The Gaming Den

You'd think that with the straits that White Wolf and D&D are in right now it would permanently cripple these things by now. But nope, still going strong.

Dammit, when will I see Geoff Grabowski in a breadline?!

Aren't those forums? You'd have to kill off the fanbase to kill them off wouldn't you?

Old forums never die, they only get shut off.

-Crissa

Yeah, I'm afraid RPGnet is here forever, pimple on the face of gaming that it is.

RPGnet is also enamored with FATE, so in order to prevent it from lurching into unnatural life after the death of White Wolf, one would also have to strike down Evil Hat.

Lago, I am deducting one point from you due to poor grammar. It is "when are ____ and ____ going to die?"

Fortunately these points do nothing, and are not even tallied.

That said, I'm sure I read somewhere (on here?) that WW was doing particularly poorly of late, and signs showed that it would be going down the plug-hole. Someone tell me this is true. I will hold a party on that day.

Apparently everyone on sup/tg/ will as well, going so far as to organise a party outside the head office, and as everyone dejectedly walks out of the building, carrying their stuff, the people will ask "Oh hi, are you selling the Street Fighter RPG?"

What's wrong with FATE? Spirit of the Century seems to work pretty well...

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Dammit, when will I see Geoff Grabowski in a breadline?!

Not gonna happen, apparently he was Eaten by wolves a few years back

Never. Forums are not pronounced dead until people cease paying for hosting. As popularity drops and traffic reduces, paying for hosting becomes easier. A Russian RPG forum that used to be the largest 8 years ago has had no more than 10 posts per month for quite some time. No one's pulled the plug yet.

Koumei wrote:That said, I'm sure I read somewhere (on here?) that WW was doing particularly poorly of late, and signs showed that it would be going down the plug-hole. Someone tell me this is true. I will hold a party on that day.

It should in no way be considered an indicator, but Dragon_Child tallied up all the WW games being run at GenCon this year and the total was pretty low -- less than the number of HERO games being run (which was actually pretty neat - 100 or so).

Currently White Wolf's print schedule is 17 months behind. That is, Block By Bloody Block came out in PDF and got reviews and stuff back in summer of '09, and as of this month they announced that it will come out in dead trees version - this time for sure - in Q1 of 2011.

Holding your breath until White Wolf prints something that they have the printer proofs for seems like a doomed operation.

-Username17

Well, that's what they get for replacing their awesome oWoD ( convoluted as it may have been ) for the bland nWoD. I preferred impossibly old cosmic horrors running around everywhere. Although the demons later on were silly.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with FATE. It is solid, playable engine that works well for certain kinds of roleplaying.

At conventions I regularly run FATE games (Spirit of the Century and StarBlazer Adventures, mostly) that work like this:

• 90 minutes: generate characters from scratch
  30 minutes: generate adventure based on the character's aspects and skills
  4 hours: play adventure out to completion.

Just got the Dresden Files RPG, it looks interesting but crunchy, and I am looking forward to Legends of Anglerre.

And Diaspora is work of art.

FATE is the best thing that has ever been done with the OGL.

Smeelbo

Since there's still a forum going for Alternity - a game which was never as popular as WW or any edition of D&D and which hasn't been supported by anyone in years - there's no chance of any of those forums going away in the next decade IMO.

http://alternityrpg.net/onlineforums/ if you're interested.

OH MY GOD THE COLOR SCHEME MY EYES JUST MELTED.

How can people even LOOK AT THAT?! I get that it's sci-fi, but I hope the future has colors beyond black and bright searing green.

I turn off 'Allow pages to choose their own colours...' anyway, so I hadn't even noticed.

DragonChild wrote:but I hope the future has colors beyond black and bright searing green.

No, we lose access to most colours in the future. It will be like the times before colours were invented/discovered, when we lived in greyscale.

IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE THERE IS ONLY GREEN ON BLACK.

Personally, I hate these colors-on-white pages. They're just terrible on the screen, you can never get them bright or dim enough for true darkness or sunlight.

At least color-on-black is readable in sunlight.

-Crissa

FrankTrollman wrote:Currently White Wolf's print schedule is 17 months behind. That is, Block By Bloody Block came out in PDF and got reviews and stuff back in summer of '09, and as of this month they announced that it will come out in dead trees version - this time for sure - in Q1 of 2011.

Holding your breath until White Wolf prints something that they have the printer proofs for seems like a doomed operation.

-Username17

Crap... no wonder their big semi-recent announcement was allowing oWoD back into the Camarilla fan club.

I still think that they're insane for not instituting print on demand for their old product lines. At the very least the insanely overpriced secondhand market for WW books would get slashed drastically.

FATE is the best thing that has ever been done with the OGL.

To bad the OGL is fucking terrible.

Also: RPG.net will fade away when a more usable social networking with capable review abilities comes along.

Features that should go in it:
* Reddit style comment formatting.
* Markdown text formatting.
* Anonymous posting
* Votes on thread and comments
* Autothumbnail images
* 3 types of threads: Reviews, Discussions, and Links

And probably more.

Orca wrote:Since there's still a forum going for Alternity - a game which was never as popular as WW or any edition of D&D and which hasn't been supported by anyone in years - there's no chance of any of those forums going away in the next decade IMO.

http://alternityrpg.net/onlineforums/ if you're interested.

Hah. My IP is forbidden there. Nice.

krainboltgreene wrote:Also: RPG.net will fade away when a more usable social networking with capable review abilities comes along.

Features that should go in it:
* Reddit style comment formatting.
* Markdown text formatting.
* Anonymous posting
* Votes on thread and comments
* Autothumbnail images
* 3 types of threads: Reviews, Discussions, and Links

And probably more.

I just wish that it was easier to *get* to reviews and discussions of individual books/lines easier. It's a mess.

Boardgamegeek.com is more functional, but less user friendly if that makes sense. The layout is overly-complicated, but it presents immense amounts of information quickly and without having to jump through hoops.

TheFlatline wrote:
I just wish that it was easier to *get* to reviews and discussions of individual books/lines easier. It's a mess.

Boardgamegeek.com is more functional, but less user friendly if that makes sense. The layout is overly-complicated, but it presents immense amounts of information quickly and without having to jump through hoops.

Amen. It feels like Geocities all over again.

That said, I've got a little hobby project I'm working on every once a week.

I've tennantively dubbed it "Roll-It", although my fellow SEO associates suggest I call it "Dice Envy" so I can grab all the traffic for the popular "Dick Envy" searches.