Replying only to Sean's original post--

It is kind of a double-standard that it begins preaching an art form yet monopolizes, and works from a regular-joe office.

Maybe the rulebook should have used the sinister theme to admit their capitalism.

"We will exploit you, draw you in and corrupt your mind. The world of darkness is just beyond this bridge. Pay the toll and pray you can return." (evil cackling)

It's a massive set up for drift. But more importantly, it's a massive set up for drift to exactly the kind of game the group drifts it to.

Gaiaguerrilla wrote: Replying only to Sean's original post--

It is kind of a double-standard that it begins preaching an art form yet monopolizes, and works from a regular-joe office.

Maybe the rulebook should have used the sinister theme to admit their capitalism.

"We will exploit you, draw you in and corrupt your mind. The world of darkness is just beyond this bridge. Pay the toll and pray you can return." (evil cackling)

Frank T wrote:

It's a massive set up for drift. But more importantly, it's a massive set up for drift to exactly the kind of game the group drifts it to.

And that's probably the secret of it's success. (That and the goth stuff.) I've heard this whole criticism about incoherent game design over and over again, but here's a game that almost any gamer can enjoy playing, given the right group. On the other hand, given the wrong group, the most coherent game in the world isn't enough to make everybody have a good time.

I can see the point in coherent game design, but I still think it's a mistake to point out WoD as an example of how not to do it. My 2 cents.

Sorry, Malcolm. Just my harsh mellodrama. If there's any non-fictional villainy in white wolf, there are much bigger fish to fry.

-I rebuke all attacks on White Wolf. Blessings, innocence. All happy. They're my favourite art.- (Fight Pentex!)

The above posts were split from World of Darkness 2.0.

After I have stated a thread is closed, it is closed. Do not post to it again. You are free to start new discussions in new threads.

This one, for instance, continues here, if there's an actual thread topic to be found in it. I don't see one yet.

Best,
Ron

Gaiaguerrilla wrote: Sorry, Malcolm. Just my harsh mellodrama. If there's any non-fictional villainy in white wolf, there are much bigger fish to fry.

-I rebuke all attacks on White Wolf. Blessings, innocence. All happy. They're my favourite art.- (Fight Pentex!)

Sorry Ron, I must have overread that "thread closed" part. My point was just that it need not be a bad thing to have mechanics support, even require drift. Despite all the criticism this approach has received, I believe it has great merits as well.

needs to meet that will, for the most part, never be a concern for folks who design games here. None of you need to assume you're dealing with people who have never played RPGs before, but White Wolf does.

Guys, I suspect this impending argument won't be suitable Forge content unless you very quickly get into some specifics. Malcolm, why do you say that indie game designers (I assume that's the "you" you were addressing) don't need to assume they're dealing with people who have never played RPGs before? What specific aspects of the WoD design make the game more accessible to new players? Was there any special attention paid to newbie-accessibility for the new WoD edition, and if so, what effects did that effort have on the design? Ralph, what aspects of the designs of the games you cite help make them newbie-friendly? How important is newbie-accessibility, in general, to Indie game publishers?

- Walt

Please consider the contents of A note on unguided Drift to be included in this thread.

Freaking moderating.

Best,
Ron

P.S. And yeah, what Walt said.

Good point Walt.

I think the idea of making a traditional game accessible to folks who aren't gamers is pretty much a myth. Its something either 1) game companies pay lip service to while really catering to the hard core gamer, or 2) understand so little about that even their honest efforts are unlikely to be useful.

The biggest obstacle to acceptance to new gamers is the fundamental structure of an RPG. Any game where the players have different levels of authority and different roles to play is going to be alien to people who are used to playing Monopoly where the only difference between players is the shape of their token. The whole "you can do anything" aspect to RPGs is also pretty alien to non gamers who are used to having rules that dictate exactly what you do on a turn. When you couple the "do anything you want" aspect with "but then you have to know all of these rules subsystems and how all of these attributes and skills interact with the dice in order to determine if you actually do do what you said" you've pretty much lost all non gamer accessibility. No amount of "how to roleplay" text is going to over come this.

Then when you get into the rules most RPGs have the written rules plus the unwritten rules...the assumed shared knowledge about gaming built into the rules. Phrases like "make a roll to jump the chasm", or "the GM decides what the difficulty is" are easily understood by gamers. To a non gamer its just gibberish. Who makes a roll, when do they make the roll, what is the thought process a player must go through before they even realize a roll will be necessary, what is this sequence of interrupting play to make a roll supposed to look like...do you raise your hand like in school? All of this stuff is glossed over at a pretty high level in most game texts (and I've seen nothing to suggest the latest version of WoD is any different in this regard).

And on top of this you have the collosal time committment required because the traditional structure assumes "on going campaign" which requires regularly scheduled play time and tons of time dedicated to prep. Niether of which are very appealing to a non gamer who's likely only looking for a diversion for a few hours at a weekend gathering with friends.


The games I mentioned above have several advantages as non-gamer games. First they use a pretty well understood hook. Everybody watches TV, everyone can imagine how a TV script gets written, everyone knows what the end result of a TV series is supposed to look like (PTA). In the case of MLwF anyone playing the game is likely to be a fan of the movies the game uses as inspiration. They know what things are supposed to look like, they know the structure of those movies, and even if they don't they know what a dysfunctional family looks like. With Universalis, the basic structure is pass the conch story telling which is still familiar to people even though its a dieing art form. So there's an immediate connection and an immediate understanding of "what to do".

Mechanically the games are all very simple and straight forward. Who rolls what when and why is laid out admirably and all of the excess chrome that may appeal to hard core gamers but just confuses new players has been stripped away.

Plus all three games have a relatively minimal amount of prep, can be returned to for a handful of sessions but also work acceptably as a one shot format, and generally just require far less time sacrifice from the players.

I think its almost a given that the more the game looks like a traditional RPG format, the less accessible its going to be, because the traditional RPG format evolved to serve the needs of the hard core gamer.

Valamir wrote:

needs to meet that will, for the most part, never be a concern for folks who design games here. None of you need to assume you're dealing with people who have never played RPGs before, but White Wolf does.

Are you serious? White Wolf...as an entry level RPG for people who've never played before?

WoD is more newbie friendly than My Life with Master? Then Universalis? Then Prime Time Adventures?

Walt Freitag wrote: Malcolm, why do you say that indie game designers (I assume that's the "you" you were addressing) don't need to assume they're dealing with people who have never played RPGs before? What specific aspects of the WoD design make the game more accessible to new players? Was there any special attention paid to newbie-accessibility for the new WoD edition, and if so, what effects did that effort have on the design?

- Walt

Malcolm,

You're relying upon the logical fallacy that "because more people play it, it must..." You're reportedly smart enough to know better.

As I've pointed out before when this argument has arisen, just because everyone eats apples does not mean that apples are the best fruit around.

Your claim is exactly equivalent to, "Hah! Everyone eats apples, the reason they all eat apples, and not kiwi, is because apples are better. Claiming they aren't means no one knows their own preferences, and so you're all basing your claim on egotistic, insular myths!"

Sorry, no. More people eat apples because they have a greater market and cultural presence than kiwi fruit.

More play White Wolf because...White Wolf has a higher exposure level in both gaming and non-gaming* circles (*by which I mean store-shelf and pop-culture presence).

What "more people play..." does not measure is whether or not more people actually prefer it to choice B.

Addendum: As well, how many individuals purchase a game is not a measure of whether they prefer it. Who avoids buying a game is a better measure of worth, as a purchase may be from habit, expectation, or peer influence (of various forms - from "oh, you gotta buy it" to "hrm, Tim bought this"), rather than based on actual preference between products.

eyebeams wrote:
The World of Darkness is more popular than all of those. It is one of a handful of games that people who are new to RPGs actually play.

and the fact that White Wolf writes to that audience,

and in the vast majority of cases, "indie" designers do not.

The hard truth of the matter is that mean 'ol profit-mongering White Wolf long ago realized that the best way to regularly feed children to the fiery belly of Mammon was to get them to *actually play* their games. Not just talk about them. Not just read them.

Anyway, the critique of the inaccessibility of the traditional RPG structure is an interesting one. I think that if computer games have taught us anything, it's that the assumption that non-gamers couldn't hack extended multi-session play is mistaken.

The challenging level of abstraction is in the social dimension and the goals of play, but any advice about this needs to be variegated -- because like most successful games, WoD isn't about assuming that the players (ncluding the GM) are idiots who need authorial direction through the bog-standard indie design -- that is, one that acts as if players can't be trusted with anything that supports something other than the game author's preferred mode of play. That's why it can't be friendly to the dominant design ethos here: It's not about the game some author wants them to play. It's about the game they want to play.

Awful, but true, I'm sure.

above Valamir wrote: 2) understand so little about that even their honest efforts are unlikely to be useful.

Valamir wrote: If you took 5 non gamers who've never roleplayed before and handed them a copy of WoD core rules and other non gamers who've never roleplayed before and handed them a copy of My Life with Master, which group do you think would be up and running and enjoying actual play first?

THAT'S what newbie friendly means.

Valamir wrote: Evidence of this? Where in the text of any WW book is there evidence that non roleplayers are more than a peripheral target market. If you mean using a goth themed game to appeal to the goth culture fad...sure that was a well timed marketing effort...but where do we see that in the actual rules of the game? If we were talking about Vampire LARPs you'd have more leg to stand on because LARPing is something that has expanded it audience into non traditional roleplayers.

Its a simple question really. What actual words written into the text of the current WoD release were written especially to help non gamers figure out how to play the game? How do they accomplish this?

Valamir wrote: I have plenty of non gamer friends. I know exactly what they're reaction would be if I handed them a WW book to read...eyes glazed over in minutes.

Indie games like MLwM, PTA, and Universalis are vastly more new gamer friendly than anything WW has ever even imagined doing. But our market penetration is fairly small.

So until someone combines the new gamer appeal of these indie titles with the market presence of WotC or WW...there won't be any growth in the RPG hobby.

Hm~

To be honest, I'm here at the Forge cause I like these games - I'm seeing various, and simple!!, ways to play RP's I hadn't seen before.
AD&D/d20 was my prior experiance to coming here. Thumbed through some WW products but my mind literally did glaze- twas like "Huh?! What did I just read?!". Mind does the same on d20 even now actually.

What I like about the Forge? With a basic gamers vocabulary, I can read these playtest games, actual play notes, and samples and go "Okay, I see what he's talkin about! I get it!"

On WW, I'm sorry but its not all that. It caters to dark gamers, most of whom cut their teeth on D&D and invariably return to D&D. I know of two WoD players: one is an unusual, teenaged girl who is "interested" in it (I think because her boy toy of the week likely is) and the other is a shop owner who got into it when it started and is now selling his books. As for D&D? The same shop owner is still playing. His shop has a board for people to post new campaigns (which has a few notes on it). My community college campus has three groups running. I work at a Wal*Mart where I got sucked into a game as a Half-Elf Ranger.

Stats are nice, shop sales are great, how many people do you know playing it? I know more people in my area playing (even just READING) Forge material than I know people playing/reading WW/WoD RP products.
Hard cold stats? Nope. Observations from the field? Yup.

daMoose_Neo wrote: On WW, I'm sorry but its not all that. It caters to dark gamers, most of whom cut their teeth on D&D and invariably return to D&D. I know of two WoD players:
...
Stats are nice, shop sales are great, how many people do you know playing it? I know more people in my area playing (even just READING) Forge material than I know people playing/reading WW/WoD RP products.
Hard cold stats? Nope. Observations from the field? Yup.

Starting with Malcolm,

I'm sorry you're not free to answer my question about design features targeted for new players. I would have been very interested in your prespective on this. I quite understand your situation, though.

Even granting that non-indie designers and publishers' ability to feed themselves and their children depends on how well they get new people gaming, I'm skeptical that this actually results in their making an effective effort to do so. The problem is that while next year's revenue might depend on the rate of new people gaming, tomorrow's revenue usually depends on the appeal to the existing core customers who often have diametrically opposite demands from the potential newbies. Again and again, in many industries, those circumstances combined with human nature and the tragedy of the commons has resulted in companies eating their seed corn and chasing a boom-and-bust cycle. I've seen this from the inside as a professional computer game designer, as an interested customer and amateur designer in RPGs, and as a completely disinterested outsider (long-ago customer) in the comics industry.

(Why is Marvel teetering when the Spider Man movies were huge hits? I have no inside knowledge at all, but I do know that several different friends of mine -- all of them with kids -- have told me of going to look for Spider Man comic books after seeing the movie(s), and being unable to figure out what title to buy or what the heck was actually going on in the issue(s) they read. No doubt Marvel was in dread of insulting the intelligence of their readers by publishing a comic whose storyline a new reader could easily grasp -- but it's not the new readers' intelligence that's the problem, it's their patience. No doubt any Marvel creator would agree that their ability to feed their kids depends on attracting new comics readers. Yet they're producing books that are uninviting to potential new readers, and they're reportedly going broke. Go figure.)

Eschewing the "system mastery" aspect of role playing games (or ceding that niche to the competitor who already has it pretty much locked up) seems like a wise business decision, and this probably will indeed help make WoD more accessible to newbies. In the recent past, though, participating in the social scene around WoD (which is required to get involved in an actual game, except when a group of newbies all start from scratch with each other at the same time) has appeared to me to require a roughly analogous mastery of setting and metaplot. That might change with the new edition, but it might not, depending on whether a new flood of setting material is on the way in. (And why shouldn't there be? The "mastery" element of participation and play, whether it's of system or something else, can be very appealing to current customers, the ones with your tomorrow's revenue already in their pockets.)

Ralph,

My tough question about the newbie accessibility of leading indie games is this: how often are these games played with an entire newbie group, as opposed to a few newbie players with an experienced "bass player" to lead and inspire them? Also, we've seen many examples of players who have never role-played "getting it" and becoming excellent players instantly when unftettered by mechanics-mastery concerns, but are there not also new players who lack that aptitude and would actually do better using game mechanics as a crutch at first?

Yes, I'm raising the opposite issue for indie games that I did for WoD, where I focused on those trying to enter "the scene" as individuals rather than new groups starting out together. But given the sparser market penetration of the indie games, it makes some sense to shift the focus that way.

Now, in general:

It seems we talk a lot about appealing to potential new players as if they're one homogeneous group. Is it not quite possible that indie games and industry games appeal to different and perhaps even non-overlapping populations?

In one extreme view, everyone who doesn't play role playing games is a potential new player. That makes it impossible to differentiate new players, market to them, or really understand them in any way at all, because it's a negatively defined group about which we only know one thing: they don't play role playing games. In the opposite extreme view, to be a potential role player someone must walk into a game store (or Web site, etc.) and say, "I want to start role playing, what should I do?" Those few people are indeed far more likely to take home a WoD book than an indie book, and I'll venture to say that those few people are probably pretty well served already by the industry.

A more common approach to "who is a potential role player?" is to look at current role playing gamers, assess their characteristics (age, socioeconomics, other interests, etc.), and designate everyone who fits that same profile but doesn't already play RPGs as a potential role player. This is IMO only slightly less bizarre than the previous two assessments. It serves the industry well by focusing on those who are most likely to be well served by the industry, but it's self-defeating as far as attracting new role-players to feed the children etc. is concerned.

It's pointless to argue about who's attracting potential role players better, without defining who we're actually talking about. What are the characteristics of a potential player of Indie games? Of WoD games? Who are these people exactly?

- Walt

Ralph,

My tough question about the newbie accessibility of leading indie games is this: how often are these games played with an entire newbie group, as opposed to a few newbie players with an experienced "bass player" to lead and inspire them? Also, we've seen many examples of players who have never role-played "getting it" and becoming excellent players instantly when unftettered by mechanics-mastery concerns, but are there not also new players who lack that aptitude and would actually do better using game mechanics as a crutch at first?

Ah, sorry, I was very unclear.

The issue I'm interested in isn't difficult or unfocused rules, but difficult in-game decision-making and substantive creative contribution via play. Something that many indie games specifically pride themselves on having.

I don't know whether this is really an issue or not, but I do remember that in my very first role-playing sessions, my character could do about five different relevant things in most in-game situations. And I mean very specific things like swing a sword, fire an arrow, cast his (one) spell, or run away. It's decades too late for me to try to imagine whether, if that first session had involved decisions weighing my character's passion for truth against his loyalty to his family, or requiring me to describe how my character would go about convincing the blacksmith's daughter to seduce the sheriff, I would have been more attracted, or less so. Similarly, I can't tell whether getting to improv bass-playing GMing woud have been easier or harder right out of the gate, without the prior experience of GMing pre-planned adventures/environments.

Have I missed Actual Play examples of "never played an RPG before, just GMed MLWM, it rocked" or even "never GMed a role playing game before, just GMed PTA, it rocked?" I'm ready to believe them if there are people out there saying that. I don't have any reason to believe it's not likely. Just haven't seen the evidence yet to compare against novices playing and GMing industry games, to support a claim that the indies are more accessible to new players.

- Walt

Hello,

Iin agreement with Ralph, BUT ...

I'd like to add this qualifier: actual and reliable appeal to folks who have no prior experience with "adventure gaming"* is terra incognita. Whether the original TSR dream of seeing D&D under every child's Christmas tree will be realized by any modern large-scale company (Hasbro at the deep end, obviously) is unknown, although I think the prognosis is grim. Whether games designed and written more in the, oh, Dust Devils model have a better chance - or at least a better chance of eventually producing such a game - is even more unknown.

Here's my take: "even more unknown" compared to, in my view, historically demonstrably a dud doesn't seem so bad.

Best,
Ron

* unofficial blanket term with few/bad defining boundaries: CCGs, RPGs, wargames using miniatures, card games based on imaginative input, etc

Whew! Here's the longer post I was working on.

I'll begin with the observation that the Forge is founded on the notion that "play sells," and furthermore on the notion that "publishing = available." Both of which have been borne out numerous times, and increasingly continue to do so. Hence there's no point of disagreement with Malcolm's claim about White Wolf's marketing-ideology. What differs is what sales are, and how many are considered successful - and what constitutes success.

The business model followed by White Wolf, AEG, and a number of other game companies is notable not for any distinctive approach to play, but rather for its remarkable adaptation to the three-tier publishing environment.

I'll start with what "popular" means in that environment.

Popularity among game store customers is a feeble variable. Examining market-share among them is a little like finding out whether Spider-Man sells better than Batman this particular month - of great interest to Marvel and DC flacks, to be sure, but no particular indicator of what other sorts of comics might be successful, or how they might be sold.

Why would I say such a terrible thing? Because game store owners are in a hard position - their first priority is to move stuff they've already bought off of their shelves. This stuff is raw bleeding debt, and they'll order deep on something that's supposed to move, in order to make even the barest black margin before next month hits.

Hence they will push that stuff hard. They'll shelve it accordingly, talk it up accordingly, and cultivate an in-store community accordingly. Shelfwar publishing tactics (i.e. tons of supplements to create a single-color wall) reinforces this behavior on their part and even, to an extent, can be considered "trapping" a retailer into a must-reorder must-keep-up pattern associated with a particular company. Popularity, in this case, means locking down store orders via well-timed promotion and release.

Therefore what White Wolf, AEG, et al. are doing so well is to hit the retailer's ordering patterns and expectations (which are not driven by sales, but rather by debt) dead on target. The company goal is to move books downstream and to fill the shelves. "Sales" means two things: orders of new product and re-orders of old product which moves. Only the latter includes an actual breathing customer, and it doesn't even have to be the primary consideration if new releases are emphasized and promoted.

This has led to the "supplement treadmill" policy for many companies, in which supplements are supposed to drive sales of the original core books. However, this policy is a deadly trap for the company and has killed many of them, especially over the last decade. Very few companies to date have profited by "the treadmill," but the survivors/victors include White Wolf and AEG. Why?

Because they additionally practice scorched-earth corebook tactics. What this means is to shift to a new game and new corebook, with which to do it again. Bring it out, release supplements, ride that wave briefly, and then do it again. Layer these releases in such a fashion that people are still emotionally committed to buying your older product's supplements when the wholly new product hits.

I credit AEG with true mastery of this tactic, especially with the whole L5R, Oriental Adventures, and Rokugan thing, a truly dizzying feat.

Anyway, back to White Wolf. Its four-game, supplement-heavy treadmill tactic failed in the mid-90s. People are gonna argue with me about that, but you'll have to get over it. It failed. The goth thing was over, and the company's initial success based on becoming gear for goths was past its sell-date. The company faced financial crisis.

The company survived, in my view, by switching away from the supplement-support of those four games and into the scorched-earth approach, by regularly releasing new games. By new games, I include highly-colored revisions of old ones, new settings for them, and so on. (I hesitate to speculate on whether and how shifts of power and ownership within White Wolf itself, at this exact time, are related to this shift in policy. None of the insider accounts are especially pretty, but all of them seem so jaundiced that I have no idea where to assign credibility.) This takes us through Trinity, Aberrant, Adventure!, Hunter, etc, etc. Arguably Dark Ages and Kindred of the East count too, earlier.

The recent "starting over," brand-new World of Darkness releases are consistent with my point - the old titles were exhausted of the last of their sales potential, so simply ... re-do them. Here they are: new games! Thousands shipped to distribution (cha-ching at WW central). Hundreds filled the shelves in stores. Initial sales are high, I'm sure, and as I see it based on the "ooh, it's the new thing" mentality of the already-existing customers. For a look at this mentality, see multiple threads asking "should I sell my old books off?" on other forums. These folks belong to a semi-imaginary club based on their consumerism, and the dues have come due once again. Twenty-unit-per-month sales in a given store are probably not off the beam ... but not for a whole lotta months.

Well now, where does all this bring my point for this post?

My point is that popularity and sales of this type are simply not comparable between (say) White Wolf and (say) Adept Press. The terms don't even mean the same things.

Adept Press will almost certainly never sell twenty units of a given title from any given game store in a single month. However, it sells all of its books steadily from release date to present, both via stores and via on-line sale. Game-play and purchase spreads through usage and through community networking. One copy of each book on select retailer's shelves is exactly what I'm looking for, not only as a source of sale but also as an advertisement over time. The retailer does not need to move 20 copies a month as he did not go into debt to acquire them in the first place. It keeps spreading from store to store, state to state, and country to country, for all titles. Retailers are finally in the habit of re-ordering them because they notice each copy passes the register, once a month, like clockwork.

It's a different sort of popularity, which is to say, not a subcultural phenomenon or fad (at best), or (more realistically) even an impressive spike at the first month's release, but rather a sustainable market of whatever size (in this case, smallish but highly profitable for me, and growing). Furthermore, it's a different sort of "sales," which in my view are not sales unless a customer clutches the book itself. Adept Press practices full returnability for just this reason. I'd be interested to know whether any company which practices WW/AEG scorched-earth publication does so.

Anyway, there's my little talk. Slinging around "popularity" as an unqualified term isn't very useful when comparing the actual use, success, financial status, or word-of-mouth buzz of role-playing games.

If anyone has substantive historical information which modifies my consumer's-eye analysis of White Wolf publishing history, I'm willing to learn.

Best,
Ron

1) I'm not making any judgment about the quality of one game or another, really, except to say that the WoD is designed to work a certain way. Whether or not you approve of that way is not something I find relevant, except to ask whether or not your feelings are backed by an experience of play, and whether or not I ought to believe your experience of play better than somebody else's.

2) On newbie appeal: The fact remains that the social dynamic of gaming is something that's foreign to most people. That remains constant throughout virtually all RPGs. The things that have been mentioned as so wierd in *this* discussion, though, are all elements that are a part and parcel of recreational culture. And if you don't believe there's any prep outside of RPGs? well, there are a hundreds of HALO websites that disagree, and millions of inane conversations about HALO level design and tactics that supplement it.

3) I've heard this claim that few people really prefer the second highest-selling RPG in the world quite a bit. As much as I am . . . intrigued by the alternate explanations proffered, I think it's a bit rich to claim that it's because game stores aggressively push something they bought a lot of. Most game stores are happy if you buy *anything* and more and more make RPG orders by request, adding 1 or 2 to stock their shelves. White Wolf's relationship with mainstream goth culture probably peaked in the mid-90s -- a decade ago -- and harping on it as a fad . . . well, we'd all like decade+ fads, wouldn't we?

As for the White Wolf "financial crisis"; it was on par with the same crisis that every single company had from 1993 onward. We're talking about a decaade where the threshold for success for most companies dropped by 80%+ here.

4) Many views about the supplement treadmill are so mistaken that they warrant an entire separate thread, but it's not a Forge topic, really. Suffice to say that it's a fancy name for something almost universal to publishing and that even WotC now realizes it needs to run the treadmill like everyone else. It's a useful metaphor in that it's led to higher quality books that have a more central relationship with individual lines (and with less redundancy -- the term was originally coined to talk about TSR's problem competing with itself), but past the core, new product sells better than old product. Always has.

5) I can run the themes of My Life With Master by applying some tweaks to the WoD engine, and when some of my players want something else, I can run that, too -- I can even do both at the same time. The reverse is not true. Drift is not an aberration that only a few groups can survive. Drift is the default state of gaming groups unless you apply artificial intervention. The basis of my model of play is that I actually run games for people, no matter what mood they're in, I know what I'll pick most nights, and puctuate it with more specialized fare on others.

6) The best thing is to get *both* games and hybridize. Then I expand the continuum of play and can please my players in all seasons. Drift is good. Drift is the way to be. Drift is, in fact, the ideal form of gaming, provided people do not intervene with their own agendas in bad faith. You fix that pretty easily though, by not gaming with people you don't like.

That's the essence of it, really. There are no competing models to a smart gamer. WoDMLWM couldn't happen without both. I like coming here because there are glimmers of innovation that you don't see elsewhere, but I'm not holding my nose about anything else that works, either.

Malcolm, the comments I made were in no way shape or form anything about the quality of anything.

My contributition to this thread was directed entirely and exclusively at your assertion that WoD is more friendly to new gamers than indie designs are.

So far you've responded to none of the points made in that regard and instead have retreated into into this "defend White Wolf against the Forge haters" schtick.

Somewhere you got this big chip on your shoulder about how the Forge hates and bad mouths White Wolf and you need to leap to their defense. Well, 1) that's not really relevant to the discussion at hand, 2) you offer no evidence at all to contridict any of the statements made other than arguement by authority, putting yourself forward as an authority because you've worked with them, and 3) if anyone who is actually a representative from White Wolf really wanted to come and set the misconceptions straight they're more then welcome...and fully capable of "defending" themselves should they feel the need to do so.


So should I take your silence on any of the issues or questions I asked above to be a concession that WoD games aren't really designed with new gamers in mind?

Wow, what an exceptionally testy thread.

I gotta say, I really do love the WoD. As a setting, yeah, even with the early '90s goth-zeitgeist thing in play.

However, I really only love it as a setting. Honestly, whenever I've bought I WW product, I've truly wished I could magically eliminate all mechanical references from it, keeping just descriptive text and artwork. Don't feel bad Eyebeams: I feel that way about several other games as well ( Jorune comes to mind).

As for newbie accessibilty, I gotta tell ya, Universalis has it in spades. The only things more newbie friendly I've seen are two freebie kiddie-rpgs ( Shadows and The Nightime Animals Save the World). It would be nice to see companies, like WW that do have name recognition and market access actually experiment with more "rapid-deployment" game design.

I will most likely be picking up the nWoD materials. I'll likely be playing inthe setting with non/new gamers. But I'll probably be using Universalis as the engine...

k-Bob

My experince has shown that WW games, as a whole product, are far from the best way of attracting true newbies into the game (that is, they have several wrinkles that can get in the way), but more interestingly, it *IS* (in my experience) frequently used as a gateway game, and even successfully. Granted, I'm fueled by local anecdotes, but I think the logic makes sense. Why it's a gateway:


• The worlds they create. The WoD (or Exalted-verse, for that matter) have proven very hooky to several different kinds of people. It's a cominbation of factors:

• a single core idea ("Magic? Cool!")
• world-building by a small number of factions/splats/whatnot, which I actually find to be a characteristic of world-building (for RPGs, fiction, or otherwise) for many associated within the gamer culture)
• said splats are quickly grabbed onto / self-identified with ("Wow, I'm just like a Ventrue/Ecstatic"). The Traditions of Mage are notable for, really, catering to almost each of an idealized geek's archetypal wants.
• touching on maturer themes (and promising an escape from some dysfunctional play that a GM, who is probably not a newbie, might already have experieinced)


• The supplement model (as well as extra "swag", like jewelry for different Vampire clans) offers lots of chances to buy in, and for a GM to further self-identify with this "brand". (And, I indeed do notice WW-GMs branding themselves as "especially a Werewolf/Mage/Dark Ages GM".)
• The GMs totally buy in, and are evangelists for the product. The pitch itself isn't a terrible stretch (vampires = sexy) and the world sounds cool, so you've got a Group Buy-In, and the game is up.



So: (1) World-building, (2) Addiction, (3) GM-buyin and an easier sell. Makes sense?

P.S. I just recently work at BzzAgent, and it appears that some of the language from there has eked into my text. <g>

I just want to clarify some points so this threads easier to read next time.

And if you don't believe there's any prep outside of RPGs? well, there are a hundreds of HALO websites that disagree, and millions of inane conversations about HALO level design and tactics that supplement it.

Drift is good. Drift is the way to be. Drift is, in fact, the ideal form of gaming, provided people do not intervene with their own agendas in bad faith.

Malcolm, the comments I made were in no way shape or form anything about the quality of anything.

My contributition to this thread was directed entirely and exclusively at your assertion that WoD is more friendly to new gamers than indie designs are.

So far you've responded to none of the points made in that regard and instead have retreated into into this "defend White Wolf against the Forge haters" schtick.

Somewhere you got this big chip on your shoulder about how the Forge hates and bad mouths White Wolf and you need to leap to their defense. Well, 1) that's not really relevant to the discussion at hand, 2) you offer no evidence at all to contridict any of the statements made other than arguement by authority, putting yourself forward as an authority because you've worked with them, and 3) if anyone who is actually a representative from White Wolf really wanted to come and set the misconceptions straight they're more then welcome...and fully capable of "defending" themselves should they feel the need to do so.

So should I take your silence on any of the issues or questions I asked above to be a concession that WoD games aren't really designed with new gamers in mind?

komradebob wrote: Wow, what an exceptionally testy thread.

I gotta say, I really do love the WoD. As a setting, yeah, even with the early '90s goth-zeitgeist thing in play.

However, I really only love it as a setting. Honestly, whenever I've bought I WW product, I've truly wished I could magically eliminate all mechanical references from it, keeping just descriptive text and artwork. Don't feel bad Eyebeams: I feel that way about several other games as well ( Jorune comes to mind).

As for newbie accessibilty, I gotta tell ya, Universalis has it in spades. The only things more newbie friendly I've seen are two freebie kiddie-rpgs ( Shadows and The Nightime Animals Save the World). It would be nice to see companies, like WW that do have name recognition and market access actually experiment with more "rapid-deployment" game design.

I will most likely be picking up the nWoD materials. I'll likely be playing inthe setting with non/new gamers. But I'll probably be using Universalis as the engine...

k-Bob

And if you don't believe there's any prep outside of RPGs? well, there are a hundreds of HALO websites that disagree, and millions of inane conversations about HALO level design and tactics that supplement it.

But they don't need to do this to play HALO, correct?

To clarify, the issue is about necessary pre game prep.

Drift is good. Drift is the way to be. Drift is, in fact, the ideal form of gaming, provided people do not intervene with their own agendas in bad faith.

Drifting is also a skill/series of skills, the learning of which can be aided by a book.

Unless it's something that must be learnt/developed in issolation to ensure the artisitc purity of the eventual drift? Or so the user doesn't follow the guideline like a robot? Is that what you meant?

Hmm. Quite a bit of harsh talk on both sides.

First of all, Malcolm -- I agree with most of your points. However, I'm not so sure about your last one...

eyebeams wrote: 7) However, if you want to get right down to it, my personal agenda is player driven, and I think extremely narrow games that try to shove the game author's creative agenda down the players' throats is horse hockey. I think Drift is the way God Himself intended us to play, and if you disagree with me fundamentally on this point, we are simply two solitudes.

Ron Edwards wrote: Anyway, back to White Wolf. Its four-game, supplement-heavy treadmill tactic failed in the mid-90s. People are gonna argue with me about that, but you'll have to get over it. It failed. The goth thing was over, and the company's initial success based on becoming gear for goths was past its sell-date. The company faced financial crisis.

The company survived, in my view, by switching away from the supplement-support of those four games and into the scorched-earth approach, by regularly releasing new games. By new games, I include highly-colored revisions of old ones, new settings for them, and so on. (I hesitate to speculate on whether and how shifts of power and ownership within White Wolf itself, at this exact time, are related to this shift in policy. None of the insider accounts are especially pretty, but all of them seem so jaundiced that I have no idea where to assign credibility.) This takes us through Trinity, Aberrant, Adventure!, Hunter, etc, etc. Arguably Dark Ages and Kindred of the East count too, earlier.

Eyebeams wrote:

However, I will rise to the bait though, and say that, yeah, the WoD is more accessible than most indie games, because most indie games are designed to be played one particular way and thus, will be dead boring to anybody who doesn't want to play that way. I know that this observation is probably so pedestrian -- so mind-numbingly *normal* as to probably be rejected out of hand by more sophisticated appraoches, but new gamers aren't sophisticated theoreticians either, I've noticed.

I haven't found any prep besides chargen and maybe 1 page of notes necessary in years. I think I've done more reading trying to learn to controls, customize them and crack campaign mode in HALO than any one of my players *ever* has playing an RPG.

eyebeams wrote:
However, I will rise to the bait though, and say that, yeah, the WoD is more accessible than most indie games, because most indie games are designed to be played one particular way and thus, will be dead boring to anybody who doesn't want to play that way. I know that this observation is probably so pedestrian -- so mind-numbingly *normal* as to probably be rejected out of hand by more sophisticated appraoches, but new gamers aren't sophisticated theoreticians either, I've noticed.

1) White Wolf does not work the way a lot of you think it does or, perhaps, wish it did for the sake of ideological justification.

7) However, if you want to get right down to it, my personal agenda is player driven, and I think extremely narrow games that try to shove the game author's creative agenda down the players' throats is horse hockey. I think Drift is the way God Himself intended us to play, and if you disagree with me fundamentally on this point, we are simply two solitudes.

Alternately, you could come to a less silly conclusion, like the fact that I'm bound by contractual obligations. The fact is, though:

1) I have been as specific as I can be.

2) If I knew one thing to be true about the design agenda, I would not argue its opposite.

3) You see that I have said several times now that new gamers do matter to the company. I have not pointed out.

So you are left with believing I'm a liar, or not. Do you think I'm a liar?

Mmmm, I think this thread is devolving into 'convince Malcolm'. Err, what benefit is there in that? Personally I found after a few instances and finally at the 'learning halo is about as difficult as RPG prep stage (after years of play)', I'm just not gelling with him thought wise to get any benefit out of further discussion, for the moment.

Of course, just giving up and trying some other time can lead to 'you wont believe what happened at the forge today' stories, but hey, chins need to move.

So what are we aiming for? An idea of what newbie friendlyness in a game really is? Really you want a good bit of too and fro with other posters, but if it's not good too and fro but just fro, just try and pick out some other poster who'll mentally tustle the way that produces the sort of neat stuff the forge does. I mean, I'm sure some posters have given up on arguing with me in the past, and it's been for the best (but not for me, of course. But it did give me time to reflect on what I was saying).

Hello,

This thread ultimately comes down to "Malcolm feels victimized." No one is going to get anywhere in that context.

Malcolm, if you can provide actual references for victimizing you and/or White Wolf, please do so in Site Discussion. I know you think you have with all your whining about corporate this-and-that, but this is the deep end of the pool - people are going to say things you don't agree with and you'll have to accept that as something to discuss, not as something to wave around as a sign of oppression.

So far, your points are feeble. ("Think of the children!!" Feh.) I strongly suggest that you start a Site Discussion thread which specifically focuses on the only reasonable point you've made: we should, at the Forge, as a community, consider whether we rely on empty and baseless concepts about White Wolf or similar publishers. I do think plenty of people need some educating about them.

I also think most of the other substantive topics here have become Publishing topics. I've answered John Kim's questions to me in What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked) over there, and I recommend that most of the other topics in the thread be brought there as well.

Best,
Ron

eyebeams wrote:

Gaiaguerrilla wrote: Sorry, Malcolm. Just my harsh mellodrama. If there's any non-fictional villainy in white wolf, there are much bigger fish to fry.

-I rebuke all attacks on White Wolf. Blessings, innocence. All happy. They're my favourite art.- (Fight Pentex!)

Oh, there are reasons to object to the way the business end of the company affects the creative end. It's just that the way these things actually work is not exactly what people tend to claim.

Many of the things the company does are really very straightforward. For instance, I noted earlier that there are goals the ST chapter needs to meet that will, for the most part, never be a concern for folks who design games here. None of you need to assume you're dealing with people who have never played RPGs before, but White Wolf does.

The products the company puts out are much, much more driven by the creative end than most people assume. The default assumption here -- that creatives are just hand puppets for management and development -- is an interesting one considering the alleged value placed on creativity here. The diffference in development and management styles are also much, much more radical. Where one developer might do a line by line redline, another might leave two or three words. Sometimes the outline is king. Sometimes it's only a very loose suggestion.

But certainly, its operations are going to be different from vanity-press style operations. That doesn't change the fact that the company wants people to play the game. Play is sales. It's nice to pretend that people just read and shelve WW's books, but that prestense will, in most cases, be incorrect.

I don't regret working for them, but there are drawbacks, and I'm looking forward to doing my own work as well.

This thread ultimately comes down to "Malcolm feels victimized." No one is going to get anywhere in that context.

Malcolm, if you can provide actual references for victimizing you and/or White Wolf, please do so in Site Discussion. I know you think you have with all your whining about corporate this-and-that, but this is the deep end of the pool - people are going to say things you don't agree with and you'll have to accept that as something to discuss, not as something to wave around as a sign of oppression.

So far, your points are feeble. ("Think of the children!!" Feh.) I strongly suggest that you start a Site Discussion thread which specifically focuses on the only reasonable point you've made: we should, at the Forge, as a community, consider whether we rely on empty and baseless concepts about White Wolf or similar publishers. I do think plenty of people need some educating about them.

I also think most of the other substantive topics here have become Publishing topics. I've answered John Kim's questions to me in What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked) over there, and I recommend that most of the other topics in the thread be brought there as well.

Ralph: I don't think responding you you at this time would be enlightening for either of us.

John: I'm not talking about GNS. I'm talking about the narrowly focused games that are currently trendy around here. I think a design needs a creative locus, but that play involves *knowing deviation* from it, as well as adherence. A robust system provides both options. This is rather sarcastically known in non-indie circles as the ability to "play it stupid."

Otherwise, I don't think a shared creative agenda is always necessary. You can run a game that fulfills to wildly different objectives of two different players, as long as you have the tools.

I think this whole "Corporate" thing is hilarious. White Wolf and WotC are tiny corporations. They have exactly one office each. Their staffs are probably under a hundred full time employees. What kind of cars do their top people drive? I'd bet a dollar to a donut hole that nobody at White Wolf or WotC drives a Lexus, let alone a Mercedes or Porsche.

Look around you. Virtually everything that you see was manufactured, transported and retailed by companies bigger than the entire RPG industry. Every TV show you watch is made by people with vastly more funding, personnel and bureaucracy. Just look at the credits. "Friends" probably employees more people than WotC. Come to think, "The Magic Johnson Show" probably did, too.

Face facts people. White Wolf may be the second biggest fish in the pond, but this is the smallest fucking pond in town. Let's all extend our eyestalks (or whatever) above the waterline for a moment shall we? If White Wolf's top people wanted to make money, they could get more of it (and more easily) managing a chain of convenience stores or fast food restaurants. They'd have an easier time getting the business loans, too.

The *only* reason to make RPGs for a living is because you like gaming, you like gamers, and you want to create things for gamers. It's too hard and the rewards are too small to do this for any other reason. I'm betting that "corporate" as he is, Malcolm could make a lot more money doing something else and be working a lot less hard to boot. And getting more props from his parents for having "a real job."

White Wolf and WotC are about as corporate as my left foot. Maybe less so. My left foot is usually wrapped in a Nike. Calling yourself "indie" is great, but don't think that the "corporate" guy down the street represents some monolithic evil. It's more of a minilith.

eyebeams wrote: John: I'm not talking about GNS. I'm talking about the narrowly focused games that are currently trendy around here. I think a design needs a creative locus, but that play involves *knowing deviation* from it, as well as adherence. A robust system provides both options. This is rather sarcastically known in non-indie circles as the ability to "play it stupid."

Otherwise, I don't think a shared creative agenda is always necessary. You can run a game that fulfills to wildly different objectives of two different players, as long as you have the tools.

Precious Villain wrote: I think this whole "Corporate" thing is hilarious. White Wolf and WotC are tiny corporations. They have exactly one office each. Their staffs are probably under a hundred full time employees. What kind of cars do their top people drive? I'd bet a dollar to a donut hole that nobody at White Wolf or WotC drives a Lexus, let alone a Mercedes or Porsche.

Look around you. Virtually everything that you see was manufactured, transported and retailed by companies bigger than the entire RPG industry. Every TV show you watch is made by people with vastly more funding, personnel and bureaucracy. Just look at the credits. "Friends" probably employees more people than WotC. Come to think, "The Magic Johnson Show" probably did, too.

Face facts people. White Wolf may be the second biggest fish in the pond, but this is the smallest fucking pond in town. Let's all extend our eyestalks (or whatever) above the waterline for a moment shall we? If White Wolf's top people wanted to make money, they could get more of it (and more easily) managing a chain of convenience stores or fast food restaurants. They'd have an easier time getting the business loans, too.

The *only* reason to make RPGs for a living is because you like gaming, you like gamers, and you want to create things for gamers. It's too hard and the rewards are too small to do this for any other reason. I'm betting that "corporate" as he is, Malcolm could make a lot more money doing something else and be working a lot less hard to boot. And getting more props from his parents for having "a real job."

White Wolf and WotC are about as corporate as my left foot. Maybe less so. My left foot is usually wrapped in a Nike. Calling yourself "indie" is great, but don't think that the "corporate" guy down the street represents some monolithic evil. It's more of a minilith.

Could you enlighten us? I don't have the perspective on how these things are done and they could be illustrative from a theoretical standpoint.

I think extremely narrow games that try to shove the game author's creative agenda down the players' throats is horse hockey.

By contrast, Indie games never have to mandatorily sell themselves to neophytes, ever.

What, did I stutter?

NEW THREADS. Please take all sub-topics to NEW THREADS. There are too many threads in this one spot. This thread can remain happy in its three-page "sets stage for multiple new threads" status.

Thanks,
Ron

Hey, I don't mean to pile on, but I have a question: which games do you consider to be trying to "shove the game author's creative agenda down the players' throats?" I've never gotten that impression from any of the games made by folks who frequent this site, but maybe I'm not understanding what you mean.

Can you explain why White Wolf has to do that but indie games don't? I mean, I think it's a pretty consistent business logic for any company to expand their market, but why isn't it just as sound for the indie games?

From what I've seen, I'd say it's just as good, if not better, for indie designers to market to a "never roleplayed before" crowd. Why? Because indie games tend to be a big step in a new direction, and "seasoned" gamers are often enough either a) damn content with what they already have, or b) seriously resistant to change.* Whereas I can explain Universalis or Primetime Adventures or My Life with Master to my in-laws and they get it. How do I explain GURPS to someone who's never gamed?

No biggie, Malcolm. Thread's closed now though.

Best,
Ron