YOU are never going to write the "(Next) D&D Next"

[PhoneLobster]

OK it was all fun and games until the forum got clogged with it for years and now every damn random half assed poster on here thinks THEY might just be the next sacred profit of the gaming den's (supposedly) unique and (apparently) unified ideas.

A couple of threads are banging around wanking over this, AGAIN. And I want to take the opportunity to call it for the bullshit it is.

Lets start with this.

You aren't going to publish an RPG that changes D&D/RPG gaming forever.
YOU. Yes you. You AREN'T GOING TO DO THAT. Maybe I'm wrong. But the chances that I am wrong are VANISHINGLY SMALL.

You might say who does it hurt to have ambitions like this? Well it hurts YOU, and this forum and here are some reasons why.

Your game design goals are broken
Designing for a commercial product and for your own personal use are DIFFERENT. If for no other reason than you are designing for a different audience.

If you and your group of players are probably the only people who will ever use your game. And that is VERY likely. Then you only need to care about what your specific group wants and needs. And most importantly you DON'T have to cater to a feverishly imagined audience of recalcitrant grognards and lowest common denominator morons.

The only grognard you need to satisfy is your own inner grognard
So every fucking one of these hand wringing threads about how "the grognards" won't let YOU personally have nice things. How they are stopping YOU from fixing fighters or wizards or whatever the fuck you are moaning on about them stopping YOU from fixing in YOUR game designed BY YOU and FOR YOU. ALL those fucking threads? They are SO damn stupid.

Because guess what? All those terrible grognards you must satisfy? The ones which are largely just hypothetical constructs? You don't have to satisfy them. You don't really even care if they are really real, how hard it will be to satisfy them or what they really want, because THEY ARE NEVER GOING TO SEE YOUR GAME.

People pulling the "but the grognards are MAKING me!" line need to damn well just fucking admit that EITHER they are making a remarkably hubristic mistake OR that actually the whole fucking "Grognards are making me!" line is actually a big fat pile of poop smeared on your own face in an attempt to pretend that various shameful grognard demands are not in fact secretly your OWN shameful grognard demands.

I don't care about business marketing strategies you are never going to use
All that wank over how to publish or market your utterly imaginary "revolutionary" gaming den RPG?

It's pure wank. I don't care. No one should care. It's a waste of space and effort. Here is how your marketing/publishing works.

1) MAYBE one day you will have a project sufficiently readable to post on the Gaming Den. Someone here MIGHT even read it.

2) MAYBE you might even make your project it's own little web site where people can download it for free.

3) MAYBE you might turn it into a PDF and sell it on Drive Thru RPG. No matter how bad, or currently imaginary, your project is, seemingly worse is on there RIGHT NOW.

Everything else? All the rest? If you haven't done at least SOMETHING on that list or won't do at least something on that list IS ALL WANK.

All the time you spend over that wank is time you spend NOT WORKING ON YOUR PROJECT. Arguably almost all the time you spend on the gaming den in general is basically wasted, but the wank over marketing, all the more so.

The gaming den is not a fucking revolution
It is a small community that SOMETIMES talks about games and game design. In between having its time fucking wasted wringing hands over imaginary grognard uprisings against imaginary marketing campaigns for imaginary projects.

It does not have anything much like a unified set of exciting ideas that are going to revolutionize any damn thing. And most certainly doesn't have any individual or group of individuals who might represent such a unified set of exciting ideas, and if it did, it isn't you.

Most of the gaming den's "newer" ideas (which are notably never actually unique to the gaming den) are massively unpopular with... more than half of the gaming den.

And actually most of the gaming den's ideas are generally NOT new. In fact often they are old. A lot of the bullshit we argue about, and often, sometimes alarmingly, in favor of, dates back AT LEAST to the dark days 2E D&D. Aaaand even then are still very often easily massively unpopular with more than half of the gaming den.

The closest thing the gaming den gets to a "generally accepted idea" is when some fucker dredges up the same unchanged crappy idea for the 19th time and everyone is just sick of pointing out how much they fucking hate it.

If you are so set on revolutionizing RPGs why the hell do you care so much about satisfying imaginary grognards anyway?
And yeah. What's up with THAT? Do you really think your wanky imaginary "way forward" with RPGs is going to ACTUALLY revolve around the results of wringing your hands (and your rules) over the desperate need to satisfy what you see as the very same force that is "holding you back" (presumably holding you back from typing a document and sticking it on My Own Invention, Drive Thru RPG, or some random web site, because, apparently, that is the all pervasive power of the hypothetical grognard if you do not satisfy them!).

You don't imagine for one second that IF you REALLY want to lead gamers on a step forward into some new age of at least incrementally better RPGs that you might not be better NOT trying to write an RPG for well... Shadzar?

And more to the point since your RPG won't be doing that and you are instead most probably JUST writing it for yourself and a few of your friends... why are you writing it for... well... Shadzar?

But, But, I'm Gonna Pull A Grognard Bait And Switch!
Yeah. You know what. Fuck You. The idea that you can, or should pull a bait and switch on the grognards is some crazy fucking bullshit.

Yeah sure "they" are probably dumb as bricks. They will probably accept propaganda ahead of reality. They will probably accept the authority of a shiny published book, or even a free web page with a moderately nice background and navigable menu with no dead ends...

...but if they are in fact THAT accepting... what the fuck are you doing talking about making rules changes to satisfy them. They don't fucking care.

And if they DO fucking care, and are able to notice, then no, sorry, the bait and switch is dishonest, reprehensible and actually deeply unlikely to even work.

In the mean time you are actively undermining at least the idea of giving out accurate information about your game to an audience who might actually WANT to play it, or even potentially sabotaging it's function for that audience.

Which is especially dumb, since that audience is primarily... YOU.

What would be better?
You should write an RPG for yourself, not for some imaginary audience you claim to hate.

THEN if you want to play the big crazy "viva la revolution" lottery go ahead, release it.

I assure you, not a fucking thing you can do or waste pages of thread around here wanking over will matter in winning the imaginary Grognard vs Gaming Den war going on in your god damn imagination.

[shadzar]

Your game design goals are broken
Designing for a commercial product and for your own personal use are DIFFERENT. If for no other reason than you are designing for a different audience.

have you sent this one to the WotC forums yet? to dragonsfoot? to ENWorld?

this is the big thing people cant see the trees for the forest.

there doesnt need to be a new RPG system, as 3.x/d20 can do everything people want with some changes for their home games.

nothing new is really even in 3.x/d20 it is all shifted around thins form hosuerules from AD&D ideas and concepts.

i am shocked PL can write something with common sense. the rest of the post i dont know about, just this one popped out due to formatting, and well its good enough to have commented on it, so the rest may be drek or an epiphany as well, who knows?

[PhoneLobster]

Damn. I thought it wouldn't summon him if I only spake his name twice.

[TheFlatline]

Bah... err...um...

Cool story bro?

[Voss]

@phonelobster. On the one hand, I entirely agree with you. It is very clearly self-delusional bullshit.

On the other hand, a large chunk of the entertainment value of the Den comes from people going off on self-important rants about their self-delusional bullshit.* So I expect I'd miss it if it were gone.

*Most of the rest comes from the hate-filled rants such bullshit generates in response.

Damn. I thought it wouldn't summon him if I only spake his name twice.

The amusing part is he seems to have missed it. Must have been the formatting.
And you somehow got the randombot to generate a favorable remark about 3e. That should be subjected to repeated testing. For science.

[TheFlatline]

Actually this is a temper tantrum on behalf of PL. I've only ever seen two *really* deluded expectations that the Den could morph into a business. They didn't last long.

What PhoneLobster did was roughly the equivalent of freaking out that there's a bunch of people who are car enthusiasts that like to talk shop and tinker. It's not even a particularly *good* attack either. Using the car analogy, it's basically screaming "THERE ARE CARS THAT ALREADY OUTPERFORM YOURS SO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO AWAY YOU'LL NEVER BECOME A CAR MANUFACTURER."

In posting this, he's shown that he is a particularly uncreative troll, a dime a dozen, with nothing interesting to say. I could replace him at this point with a script that pulled random quotes from Youtube and I doubt anyone would notice the difference.

[PhoneLobster]

On the other hand, a large chunk of the entertainment value of the Den comes from people going off on self-important rants about their self-delusional bullshit.* So I expect I'd miss it if it were gone.

I feel there is a world of difference, and quality between...

"I will revolutionize RPGs with this awesome new self delusional bullshit!"

...and the increasingly pervasive...

"I will revolutionize RPGs by deluding myself into thinking I'm giving grognards what they want!"

...but I doubt it's any LESS entertainingly self delusional or any less likely to generate hate filled counter rants if people went for the much more optimistic first option.

And I can only hope it might have people ACTUALLY talk about ACTUAL new ideas... in their delusional and hate filled pro and counter rants. Instead of say... endless complaining about how "grognards" are FORCING them, with FORCE no less, to fuck over fighters for eternity. Because Grognards.

[Kaelik]

People who think they are going to write the next perfect RPG for no goddam reason who need to read the parts of this rant about how they aren't going to do that (as opposed to the parts that are actually whining about fighters, thanks fighter thread in disguise):

1) Lago
2) Lago
3) Phone Lobster
4) Sigma

Irony Meter: currently at half maximum.

[K]

proph·et
ˈpräfit/
noun
noun: prophet; plural noun: prophets; plural noun: Prophets; plural noun: the Prophets
1.
a person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God.
"the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah"
synonyms: seer, soothsayer, fortune teller, clairvoyant, diviner; More
oracle, augur, sibyl
"the queen was disturbed by the prophet's interpretation of her dreams"
(among Muslims) Muhammad.
singular proper noun: Prophet; noun: the Prophet
(among Mormons) Joseph Smith or one of his successors.
noun: the Prophet
a person who advocates or speaks in a visionary way about a new belief, cause, or theory.
"a prophet of radical individualism"
a person who makes or claims to be able to make predictions.
"the anti-technology prophets of doom"
2.
(in Christian use) the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor prophets.

profit
rof·it
ˈpräfit/
noun
noun: profit; plural noun: profits

1.
a financial gain, esp. the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.
"pretax profits"
synonyms: (financial) gain, return(s), yield, proceeds, earnings, winnings, surplus, excess; More
informalpay dirt, bottom line
"the firm made a profit"
antonyms: loss
advantage; benefit.
"there's no profit in screaming at referees from the bench"
synonyms: advantage, benefit, value, use, good, avail; More
informalmileage
"we could gain no profit by continuing"
antonyms: disadvantage

verb
verb: profit; 3rd person present: profits; past tense: profited; past participle: profited; gerund or present participle: profiting

1.
obtain a financial advantage or benefit, esp. from an investment.
"the only people to profit from the entire episode were the lawyers"
synonyms: make money, make a profit; More
informalrake it in, clean up, make a killing, make a bundle, make big bucks, make a fast/quick buck
"this company must not profit from its wrongdoing"
antonyms: lose
obtain an advantage or benefit.
"not all children would profit from this kind of schooling"
be beneficial to.
"it would profit us to change our plans"
synonyms: benefit, be beneficial to, be of benefit to, be advantageous to, be of advantage to, be of use to, be of value to, do someone good, help, be of service to, serve, assist, aid More
"how will that profit us?"
antonyms: disadvantage

Origin

Grammar burn!

[PhoneLobster]

Grammar burn!

I almost decided to then correct that obvious glaring error once pointed out with excessively large quotes.

But just now I decided to pretend it's some sort of lame deliberate commercialism pun.

I mean, it isn't, but I'm going to pretend.

[Koumei]

Grammar burn!

I think you mean Semantics burn!

Anyway, I thought everyone already understood that "Nobody is making the next D&D, even if we could work together (we can't) and could agree on one set of rules (we can't) and could stick to the project for the whole thing (we can't), it would require crazy big marketing". That people were just doing vague musings on what it might be nice to have (and then hopefully arguing about it), or sometimes making their own things for themselves.

[hogarth]

Your game design goals are broken
Designing for a commercial product and for your own personal use are DIFFERENT. If for no other reason than you are designing for a different audience.

This is an excellent point that I think many people here are clueless about. D&D fans are, by definition, people who like things about D&D, which is why Pathfinder's technique of "let's design a game that's almost exactly like 3.5E to attract 3.5E fans" was fairly sucessful and 4E's technique of "let's design a game that's very different from 3.5E to attract 3.5E fans" was not terribly successful.

[erik]

I just need to have a loop of Tyler Durden droning in the background while reading this to make it complete.

"Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

[ishy]

4E's technique of "let's design a game that's very different from 3.5E to attract 3.5E fans" was not terribly successful.

I don't think that is true.
Many people were happy and optimistic about 4e trying to slay certain sacred cows, like: no more christmas tree of items on characters, better balance and a lot of other things. It was just that the execution of everything was terrible and bad and sometimes the exact opposite of what they promised.

[codeGlaze]

4E's technique of "let's design a game that's very different from 3.5E to attract 3.5E fans" was not terribly successful.

I don't think that is true.
Many people were happy and optimistic about 4e trying to slay certain sacred cows, like: no more christmas tree of items on characters, better balance and a lot of other things. It was just that the execution of everything was terrible and bad and sometimes the exact opposite of what they promised.

Both of you SPAKETH TRUTH! I feel 4e was too different and at the same time didn't fix thr right things. Most of my gaming group are along the same lines of thought... for what ever that's worth (not much).

[Mask_De_H]

This is the closest to a useful, valid point PL's made on IMOI in months. It's blindingly obvious and I think K's brought it up a couple of times (also, why we aren't retooling the Tomes) but at least it's something.

And 4e fucked up because it managed to ruin every good idea it had while adding a lot of bad ones.

[Voss]

4E's technique of "let's design a game that's very different from 3.5E to attract 3.5E fans" was not terribly successful.

I don't think that is true.
Many people were happy and optimistic about 4e trying to slay certain sacred cows, like: no more christmas tree of items on characters, better balance and a lot of other things. It was just that the execution of everything was terrible and bad and sometimes the exact opposite of what they promised.

Both of you SPAKETH TRUTH! I feel 4e was too different and at the same time didn't fix thr right things. Most of my gaming group are along the same lines of thought... for what ever that's worth (not much).

Actually, ishy is far more correct than hogarth is. Part of the designer's 4e pre-launch PR campaign was to badmouth 3rd edition, complain bitterly about its flaws and go on about how 3.5 players should completely abandon that old trash and pick up 4th.* They made a concerted effort to drive fans they didn't want any more out of the door and into Paizo's prepared snakepit.

On the other hand, some of the ideas and goals of 4th were interesting, some were even good. But the execution, and terrible handwaving of shit people actually cared about dragged the whole project down into shit.

*I find it somewhat interesting that they aren't repeating this with 5th. This time, the tactic seems to be 'pretend 4th edition never happened'

[zugschef]

This time, the tactic seems to be 'pretend 4th edition never happened'

Well to be honest, it really feels like 4th edition never happened.

[Josh_Kablack]

Yeah, it's pretty clear at this point that Gabe from Penny Arcade is the one making the game which will actually fill the void left unfilled by D&D next.

It's also been blindingly clear since my days as a fourth-string benchwarming shadow editor for Exalted freelancers that trying to make any sort of living in the RPG industry is a fool's errand.

That said, my prior offer stands. If Koumei wants to Kickstart a hardcopy book of something vaguely D&D-ish, I'm in at the $50-$100 level. Double that if she can get someone (from here or elsewhere) with prior publication history to edit and mathhammer it.

[Previn]

Yeah, it's pretty clear at this point that Gabe from Penny Arcade is the one making the game which will actually fill the void left unfilled by D&D next.

Can you elaborate? I know he did a bunch of 4e games that he posted, and art work, but do you think he's seriously driving 5e design?

[Josh_Kablack]

Read what I actually wrote - Gabe is not influencing 5e D&D.

Here's the link to the only project which has enough hype to compete with the new edition of D&D.

Now given the track record of the PA folks vs the track record of the folks currently designing D&D, which product do you think will be better received?

[Pixels]

Yeah, it's pretty clear at this point that Gabe from Penny Arcade is the one making the game which will actually fill the void left unfilled by D&D next.

Can you elaborate? I know he did a bunch of 4e games that he posted, and art work, but do you think he's seriously driving 5e design?

Gabe has been working on his own homebrew system called Thornwatch. I can't say I've seen any real details on it though.

EDIT: Oo, a link. I'll give it glance after work. I might never be able to make an RPG, but I trust that there will always be a few good souls who have the patience and the know-how to put something worthwhile together.

[Voss]

Read what I actually wrote - Gabe is not influencing 5e D&D.

Here's the link to the only project which has enough hype to compete with the new edition of D&D.

Now given the track record of the PA folks vs the track record of the folks currently designing D&D, which product do you think will be better received?

I'm sure their fanboys will happily jam it up their own asses. From a game perspective, I'm equally sure it will only be worth what usually dribbles out of said asses.

[JonSetanta]

I've read this thread twice now and I'd like my ten minutes back.

[Seerow]

Read what I actually wrote - Gabe is not influencing 5e D&D.

Here's the link to the only project which has enough hype to compete with the new edition of D&D.

Now given the track record of the PA folks vs the track record of the folks currently designing D&D, which product do you think will be better received?

I have no idea what PA's track record is, but that link has me interested.