The Gaming Den

What? There are thousands of people who believe the Tea Party, and thousands of people think spirit science is legit. Saying "a lot of people think this is good" is not nearly an argument for it.

The thing is, *World has bad rules. The fact that those rules are bad is exemplified because most (not "thousands", but most) people don't want it. You bring up all of these points in defense of your position, and then as soon as they're turned on you, you just fall back on "IT'S JUST PEOPLE'S OPINIONS MAN, STOP OPPRESSING ME YOU CAN'T DO BETTER". Just because a small group of people like eating glue doesn't mean glue is something you should stock in vending machines or offer at dinner parties.

silva wrote:Whatever.

Thousands of players are having fun with a game developed and published by a single guy - thats important.

Have anyone here did something similar ? I mean, is there any actual rpg designer here ? With the amount of arrogance shown in this thread, one should suspect there is a million-selling designer around here somewhere.

Is there ?

Is this the "since you never made X you can't judge it" fallacy?

Also marketing a game is different then making a game.

Nope, it was K who started it:

K wrote: you'll find that the rest of the world agrees with my assumptions and there won't ever be massive sales of AW or any other games that are barely above freeform RP.

Funny how you guys choose the weapon, but then start to lose the fight with that weapon, and resort to crying like babies.

3000 units is "massive sales?


The bar. She is low.

silva wrote:Nope, it was K who started it:

K wrote: you'll find that the rest of the world agrees with my assumptions and there won't ever be massive sales of AW or any other games that are barely above freeform RP.

Funny how you guys choose the weapon, but then start to lose the fight with that weapon, and resort to crying like babies.

That has nothing to do with the question I asked.

silva wrote:Whatever.

Thousands of players are having fun with a game developed and published by a single guy - thats important.

Have anyone here did something similar ? I mean, is there any actual rpg designer here ? With the amount of arrogance shown in this thread, one should suspect there is a million-selling designer around here somewhere.

Is there ?

Frank made After Sundown. That is, in fact, an RPG.

An RPG btw that many of the Dennizens hold up as a pretty solid product, as far as I've seen. Which is saying a lot.

Koumei has also written several RPG-type projects up.
Phonelobster has written a heartbreaker, too.

So, really, this is the wrong place to be slinging that around.

silva wrote:Whatever.

Thousands of players are having fun with a game developed and published by a single guy - thats important.

Have anyone here did something similar ? I mean, is there any actual rpg designer here ? With the amount of arrogance shown in this thread, one should suspect there is a million-selling designer around here somewhere.

Is there ?

Yes. Aftersundown has more downloads than Apocalypse World does sales, and that happened in less time.

Yes. Frank was part of the team that made Shadowrun 4 books which outsold your thousands of World sales by several hundred times.

Yes. This forum has the Tomes, which have been used and liked by more than 3000 people, because they are not shit.

"After Sundown" ? Never heard of it outside here. While Apocalypse World shows up on RPGnet, theRPGsite, Story-Games, ENWorld, Gnome Stew and even on MTV. (and no, self-created threads for advertising doesnt count)

And downloads doesnt count either. Otherwise we should count all downloads of AW, its playbooks and derivatives (Dungeon World, Tremulus, etc).

So shut da fuck up.


EDIT: Im not judging "After Sundown" value as a game, as Ive never read it. It can be a perfectly fine game. Im just presenting the facts about popularity - the weapon you guys elected for the duel.

"I never heard of that one game out of the three you mentioned but I totally heard this other game got mentioned in all these other places and therefore based on my personal experience my game is more popular and thus better than the other one."

Damn silva you are diggin this hole deep.

Ancient History wrote for Shadowrun too; JigokuBotsu is a published author; K wrote (is still writing?) the Dead City chronicles; etc.

Honestly, I think more regulars have published than not, around here.

fectin wrote:Ancient History wrote for Shadowrun too; JigokuBotsu is a published author; K wrote (is still writing?) the Dead City chronicles; etc.

Honestly, I think more regulars have published than not, around here.

Thats one more reason to recognize the effort of a single guy writing and self-publishing his work, specially when this work is praised as a good one by different sources.

So, your criteria for a praiseworthy game are:
- the author worked hard, and
- a group of people likes it?

Let me tell you about Wraeththu...

edit: dammit, spelling

Fectin, lemme recap for you. My criteria for praiseworthy is a combination of various factors that are internal and external to a given game:

- text
- tone
- fiction
- themes
- art
- explicit rules
- implicit rules
- props
- my previous experience as a consumer of fiction
- my particular tastes as a gamer
- my expectation and playing assumptions
- my inspiration at the moment of reading it

But this criteria of mine seems to be aborrant to the local zeitgeist, which seems to default to this single criteria for judging games:

- task-resolution


There it is. THe whole discussion is based on that.

silva wrote:Fectin, lemme recap for you. My criteria for praiseworthy is a combination of various factors that are internal and external to a given game:

- text
- tone
- fiction
- themes
- art
- explicit rules
- implicit rules
- props
- my previous experience as a consumer of fiction
- my particular tastes as a gamer
- my expectation and playing assumptions
- my inspiration at the moment of reading it

But this criteria of mine seems to be aborrant to the local zeitgeist, which seems to default to this single criteria for judging games:

- task-resolution


There it is. THe whole discussion is based on that.

Yes, it is. Because if you don't have that you don't have anything to support your implicit or explicit rules cooperatively, and you don't have a fucking game.

To recapitulate, you must first have capitulated.

But that's beside the point: You yourself claim not to judge based on whether or not a work is self published; or whether the author worked his little heart out or slacked his way through. Why, other than intellectual dishonesty or trolling, would you expect anyone here to evaluate based on criteria that even you admit are without merit?

Alternative to other people pointing out what a hypocrite you are, I'm going to take a different tack to point how hypocritical you are:

silva wrote: - text-You haven't read it
- tone-You hvaen't read it
- fiction-You haven't read it
- themes-You don't know what they are
- art-You haven't seen it
- explicit rules-You haven't read them
- implicit rules-They don't exist, but if they didn't, you wouldn't have read them
- props-WTF?
- my previous experience as a consumer of fiction-Doesn't apply to something you haven't read, so this makes no sense
- my particular tastes as a gamer-Again
- my expectation and playing assumptions-Don't apply
- my inspiration at the moment of reading it-You haven't read it yet

So... you are fucking dumb as shit, because you just dismissed a game as not very good without addressing any of those factors at all.

So it turns out your actual system for judging games is:

-How many forums have I fellated the author of the game on.

Also, to be clear, when you say that we are judging a game based on task resolution, you are either lying or full of shit. Because by that logic, we never would have written the Tomes and assorted content, because they don't change the fucking task resolution, which is still d20, but we think they are a better game.

fectin wrote:To recapitulate, you must first have capitulated.

But that's beside the point: You yourself claim not to judge based on whether or not a work is self published; or whether the author worked his little heart out or slacked his way through. Why, other than intellectual dishonesty or trolling, would you expect anyone here to evaluate based on criteria that even you admit are without merit?

Nope, it was K who did it. I just went along in his game.

But really, I think this discussion had enough, since its all a matter of taste at this point. Lets agree to disagree and leave it at that.

silva wrote:But really, I think this discussion had enough, since its all a matter of taste at this point. Lets agree to disagree and leave it at that.

No, it isn't a matter of taste. It is a matter of you being a lying asshole who knows absolutely nothing about RPGs at all, and chooses to play a specific shitty not game and fellate it as much as possible.

We cannot agree to disagree, because once again, you are still fucking wrong, and you still have absolutely nothing to support your side that wouldn't also support calling literal genocide a fun game that is a matter of taste.

silva wrote:Or, in a more concrete example: look at the Sorcerer rpg (and the various "indie" or "new school" games that succeeded it ) -

Sorcerer has the mange, and smells like sour milk.
Also, Ron Edwards is a self-important assclown who can't get enough of his own self-fellating.

A game has rules that produce FUN

This is a completely vapid non-point.

and there won't ever be massive sales of AW or any other games that are barely above freeform RP.

Here, I can give you some estimates:

- AW sales: http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/707

- the above do not account for the sales and distributions of its hacks:

[...]
10. Murderous Ghosts
[...]

--> Now, are you really saying me the thousands of players that play Apocalypse World or one of its hacks are all "playing wrong" ? Or would it be more coherent (and humble from your part) to admit its just that the game fits their playing assumptions and particular tastes better than it fits yours ?

Murderous Ghosts is indeed included on that chart.
More importantly, it has taken him 10 years to gross $10k.
Also, at ~$10 a pop, that's 1000 copies. I.e., that's the total aggregate units for 6 different games. More to the point, total units for AW (his "big" seller) was less than 300 total units over a 2-year period. And only just over one-quarter of the people that tried one of his games gave him a second chance.

My dumbfuck of a roommate sold more copies in 6 months of a shitty "supernatural romance" novella that he shat out over the course of a weekend.

Point being .... WTF was your point about posting that link? You only emphasized the point made in the quote that you presumably were trying to refute.
Fail, indeed.

Nope, AW sold 3500 copies according to the last graph.

But whatever.

The way I see it...

Apocalypse world is a role playing aid, in the way that a round table and seats are aids to hosting a tea party. Could you cooperatively tell a story without apocalypse world rules? Yes, but apocalypse world sets up a speaking order so everyone gets their turn to add to the story. At that, it succeeds.

It's just that role playing aids aren't really TGD's thing, folks here are mostly into discussing roleplaying mechanics, resolution systems, and so on. Concrete things that aren't up to the whims of the GM.

silva wrote:Nope, AW sold 3500 copies according to the last graph.

But whatever.

Whatever indeed.

If that is the sum total of 10 years of work in the internet age (which is almost designed for selling stupid shit to dumb fuckers), that is a pretty terrible failure.

Comparison: people who do webcomics sell more physical copies of their avialable-entirely-for-free on the internet stuff by driving around to conventions over the course of a single year.


@Ogrebattle- well, yeah. Because you can draw speaking order out of a hat, and still not bother with Shit World rules. Succeeding at 'speaking order' is setting the bar low enough that kindergarteners can leap it.

silva wrote:The total sales gfx estimate around 3000 copies sold in a 2 years interval.

The lifetime sales indicate 2830 copies, in a 3 year period (12 quarters).

My criteria for praiseworthy is a combination of various factors that are internal and external to a given game:

- text
- tone
- fiction
- themes
- art
- explicit rules
- implicit rules
- props
- my previous experience as a consumer of fiction
- my particular tastes as a gamer
- my expectation and playing assumptions
- my inspiration at the moment of reading it

But this criteria of mine seems to be aborrant to the local zeitgeist, which seems to default to this single criteria for judging games:

- task-resolution

There it is. THe whole discussion is based on that.

Here is the thing. I consider this to be a game design forum. So when talking here, I'm going to be talking in a different way about games then I would on other forums / to other people.
My personal tastes for example aren't all that relevant when it comes to the design of a particular game.

Here is the thing. I consider this to be a game design forum. So when talking here, I'm going to be talking in a different way about games then I would on other forums / to other people.
My personal tastes for example aren't all that relevant when it comes to the design of a particular game.

Im cool with that. Even if I disagree about the "game design forum" part myself.

silva wrote:Nope, AW sold 3500 copies according to the last graph.

But whatever.

Throwing around the total sales penis is stupid, because Ancient History wins. For a while he was basically carrying the entire 4th edition Shadowrun line, where a poor selling book still had more than ten times the sales of Apocalypse World. I worked on a couple of the better selling books of that line, but Ancient History was in pretty much all of them.

But yes, if for some reason you have to write an RPG book with more sales than Apocalypse World to dis Apocalypse World, I do meet that criteria. I've written into books that have sold two orders of magnitude more than Apocalypse World.

2800 or 3500 or whatever copies is a niche product. It's beyond a niche product, it's a vanity press.

-Username17