly? And wouldn't it be better if there was a handout you could give to the players about how to play the game so that they could be in character, knowing the things about the game that their characters would know? Isn't that useful?

I am imagining a situation in which the group's most recent score takes them to Luna and as background flavor you talk about the Zero-G Football game and, players being players, they decide to incorporate it into their heist plans. Stuff liek that happens all the time. Cyberpunk2020 talks about sports in its flavor text all the time (because sports are a part of the world) but I don't think it has dedicated rules for athletic contests. You have to use the rules that are there to manage the situation.

I mean, this is just a philosophical difference. I don't mean to suggest you aren't doing it right. This is just the kind of scenario that makes me want clean, concise, widely applicable rules that I can use to deal with whatever BS the players come up with. It wouldn't really help me if there were rules for athletic contests if they were in some obscure supplement, anyway.

 

[Reynard]

The abject, sneering disdain toward game designers here. How dare these nincompoops try to entertain you!

What are you talking about? Developing solid, widely applicable rules IS game design too.

source: am designer

 

[Grendel_Khan]

What are you talking about? Developing solid, widely applicable rules IS game design too.

source: am designer

Either your sarcasm detector is off, or mine is, but context collapse notwithstanding you know we're in complete agreement here, right?

 

[Reynard]

Either your sarcasm detector is off, or mine is, but context collapse notwithstanding you know we're in complete agreement here, right?

Oh, yeah. I was being sarcastic too. Like, double sarcasm, you know?
Ahem.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Then you aren't interested in anything but one shots and mini-campaigns, and as such, with respect, who cares what you think about the rules because rules aren't for you anyway.

Mod Note:

The phrase, “with respect” does not mitigate subsequent disrespectful proclamations. Be better, going forward.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Oh, yeah. I was being sarcastic too. Like, double sarcasm, you know?
Ahem.

Well that's embarrassing for me. Time to crawl into a hole for a while and I guess be real mad at every game I've purchased, all of which feature a glaring lack of mechanics covering the tensile strength of 18th-century carriage wheels.

 

[Reynard]

Well that's embarrassing for me. Time to crawl into a hole for a while and I guess be real mad at every game I've purchased, all of which feature a glaring lack of mechanics covering the tensile strength of 18th-century carriage wheels.

I am still trying to find my strength after discovering a complete lack of mechanical distinction between a flagon and a tankard in the last Taverns, Inns and Alehouses supplement.