Playtesting 5E

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Thu May 16, 2013 9:30 pm

. No one sane is talking about running a campaign when they talk about playtesting,

And there's the problem. We're not talking about "anyone sane", we're talking about RPG designers, and fighting against the ignorant, stupid ideas people in Paizo and WOTC put out. Having an essay explaining, in detail, why that's bad is nice to have.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Thu May 16, 2013 9:32 pm

MisterDee wrote:As far as I know, in-house playtesting is still just people running campaigns, however. Certainly, both Paizo's and WotC's crews have come out in the past with stuff that has happened in their campaigns.

It's absolutely terrible procedure, but it would explain why neither companies seems able to spot loopholes. It still doesn't explain why the fuck the caster-martial divide still exists, though.

I'm sure that it's because there was no destructive play-testing involved, at all.

If you want to hear different opinions about your game, then you'd better ask for the bad ones first: "Here are my rules, do your worst." is a kind of playtest I can see the inherent value.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu May 16, 2013 11:29 pm

tussock wrote:@Shadzar: Did you really just complain to me that professionals are paid to do things by their employers? Is the water also annoyingly wet where you live?

no i complained cause you said the nepotism was impossible to avoid because it was a "small field" they had to pull from, and that is bullshit!

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri May 17, 2013 11:45 am

Oh, sorry Shadz, I wasn't counting people who haven't actually worked on anything that made minimum wage money, nor those who have but are otherwise gainfully employed, nor those who are mad as a fucking hatter, nor those who just don't like your business plan.

It's a small field. Are they supposed to pull Frank Mentzer out of retirement? Because I think he kinda hates them, in his own gentle-old-man ways. You can't actually hire anyone from the Forge, because they all went insane. ACKS is like Basic, cut to ten levels, that doesn't really solve any problems other by pretending that's enough (which it sort of is, but not for the big show). They did hire Monte, and now he hates them too. Paizo's busy winning, with a lot of the "hot talent" (relatively speaking) tied up. Half their last lot of designers are making a 4e-like product to try and become the next Paizo, and also kinda hate them.

Who the fuck they gunna hire? Names, man.

The people capable of making games outnumbers those employed to do so solely for financial reason.

Well, that's a pretty important reason, finance, given that someone has to pay them. But no. Those people who are "capable" of making RPGs and don't do so aren't actually capable. People don't get hired for shit just because they got good ideas, every fucker's got good ideas. Making them work commercially is the other 99% of that, which almost no one has. It's super-rare to make RPGs that even come close to paying the author for their time, let alone artists and editors and other important people.

There's vaporware out there from people who tried really hard with great ideas and just weren't up to it, even with a lot of community generosity behind them. And those people would be worth far more than anyone who hasn't even tried, which is almost everyone.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 17, 2013 3:13 pm

I don't actually think that getting talent is much of a problem. Back in the eighties, they literally walked down to the local university games club and elevated fan boys right then and there. Today they have the reverse problem, when they offered world submissions, they got thousands of replies and didn't even read them all. They ultimately accepted the proposal of a dude whose name starts with "BA-", indicating that they never even bothered reading through to the Cs.

The fact that RPGs keep hiring the same fuckups over and over again is not because they don't have a lot of applicants, it's because they can't be fucked to read through the applications they have and just keep hiring the devil they know over and over again.

-Username17

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Fri May 17, 2013 7:29 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:They ultimately accepted the proposal of a dude whose name starts with "BA-", indicating that they never even bothered reading through to the Cs.

The three finalists were Keith Baker, Rich Burlew, and Nathan Toomey. Morning Star by R. Scott Kennan was a semi-finalist, Dawnforge was as well, which I think was Greg Benage. Sunset Kindgoms, another semi-finalist was by Gray Pratt.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Fri May 17, 2013 9:04 pm

tussock wrote:Are they supposed to pull Frank Mentzer out of retirement?

I doubt they could afford Frank, or Kask, or the others since they are running Edlritch Enterprises, making old school game stuff like they did years ago.

They have the one person best to create settings, since you know, he created a "game" before D&D ever existed, and well it became the most loved setting and msot developed.

i would actually like to see the notes to the game that used to be Forgotten Realms, before TSR turned it into a D&D setting.

Other than that, there are plenty of gamer that write shit and have for years. maybe they shouldnt take old farts that want to be liked by todays kids and suck corporate cock for a paycheck. but that will never happen with HASBRO, so odds are EE will likey find or create the new talent.

it is like movies. you can pay for the big name and get the big name cost and risk. Maybe you will nail the next Iron Man saga, or you can hire cheaper unknowns and take a bigger risk but having a lower cost, have a bigger chance to win out in the end, and loose less if it doesn't.

your idea kind of fails to realize Gygax existed... a nobody that had never done anything and did NOT know what he was doing, and BAM instant success. he wasnt in the gaming field, but knew what he wanted to do.

i think Monte Cook sucks ass as a gamer and game maker, but he does stand behind he crappy stuff. it just doesn't suit my taste. no they cant get him back, but they NEED someone like him. Someone that does what he does because he has, for lack of a better word, a "vision" about what he wants to game to work like, as Gary did; and not afraid to stand by it.

the company has to support its designers, not drain them of the will to game/live. and if they REALLY want new ideas in gaming, they have to get new people, not all these SUPER XP'd people in the field, cause they often give the same tired old ideas, and like the Mearls type designers they kiss corp ass for a paycheck without having ANY talent to design.

the "field is small" because nobody is willing to put of with LW/HASBROs shit! they wont change, so the only people that are suggested are the cronies. soon Mearls will be out like Bill S and then maybe Wyatt and Baker gone, and new people will come into the fold.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat May 18, 2013 6:11 am

shadzar wrote: i would actually like to see the notes to the game that used to be Forgotten Realms, before TSR turned it into a D&D setting.

Get the original boxed sets, they're pretty close. Though, having heard Greenwood talk about running campaigns in 'his setting,' rather lacking in whores. Avatar crisis and later stuff diverged pretty heavily from the initial setup, but the idea that high level wizards are Omega Class weaponry and anyone that fucks with the status quo will cause everyone else to bring the hammer down is pretty embedded in both his work and how he talks about the Realms.

And when he talked about his own campaigns, shit went to crazy town pretty fast. He talked about his group infiltrating Zhentil Keep (by way of a whorehouse) and the male party members being rather stupid about it, which resulted in an all out fight with mid-tier Zhent guards (and several party members with their pants around their ankles), massive building fires, and ultimately multiple beholders laying down fairly indiscriminate eyebeams into a burning building. Yet somehow the party managed to escape so I'll let other people analyze the escalation to crazytown and party survival somewhere else (significantly, the party seemed to range between levels 4 and 7, and involve 7 or 8 people). I rather suspect people here would find his games objectionable for a variety of reasons.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Wed May 22, 2013 5:54 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:I don't actually think that getting talent is much of a problem. Back in the eighties, they literally walked down to the local university games club and elevated fan boys right then and there. Today they have the reverse problem, when they offered world submissions, they got thousands of replies and didn't even read them all. They ultimately accepted the proposal of a dude whose name starts with "BA-", indicating that they never even bothered reading through to the Cs.

Probably more an issue with primacy than with not reading things later in the alphabet. The few proposals that made it into the semifinals with later lettered names made it because they really shone, but they ultimately couldn't overcome the fact that Baker came first.