YOU are never going to write the "(Next) D&D Next"
Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2013 6:27 am
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.
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.