RPGPundit Spreads His Outrage To A Whole Other Language!

Yes, it's not enough for me to infect the english-speaking gaming world with my "problematic" (that's the word people use for something that isn't really a problem, but that they wish it was) statements.  Now, I've been interviewed by a Spanish-language RPG blog, Runas Explosivas (that's "explosive runes", for those of you who are a bit slow).

If you're one of the pseudo-activists desperately reading everything I write (hi Ettin!) and don't actually read Spanish, don't despair! You won't even need google translate, as the English version of the interview is found at the bottom of the article.

So check it out, and see what the Latin world thinks of me!

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Ben Wade Canadian + Image Latakia

A Tale of Two RPGnet Mods

As the campaign of the Outrage Brigade flounders and starts to die away in the face of backlash from all the people who are sick of them, there's still a couple of things happening worth pointing out; one for how admirable it is, the other for how ridiculous it is.

Case number one: RPGnet poster and recently-anointed moderator Zeea, who already did something remarkable by actually showing up on theRPGsite to talk to me about the ridiculous allegations made against me by the Outrage Brigade, to see for herself what I had to say about it, instead of wallowing in the fashionable witch-hunt that was taking place.  Deciding to look at the facts, she found to her surprise that the "case" against me (and Zak S.) was largely a pack of bullshit.

Then she did something even more remarkable: she apologized. 

So, very impressive. Someone who had every reason to believe in the people who were lying about me, but went out of her way to figure things out for herself.

But just in case this was all making you start to feel some sense of hope for human dignity, let's look at the other side of the coin: rpgnet mod, SA-goon and all-around-asshole Ettin. Has he apologized for being one of the principal architects of the lies told about me, or strongest pushers of the campaign to try to somehow have me retroactively blacklisted (I mean seriously, what do these guys think is going to happen, that Wizards of the Coast will just scrap everything they've done so far so that they don't have to put my name on the credits?!)?

No, quite the contrary.

You see, the RPGsite mods are able to see what threads posters are looking at.  My tech mods have pointed out to me that over the past two days, several individuals, but especially rpgnet-mod and SA-goon Ettin, have been frantically poring over theRPGsite in a desperate search for "evidence" to use against me. We've spotted him looking at threads from eight or nine years ago, looking for ammunition.

Which is hilarious, not only for how pathetic it is, but for how it proves that the people who love to crow on about how 'irrelevant' I am have probably read more of what I've said with more extreme attention, dedicated more hours to the study of me, than the biggest pundit fan ever would.  Here's Ettin, who has often desperately tried to portray me as a nobody, and upon finding that particular little lie-to-himself profoundly challenged by the fact that I (and not he, or people he approves of) was chosen to be one of the figures brought in to influence the direction of the new edition of D&D (a new edition that, by the way, I have been told is doing extremely well so far!), he decides to try to 'ruin' me.   I'm sure he'd hoped that the mere accusation would work, only he wasn't dealing with some hapless innocent who doesn't already know all the tricks.  Suddenly, he found himself having to look for actual real 'proof', where there was none to be found; so now he's been reading everything I've ever publicly written, going back as far as a DECADE, to try to desperately find any snippets he can cut out of any sense of context to compile a sad sorry list of allegations against me.  In the process, he's shown the entire world just how obsessed he is, just how important it is to him to try to 'beat' me.

He has become the most dedicated student of my writings.

But really, it's not like he hadn't read most of it before; the average gamer would find it hilarious just how many of the rpgnet-modclique and the SA-goons we spot very regularly poring over not only my every word, but pretty well everything that's going on over at theRPGsite.  I guess competition scares them.  It should, since they're losing.

Oh yes, one more detail: let it never be said that Ettin is gracious in humiliation, either.  His reprisal when we pointed out what he was doing was the ban "One Horse Town", one of our moderators, from rpgnet.  He didn't really care whether it was OHT who had anything to do with having spotted Ettin looking at eight year old threads or not, or the fact that it didn't have anything to do with rpgnet per se, he just lashed out like an angry toddler at someone he could hit.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Volcano + H&H's Beverwyck

DCC Campaign Update.. Sort Of

So this is not technically an update of my DCC campaign, because we didn't play this weekend.  Instead, on Sunday I went off to a special gaming con being put together (as part of a larger series of youth events this winter vacation) by the Montevideo city government.  "2d4orcos.com", the local gaming forum, had helped co-ordinate it, and I was invited to run a game; since I always like helping 2d4orcos out, I agreed. 

I had kind of forgotten that this was going to take place the weekend after the release of 5e D&D. As it turns out, it was quite the experience; the adulation I got from some of the gamers there was pretty awesome, I have to admit.  It was also awesome that I was running DCC, and over at the table next to mine they were playing Lords of Olympus (which has become very popular in Uruguay).

But anyways, we played with a group of five: one was a gaming veteran, the other four relative newbies, a group of four friends in their late teens who had each played an RPG between 0-3 times. None had ever played an Old School RPG before (in fact, only one had ever played D&D).

In this adventure, our intrepid Substitute Heroes learned that:

-Among the mutant villages of the Tangled Forest, a Mud-raker earns more than either a baker or a gaucho, but not as much as a con artist.

-No one trusts the Transparent Mutants.

-The forest is littered with the ruins of the Great Neutral Kingdom, who were too indecisive to stop the onslaught of the forces of Law and/or Chaos.

-The Triangle Mutants are too caught up in their war with the Square mutants to give a crap about figuring out what monstrosity came out of the ancient ruins to massacre the Stick Mutants.

-Cannibal Riverweed is nothing to trifle with.

-On the other hand, cannibal riverweed looks like a walk in the park compared to a Vicious Giant Wiener Dog.

-When your best warrior has a crippling phobia of bright lights, it's not a good idea to cast spells that mercurially involve flashes of bright light; especially if said warrior is the only thing standing between you and a giant killer wiener-dog.

-When exploring the ruined metal temples of the Ancients, it's not necessarily a good idea to press a bunch of buttons on any old panel you come across.

-Killer robots come in Square and Triangular forms... coincidence? Probably not.

-When a single level-1 warrior is the last man standing against a killer robot, making use of the ruins' automated traps can be a life-saving (and adventure-defining) moment.

-Unfortunately, finding a big locker full of still-viable Ancient Tech is not worth that much when one of your mutants doesn't have the wherewithal to estimate the blast radius of an ancient incendiary grenade.



At the end of the day, the body count was 4 dead out of a total of 7 characters made.  The PCs killed a patch of killer Riverweed, a Giant Wiener Dog, and two evil Robots. The successfully avoided getting into fights with either the Triangle or the Square mutants. Everyone had a grand time.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Solitario Oversize + H&H's Beverwyck

Join the Pundit-Boycott List for Fun and Profit!

The net effect of the Outrage Brigade's actions thus far has been to double the readership of my blog, to radically increase attention to (and, in all likelihood, sales of) my own RPGs like Arrows of Indra and Lords of Olympus, and to increase traffic on my forum, theRPGsite.  It's quite possible that it has also increased downloads of the D&D Basic PDF, and sales of the Starter Set, though in both cases the net effect there is probably a drop in the bucket in the larger scheme of things.


They're literally MAKING ME MONEY now.

In any case, I decided that since the efforts of the Outrage Brigade have been so successful at making me more rich and more famous, I ought to try to share the love a little bit, and see if we can't get them outraged about some of the many, many other products that I have been given credits in, publishers that have hired me or otherwise collaborated with me, and industry leaders that have patronized me in other ways, with the goal of helping all my friends increase their own sales and profile. 
Let it never be said that I'm miserly!

 So for example:

"Attention, Outrage Brigade!  Wizards of the Coast is not the only company that has been "legitimising" the RPGPundit!  I'm actually listed on Corporia too, as a Contributing Editor.  That's even more impressive than Consultant!

So you probably want to start writing to everyone that the the CORPORIA RPG (make sure you spell it right) has had the gall to credit that terrible RPGPundit as an editor! Tell everyone you know about the Corporia RPG!"

There, Mark. Now you owe me one, I just sold you like a 100 copies of your book at least.

 

Or:

 

"Pete Spahn's Small Niche Games published THE GUIDEBOOK TO THE CITY OF DOLMVAY, where, to everyone's horror, he has put a 'thank you' to known monster RPGPundit in the credits!  We urge all dedicated internet warriors of relatively ineffectual pseudo-activist causes to reshare, tweet, and generally make a point of putting enormous attention on Small Niche Games and specifically the CITY OF DOLMVAY book, to teach this person a stern lesson about supporting a meanie like the Pundit!"

 

You don't even have to have actually given me a credit, to get in on the action!:

 

"The people at Cubicle 7 clearly haven't gotten the message of how dangerous it is to "legitimize" the RPGPundit!  In fact, they kind of started it all, by giving him a playtester credit in the original edition of their Doctor Who RPG!

But now, to add insult to injury in supporting this bestial criminal who has said MEAN things about people that compare D&D fans to brain-damaged child-abuse-victims, they have just sent him not one but FOUR spectacular free review copies of their recent RPGs, all in glorious hardcover.

If you hate the Pundit for things other people have invented about him, then you absolutely must tell everyone about how the makers of VICTORIANA, ROCKET AGE, WORLD WAR CTHULHU and the new Limited Edition DOCTOR WHO RPG hardcover have completely ignored how mean the Pundit is, and the profound fake concern of numerous self-styled gatekeepers, for no other reason than that he is just the best most reliable RPG reviewer in the hobby; as if that mattered more than the fact that sometimes swears at people and that various unsubstantiated and untrue remarks have been made about him by D&D fans who got their feelings hurt!

Also, they have given aid and succor to his cat, who is probably a racist, in the form of a box just big enough for her to fit inside: 

 

 

 Don't let the Pundit and his evil cat get away with it!  Let everyone know about Cubicle 7's awesome games and how they must be punished for allowing his toxic influence on the hobby to flourish and make our own toxic influences look incompetent by comparison!"

(I'll note I added the cat picture because I know the rpgnet crowd likes both Fake-Outrage and Kittens; so I thought maybe a cat picture would help spread the word...)


At this point, I'm also open (for a small fee) to publicly associating myself with games or publishers that I have not yet been associated with, for the purpose of rallying the Outrage Brigade against them too, and thus leading to a proven boost in their visibility and sales.  Anyone wanting my services in this regard is free to send me a private message.  Don't miss this excellent chance to promote your product and improve your sales by tapping into the awesome marketing power of the fake outrage (and true bitter impotent envy) of the pseudo-activists!

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Moretti Rhodesian + Gawith's Squadron Leader

Why do Commercial RPGs Fail?

There’s a pretty short list, really.  Avoid those and you will avoid most of the pitfalls that can keep your game from being a success:

1. Lack of Promotion: Before getting into anything about the writing or content of the RPG itself, this is the single biggest reason why an RPG would fail. It doesn’t matter if you’ve written a masterpiece; if no one knows your RPG exists, then it will fail. Make sure everyone does, and even a mediocre RPG stands a chance of doing well.
Ironically, this is one of the areas where many would-be writers fail to pay proper attention; they discount the whole concept as though “if you build it, they will come” was the only guideline they needed. 

2. Unclear Writing: the game might be full of potential greatness, but if no one can actually make sense of what you’re saying, you’re fucked. Get an editor.

3. Too Much Front-end Commitment: if you have to memorize 10000 words of jargon, or remember that some stupid word with no vowels in it is what they use instead of “shield” in the game setting, or in some other way have to learn massive amounts of stuff UP FRONT, from the beginning, that relates only to your game, odds are most people won’t bother.

4. The System Sucks:  Of course, system is one of those things that falls on a spectrum: you say “GURPS” and one gamer might get wood at the thought of all that delicious point-buy and pseudo-realism, while another might cringe.  But there’s that, and then there’s systems that just suck.  If you have to do quadratic equations to play your game, or if you are missing a certain table vital to determining outcomes of most battles, or if there’s a low-level spell in your game that basically makes the entire party invulnerable forever, then you’ve got a system that just plain sucks ass.  Some people resolve this through playtesting; I think its important besides that to have a “mechanics editor”, someone apart from the regular editor (the guy who makes sure you don’t have the aforementioned crap writing), that specializes in understanding how games work.  Your regular editor need not be that (shit, it could be someone who’s never played a game in their life), but your “mechanics editor” should be a guy who can look at something you just wrote and explain “that means that in your game nobody could ever have a high enough skill to  successfully drive at speeds above 30km/hr”, or whatnot.

And finally:
5. Pretentiousness & “Too Weird to Live”: Both of these are categories of things that, one must admit, have had successful games.  Of course, they’ve had far more utter failures.  Generally speaking, the pretentious games that succeeded were ones that were not derivative of existing pretentious games.  The whole point of a game full of pretentiousness is to make its reader feel like they’re special just for “getting it”; if you are doing something that is an obvious cheap copy of an existing Pretentious work, you’ll never get there.  Consider how Vampire spawned an entire brood of copycat “dark”, “gothy”, "edgy", “storytelling”, “deep” games (i.e., 50 metric fucktons of bullshit), none of which anyone remembers today.

As for just-plain-weird games, their problem is that they’re weird.  That makes it hard for people to get the point of them, and odds are they’ll fail.  Bizarre settings that have no obvious sense of cultural connection to anything we know tend to be pretty hard to roleplay in.  Your best shot in these cases is to try to make your writing as clear as possible, do massive amounts of promotion in the hopes of finding someone who digs your endless cultural essays on “the tgunslanttrhru rituals of the Ksaltohyanu”, and pray that said 'someone' creates a small band of obsessive fanatics who’ll buy everything you write, guaranteeing a tiny but loyal customer-base. 

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Poker + Stockebbye’s Bull’s Eye Flake

(reposted April 26, 2013; from the old blog)

Continuing To Confront the Fake-Outrage Brigade; and Getting Just a Bit Sappy

So I don't have much time to be writing today; I'm about to rush off to a local gaming Con sponsored by the city government; yes, Uruguay has turned into one of those weird socialist countries that have state-sponsored Gaming events.  Since I was especially invited, I'd best not be more than fashionably late.

But I can't avoid addressing yet again the assholes who continue to try to slander me as a homophobe, making up that lie because it is much easier to get a (righteous) response from people at the suggestion that I'm a homophobe or transphobe than it would be to give anyone to give a shit that I hurt your feelings about elfgames.

It pisses me off immensely, these rpg.net and SA-goons spreading this meme about me being homo- or trans-phobic.  And you'd think that the fact that, as far as I know, I'm the FIRST fucking guy to ever put a transgender character on the cover of an RPG rulebook would be proof enough that they're full of shit.

Luckily, the tide seems to be somewhat turning. A significant number of people have spoken out in support of me, in exhaustion at the Outrage Brigade's antics, and in condemnatory suspicion of their utterly unsubstantiated claims.  Even in some of the places where these guys reign supreme, they've actually had to face people demanding that they offer up some kind of proof.

So apparently, these guys have scoured my blog with a fine-toothed comb in a desperate effort to come up with some kind of evidence that I'm in fact the raging LGBT-hater they want to make me out to be. You'd think if their claims was true that would be easy, but of course, that hasn't worked out for them.  Instead, they've managed to come up with only two frankly absurd exhibits that they want to try to make people believe is 'proof', one extremely old the other very recent.

The first is something from the archives of my old blog, a throwaway comedic line from a blog entry where I was bemoaning the shift in demographics in gamer's ages that happened in the 90s. There, I commented along the lines that before White Wolf's games came out, the average gamer was 13 and obsessed with barbarians, big guns, mecha, etc., and the hobby catered to that; after White Wolf, the gamer being catered to was a college kid "wearing all black, listening to the Cure and questioning their sexuality".  The point being that the shift in age-range from making games to draw in young teenagers to making games for pretentious college kids did not have a good effect on the hobby.

Now let's note something: this was from a blog entry that I wrote something like 8 or 9 YEARS ago.  Eight or nine years ago, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were against gay marriage; as were the majority of the population of the U.S. (I'll note that even 8 or 9 years ago, I was FOR gay marriage).

I could point out that right around that same time, I made a blog entry about a kid named Zach Stark who had been forced by his parents to be interned in a 'gay reparation' (read brainwashing) clinic against his will. Some of you might remember the case, you can read about it here. I wrote about that too, expressing my outrage and trying to draw attention to what had been done to him, linking to a campaign that tried (and failed) to get action to have him released (in the end, as you can see in wikipedia, the 'therapy' didn't work, surprise, surprise).

So right around the same time, you see me trying to defend the rights of a gay kid. 

But more importantly, in 8 years language and humor have changed, I probably wouldn't use that line about "questioning sexuality" now in that same exact way.  Back then, I sometimes still used "gay" as a synonym for "lame", which I wouldn't do now either.  The point is, even in the context of history, while I've continued to evolve, by the standards of 2005 you could say I was already ahead of the curve in terms of a straight guy supporting gay rights.


The only other quote they got to use against me? A line from a very recent DCC campaign update; where it's not even my own words, but a 10 year old who's a player in that group.  I reported how he's playing a wizard that changes gender when he spellcasts, something he's been not at all bothered by;  I was inspired by that (and trying to make sure that the kid saw his character's gender fluidity as something not unique in the setting) to introduce an order of wizards who are all in some form or another not 'cisgendered'.
Now, I called these guys the "Grand Inclusive & Non-Hierarchical Azure Order", which maybe some people interpreted as mockery; the thing is, anyone who's been reading my DCC updates knows that the entire campaign has been a little bit silly, and this order are just about the least silly thing in it.  As I've said in other DCC updates, the Azure Order are both powerful and the 'good guys', using their powers to help protect the helpless from the many horrors of the post-apocalyptic fantasy setting they're in.  But it would have stood out like a sore thumb if they weren't at least a tiny bit silly, because EVERYTHING in that campaign has been a little bit silly.
The part that has been used as proof against me, somehow, is that my young player, when invited to join the order, said "no thanks" because he felt completely comfortable and included in his current group (the PC party).  He later changed his mind and joined after all, I'll note, when he cannily realized that he could raid the Azure Order's library for spell research purposes.  That's a good gamer if ever I saw one!
Oh yes, he also referred to his character as "trigendered".  I don't know where he got the term from, but it was his term, not mine; so really, if you have to resort to using a term I quoted a fifth grader as using (and not one I see anything particularly wrong with!), you've pretty much got nothing.

Seriously, if this is the best they can do, it's pathetic.


But anyways, it always pisses me off when the anti-pundit crowd resort to making up lies about me to try to "get me"; but this particular bit of libel bugs me a lot more than most.

I have to admit bothers me in a particular way; maybe more now than it ever would have in the past.  I don't have kids of my own, but in the last two years, for the first time, I've had a couple of kids (one in his mid-teens, the other the aforementioned 10 years old) playing in my gaming group.  They're the sons of a very dear friend of mine; whose family we've spent a lot of time with. I'm very close to both of those kids and would be proud if I were ever to have a kid like either of them. 

The older one identifies as straight, the younger one has not said outright one way or the other but has been really happy playing a wizard who changes into a girl when he spellcasts.  And just the thought that, if either of them were in fact LGBT and should happen to end up finding something on the internet that would suggest to them that I would hate them for who they are, it absolutely fucking sickens me to think that for a second they might imagine (because of these what these assholes wrote) that I wouldn't accept and love them unconditionally.

Sorry for getting sappy there, but it's true. And I want it on record as much as possible, just in case.  For my awesome DCC player, for any theoretical future kid, nephew, niece, whatever.  Don't believe for a second I wouldn't be on your side, don't ever think you couldn't tell me anything.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Ben Wade Canadian + Image Latakia

Arrows of Indra Class Skills And Old-School "Character Powers"

Arrows of Indra has an awful lot of skills for an "old school" game.  These are, as I mentioned in my previous entry on the caste/background skills, not really set up in the same way as players of more modern games would think of as typical skills; rather, the background skills mostly tend to be things that, while conventional as skills, are not meant to be directly related to adventuring as such (though many will certainly be put to very good use by creative players), and the Class skills are really closer to "special abilities" than to anything we'd normally define as "skills" in the post-3e-D&D sense.

There are in fact a few skills in AoI that do fit the standard; "theology" for Priests or "disguise" for Thieves, for example.  But in AoI the more basic "spells" for Priests and Siddhis are found on the "skills" table, and not because they're in any way rolled as skills (they aren't; each occasion where you get one means you can use it once per day).  Likewise, fighters and rogues get proficiencies (bonuses to using particular weapons) from the skill tables, as well as other things like Leadership, or Urban Knowledge. 

Human characters get two initial rolls on the skill tables, non-humans get one; that's at first level, and after that any PC gets one skill roll per level.  Optionally, players can simply choose one of the skills from the basic table, but doing that they won't get a chance to choose any advanced skills until all the skill slots from the basic table have been filled. If they roll, there's a chance they can obtain an Advanced skill earlier.

All of this brings up what I think is an element of my own old-school perspective: there are some people who think that part of old-school play means "don't give the PCs too much stuff", that the idea of a PC getting some new power or bonus every single level is somehow anathema.  I don't think that's true. 

See, I think that this is a reaction against something that happens in some new-school gaming; two "somethings", actually.  The first, being that characters become quite overpowered outside the more traditional scale of old school D&D.  The second, that mechanics like 3.x's feats create a situation where people engage in a type of character-building that puts the focus on getting the right bonuses, on pre-planning how your character gains in power, and that often slows down the game as players have to choose between series of feats with pre-requisites for other feats, etc. etc., and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of any old-schooler who feels character progression should be an organic thing.
That sort of thing is certainly not within the aegis of "old school".

But I think there's nothing in old-school that is against the idea as such of player characters being able to regularly increase in power as they go along, including gaining something every level. Magic-users have always gained at least one spell each level, thieves always gained percentage skills each level. So the key in Arrows of Indra was to create a skill/power system that didn't fall into the aforementioned traps of 3.x-style "CharOp".  In AoI this was worked out by having gains generally be gained through random determination from a set and limited list; no picking and choosing from a huge variety of powers.

As far as power-level, being an "Epic India" RPG, Arrows of Indra is supposed to be more powerful than your average D&D game.  Even at mid-levels, fighter characters can be frighteningly competent; and while there's a chance a Siddhi may not cast as many spells in total as a D&D 1e magic-user of his equivalent level, he can theoretically (between class skills and Enlightenment Powers) gain some very powerful spells at a very early point in his career. But again, all of this tries to stay within the old-school affinity; what you don't see are feats that involve tricks that operate at the level of mechanics, a wide variety of "conditions" and condition-affecting feats, or character stuff in general that has more to do with gaming-the-system than with roleplaying a character in the world.

So in all that, I suggest, Arrows of Indra provides one way that you might "do it right" when it comes to innovative design that still falls entirely under the style of old-school play.

All that said, I think now that if I were to do something along similar lines to AoI's system but intended for some other setting, I might simplify the mechanics of character advancement even further, while at the same time using the "random advancement" method to encompass even more of what a character does. I won't have a chance to work out this idea with Dark Albion, as it won't be having its own rules-system; but possibly we'll be seeing the product of these thoughts in my next project after Albion.

RPGPundit

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