What is the biggest debacle of RPG history?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Jul 17, 2013 10:13 pm

Don't forget Exalted 3E's rape ghosts. That was an impressive detonation of an otherwise fairly successful brand.

infected slut princess · Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:46 am

Dragonborn??? Are you kidding me??? That probably killed the 4e right there.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:48 am

infected slut princess wrote:Dragonborn??? Are you kidding me??? That probably killed the 4e right there.

Dragon tits did it.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 2:45 am

Honestly, Dragon Tits really should have won them players, there are a lot of furries and people who can't be arsed to give a shit as to whether humanoid dragons have tits or not.

The posts in this thread make it sound like White Wolf doesn't, or barely, exist any more, but that's definitely not the case. Their website has current news pieces. They may be primarily focusing on their 20th edition reprints which are silently admitting that NWoD sucked snake dicks, but they're there. If they had ceased to exist, it would be almost excusable that they failed to cash in on the Twilight craze, but no, they were still publishing in 2008, the Twilight Heyday (trust me, I had a Twilight-obsessed girlfriend in that year, it was its heyday). The fact that they published Scion rather than Vampire: the Seduction is inexcusable from any kind of standpoint which matters here.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 2:50 am

I could not possibly care less about the dragon tits thing even if it is def not my fetish. Compared to the way mindflayers "work"--and yes, I do think that deserves scare quotes--the notion that convergent evolution led to lactating scaly people in a magical setting is way plausible.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 2:55 am

Honestly, I don't even know how mindflayers work now. The core books and monster compendium books refer to one thing, and the aberrations book apparently referred to another while pretending that the first way is still in some way present. I literally have no clue which is supposed to be the way it is. They also alluded to, what, three possible origins without ever even going into what they entailed, let alone which one they supported?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 3:07 am

If the OSSR threads have taught me anything, it's that the reason we have all that conflicting information is because none of the damn explanations make sense even when taken entirely on their own terms.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 5:44 am

Prak_Anima wrote:The posts in this thread make it sound like White Wolf doesn't, or barely, exist any more, but that's definitely not the case. Their website has current news pieces. They may be primarily focusing on their 20th edition reprints which are silently admitting that NWoD sucked snake dicks, but they're there. If they had ceased to exist, it would be almost excusable that they failed to cash in on the Twilight craze, but no, they were still publishing in 2008, the Twilight Heyday (trust me, I had a Twilight-obsessed girlfriend in that year, it was its heyday). The fact that they published Scion rather than Vampire: the Seduction is inexcusable from any kind of standpoint which matters here.

OK, instead of going to their website, try going to a brick and mortar store and count how many White Wolf books they have that were printed since 2009. Better yet, you could check Amazon and note that the latest book they even have records of existing is a paperback from Q4 in 2011.

White Wolf doesn't print things anymore. There are still pdfs made up of things in White Wolf properties from time to time, and you can still buy them or get those pdfs printed on demand, but the company doesn't make physical products anymore. Hasn't since people took Rick Perry seriously as a candidate for president.

In the sense of actually being a company that makes role playing game material you could actually buy in a game store, or even order and have sent to you on Amazon, White Wolf does not exist and hasn't for about 18 months. In the sense of actually being a company that produced products you were likely to see displayed prominently in a brick and mortar store, they haven't qualified for four years or more. Have you ever seen a physical copy of Geist: the Sineating? If you have, how about anything written since Obama took office?

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 6:10 am

Ok, I saw incorrect data when I typed that. The main three Scion books were all in print before the Twilight craze really got going. It's easy enough to find White Wolf books in brick and mortar stores around here still, but admittedly, that doesn't mean the company really exists in anyway that really matters for discussions here. All they're doing now is the aforementioned 20th edition compendiums (which I actually kind of want because they're compilations of all/most of the material for their lines and look pretty slick).

The fact remains that company fucking chose to write Scion instead of cashing in on the Paranormal Romance craze.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 6:46 am

Prak wrote: It's easy enough to find White Wolf books in brick and mortar stores around here still

Of course it is. Those books didn't sell. Check the publication date on them. How many of the White Wolf books on the shelf now were written when George Bush was president?

I mean yes, you can still probably see a book of Promethean: the Created on the shelf, because game stores ordered a lot more of those than they sold. A simple reality that before the book came out, a lot more people showed interest in playing Frankenstein's monster than continued to be interested in the game once it had come out and people knew it was a dog with fleas. But remember: that book came out in 2006, so the fact that you can still see one on a shelf is actually why White Wolf doesn't publish books anymore.

-Username17

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 7:49 am

nockermensch wrote:
infected slut princess wrote:Dragonborn??? Are you kidding me??? That probably killed the 4e right there.
Dragon tits did it.

I don't care much about that, but WHY DON'T THEY HAVE TAILS
They just have scaly asses!

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 9:59 am

Anyone who says anything other than FATAL is fooling themselves.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 10:05 am

No, Racial Holy War is worse. FATAL is juvenile, sexist and ill advised. RaHoWa is racist. Though FATAL stupidly tries to defend the extent to which it talks about terrible things with the argument, it is true that the things it talks about did happen in the medieval era, and still do. D&D handles rape, unjust laws and sexism too, just not to the extent that FATAL does, the most reprehensible thing about FATAL is that it implies raping the fair maiden you just rescued is a valid play choice. RaHoWa goes the step beyond to say that racism and sexism and brutal murder of other races are the ideal play style.

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 10:09 am

Okay, fair enough.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:36 pm

shadzar wrote: Vampire the Masquerade by Mind's Eye Theater LARP.

I know the rules are shit, but MET was one of the most popular LARP rulesets out there. Hell I could go out tonight and find a Vampire LARP running. It's consistently the most popular part of White Wolf these days. I don't see how it's a disaster, unless you mean in and of itself it's a disaster.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 11:25 pm

I don't think I've seen it mentioned yet but wasn't Dragon Dice a huge blunder by TSR?

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:19 am

4E definitely, but I'm not sure we've explored how much of a debacle that was:

*loss of 75% of the customer base according to the later Gen Con figures. Huge flamewars on every RPG forum, with permanent and irreversible balkanization of the customer base.

*leak of the PDFs pre-release.

*insufficient playtesting leading to orbizards and rangers with Blade Cascade killing the games' top monster Orcus before the games' actual release. Wave after wave of errata during the games' run.

*the GleeMax and digital tools fiasco. Whole subforums on the WOTC boards (e.g. Epic which I used to lurk at) missing and most of the userbase absorbed into ZombieGleemax (slurp), losing huge amounts of discussion and history.

*major customer relations mismanagement (Gamer Zero, the 'clouds across the sky' article)

*disappearance of D&D Miniatures- maybe related to the customer losses - despite the new game being more grid dependent.

*licensing issues prevent D&D based video games being released during most of its run - not 4E's fault, but preventing them from capitalizing on the new MMO-compatible mechanics.

*movement to a GSL which crowded all the third party companies out, notably leading to the company that used to produce Dragon magazines for them to overtake them as their major business rival.

Some points for getting out the character builder and earning some $$ off that, though they seem to be hard at work trying to lose their customers there with Next, which promises to be too basic to need similar software.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:22 am

Can I just list Bob Salvatore for biggest debacle?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:44 am

CCarter wrote:the 'clouds across the sky' article

I missed that one. What was that fuckup?

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 6:39 am

Prak_Anima wrote:
CCarter wrote:the 'clouds across the sky' article
I missed that one. What was that fuckup?

Can't find the link now, but there was an article prior to 4Es release where one of the designers said to think of 4E as being like the weather ('clouds across the sky') and coming no matter how much anyone bitched about it. It was a great example of Wizards' communication with the players at that point i.e. shut up and no we don't want any feedback from you.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 7:29 am

The clouds across the sky rant was just a small part of 4e's marketing imploding on itself. Even WotC realized they had fucked up with the Gnome & Tiefling cartoon, naming it "The Gnome Problem" (a race used by 5% or less of characters is still used by 50% or more of gaming groups, because of compositional effects).

I would argue that their marketing really went off the rails when they started explaining what their actual designs were, and that was because the ideas they had were terrible. When they were talking in generalities about fixing math and reducing item christmas trees, people were cautiously optimistic. When they started going off about how monsters didn't exist when outside of combat and didn't need rules to interact with stories or their environments, people got trepidation.

-Username17

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 7:36 am

Prak_Anima wrote: the most reprehensible thing about FATAL is that it implies raping the fair maiden you just rescued is a valid play choice.

it does a little more than that .... it gives you the explicitly rules for repeat-gang-raping the fair maiden's infant.
Just saying.

RaHoWa just appears to be genocidally bigoted.

While I find both reprehensible, I think I prefer bigotry over baby-rape.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 7:50 am

wotmaniac wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote: the most reprehensible thing about FATAL is that it implies raping the fair maiden you just rescued is a valid play choice.
it does a little more than that .... it gives you the explicitly rules for repeat-gang-raping the fair maiden's infant.
Just saying.

RaHoWa just appears to be genocidally bigoted.

While I find both reprehensible, I think I prefer bigotry over baby-rape.

FATAL is a tasteless and offensive misogynistic and homophobic shaggy dog joke that is nowhere near funny enough to justify its thousand pages. RaHoWa is propaganda and a blueprint for actual terrorist attacks in the real world against real people in the service of an incoherent and genocidal ideology that has proven time and time again that it represents a real threat to the real safety of real people.

FATAL is an inexcusable lapse in judgement and taste. RaHoWa is illegal as a credible threat of violence in most of the civilized world. FATAL succeeds at its goal of offending its audience with unfunny shit jokes, unfunny dead baby jokes, unfunny rape jokes, unfunny homophobic and misogynistic tirades, and various other categories of offensive attempts at "humor" that should get anyone drummed out of polite company. FATAL is the equivalent of a one thousand page transcript of shit talking by XBox Live trolls. RaHoWa is a hate screed by a radical wing of violent White Nationalism that advocates and carries out terrorist attacks. It's the difference between something written by a suspended XBox user and something written by Osama Bin Laden. It's not even on the same playing field.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 8:10 am

Holy crap, did Frank just defend one of my opinions?

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 8:41 am

FrankTrollman wrote:[stuff]

Holy shit -- I've never actually seen the game; I was just trying to draw some sort of contextual understanding from this thread ...... I can't even imagine that something like what you've just described would even be able to make it to print (don't get me wrong -- I'm not doubting you; I just literally flabbergasted at the notion that something like that could make it to print).

I mean, it's one thing to have some ethnic cleansing going on in the background ..... I can even imagine having the topic be the centerpiece .... but to have the "object of fun" be racial-genocide wish-fulfillment -- WTF?!

Prak_Anima wrote:Holy crap, did Frank just defend one of my opinions?

Nah -- he's just calling me out on my ignorance ... I'm sure that anything else is just coincidence.