Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[LovisXVI]

The Trench Crusade Kickstarter was a smash hit, raising half a million dollars in hours. The usual suspects are smugging about le anti woke being defeated, but i suppose its succesful because the average anti warhammer sperg doesnt actually care about discord drama.

Crowd funding is all well and good, but wargames, even more than ttrpgs, live and die on community. We shall see if they can keep it up, but I'm skeptical that they can, given that troonish communities have a tendency to implode and are rarely good at managing money.

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

Crowd funding is all well and good, but wargames, even more than ttrpgs, live and die on community. We shall see if they can keep it up, but I'm skeptical that they can, given that troonish communities have a tendency to implode and are rarely good at managing money.

The subject matter is so religiously charged and the general asthetics leaning more on the grimdark that i doubt it will attain much IRL play

But other than that the only major point of failure that i see is the shipping and potential future updates, most of what they offer is pretty cut and dry. Community infighting may be spicy though, most troon communities have ossuaries in their closets

 

[LovisXVI]

The subject matter is so religiously charged and the general asthetics leaning more on the grimdark that i doubt it will attain much IRL play

But other than that the only major point of failure that i see is the shipping and potential future updates, most of what they offer is pretty cut and dry. Community infighting may be spicy though, most troon communities have ossuaries in their closets

I hope we get a community watch out of it, that would make it all worthwhile.

 

[darknation]

re: Trench Crusade, I'll probably pick up a book if the discord trannies can behave themselves for the two weeks the campaign is running.

So less than even odds.

I also can't help but notice the multi-part plastic kits are no longer plastic, and I'm not seeing any options for weapon loadouts (ie: there probably aren't any.)

 

[Corn Flakes]

The Trench Crusade Kickstarter was a smash hit, raising half a million dollars in hours. The usual suspects are smugging about le anti woke being defeated, but i suppose its succesful because the average anti warhammer sperg doesnt actually care about discord drama. That and the models they offer seem to be pretty good, with options for physical tiers if you dont own a 3d printer, which is abit above average for a tabletop kickstarter

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1405364378/trench-crusade

Of course, some are using the success to do autistic smug victory laps around retarded culture warriors like Grummz instead of just enjoying the game
The current most updooted post on the reddit about the Kickstarter is focusing more on felting Grummz rather than actually celebrating the game's success

https://archive.is/q6OdP

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrenchCrusade/s/S95RKfrPB6

The average pledge so far is almost 180 dollars.

I'd love to see a graph of the total pledged for that project over time, because I have a feeling we'd be seeing some large jumps wherever a few whales jumped into the pool.

 

[LovisXVI]

The average pledge so far is almost 180 dollars.

I'd love to see a graph of the total pledged for that project over time, because I have a feeling we'd be seeing some large jumps wherever a few whales jumped into the pool.

For a miniatures wargame, that isn't that much.

 

[The Ugly One]

We're talking about different things, then. You're talking about success in terms of profits and sales, I'm talking about success in terms of developing and managing good game.

In business, the only kind of success that matters is the kind of success that translates into customers buying your product, not winning a poll on a forum with 72 active users or getting a fond retrospective on a hobbyist website with under 100 hits per month.

In that case, fair enough. I concede that 5e is a far more successful product than 3.5e ever was. But I still hold it's a much worse game despite its profits. Because what's successful in business and financials doesn't necessarily translate to a good experience to the end-user.

Problem is, 5e attracted and kept a lot more end-users than 3.5 ever did, and in the market for clones of dead D&D editions, 3.5 is practically nonexistent (Before the Empire is the only one I know about). You're just defining a good game by how many landfills it takes to hold all the material printed for it, AD&D 2e is the greatest RPG ever made.

 

[Corn Flakes]

For a miniatures wargame, that isn't that much.

It's not that much for a multi-squad miniatures wargame like Warhammer. But unless they changed the rules since last I checked, Trench Crusade is a skirmish-level game. It's closer to Kill Team or BattleTech in terms of model count. The pricing scheme for pledges with physical rewards goes from $85 straight to $666. And they have 113 backers on that tier, plus 140 backers on the $888 tier. That's about 5% of their backers contributing over 20% of their total pledges, on a game that as far as I know hasn't even released a highly scripted demo video to show people how it plays.

My point is: just like every kickstarter, there are more than a few whales jumping in based on hype and distorting the numbers.

 

[Ghostse]

Problem is, 5e attracted and kept a lot more end-users than 3.5 ever did, and in the market for clones of dead D&D editions, 3.5 is practically nonexistent (Before the Empire is the only one I know about).

I think "kept" is maybe an overstatement, and attracted is a strong sentiment for a bunch of trannies that bought a book and maybe attended a session 0. Also the pandemic.
But I think we can all agree: even if there are pallets of new-old stock sitting in backrooms and warehouses with all that horrible wrong think that was later errataed away by tranny political officers, WotC pushed way more 5e books past the point they got their money for them than they did 3.5 books.

There are a few things that hollowed out the 3.5 retroclone market:
1) Pathfinder. I could really stop there, but I'll keep going. The 3.5 grogs went to Pathfinder and any publishers for 3.5 'retro' content would just make it Pathfinder instead.
2) There are a bunch of "hidden" 3.x clones. Castles and Crusades is a 3e core, Basic Fantasy is templated from 3.5, and you have things Testament which are practically settings based 3.5 system forks... basically a bunch of OGL "d20 system" systems and quasi-systems that remained niche.
3) Similarity with 5e; 5e is a less broken 3.5 with advantage and no grapple flow chart. If you know 3.5 its not too far of a jump to learn 5e which brings me to
4) Lack of niche. to tl;dr B/X has made a comeback because its a simple system. 3.5e isn't super complex but its more complex than 5e, but its also not as spergy as 2e AD&D with all the optional rules. So if you are recruiting for new players its easier for a 3.5 group to learn 5e than teach a 5e player 3.5.

You're just defining a good game by how many landfills it takes to hold all the material printed for it, AD&D 2e is the greatest RPG ever made.

Based and TSR pilled

 

[Second Missing Primarch]

re: Trench Crusade, I'll probably pick up a book if the discord trannies can behave themselves for the two weeks the campaign is running.

So less than even odds.

I also can't help but notice the multi-part plastic kits are no longer plastic, and I'm not seeing any options for weapon loadouts (ie: there probably aren't any.)

They apparently decided to just 3D print all the minis, and picked a printing company called Only-Games.co to do it for them. People were expressing concern about this in the Kickstarter comments, so I took a look at the company's reviews online and they are...not great. Literally the first result after the company's webstore are a bunch of plebbit threads complaining of excessively delayed shipments, broken or poorly printed minis, wrong items being delivered, and terrible customer service, and they also have atrocious reviews on Trustpilot and their Facebook page. The TC people apparently chose them because they think they'll get the job done quickly and cheaply and somehow avoid fucking up this many orders coming in at once. They keep reiterating that plastic would be too expensive and also said that they were only able to get two multipart kits developed in time. Honestly, the whole operation feels a bit slapdash. If it winds up falling apart, I won't be surprised.

 

[LovisXVI]

They apparently decided to just 3D print all the minis, and picked a printing company called Only-Games.co to do it for them. People were expressing concern about this in the Kickstarter comments, so I took a look at the company's reviews online and they are...not great. Literally the first result after the company's webstore are a bunch of plebbit threads complaining of excessively delayed shipments, broken or poorly printed minis, wrong items being delivered, and terrible customer service, and they also have atrocious reviews on Trustpilot and their Facebook page. The TC people apparently chose them because they think they'll get the job done quickly and cheaply and somehow avoid fucking up this many orders coming in at once. They keep reiterating that plastic would be too expensive and also said that they were only able to get two multipart kits developed in time. Honestly, the whole operation feels a bit slapdash. If it winds up falling apart, I won't be surprised.

OOOF, cheaping out on your first product release is not a good idea and makes me think that it is going to start crashing and burning faster than expected.

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

They apparently decided to just 3D print all the minis, and picked a printing company called Only-Games.co to do it for them. People were expressing concern about this in the Kickstarter comments, so I took a look at the company's reviews online and they are...not great. Literally the first result after the company's webstore are a bunch of plebbit threads complaining of excessively delayed shipments, broken or poorly printed minis, wrong items being delivered, and terrible customer service, and they also have atrocious reviews on Trustpilot and their Facebook page. The TC people apparently chose them because they think they'll get the job done quickly and cheaply and somehow avoid fucking up this many orders coming in at once. They keep reiterating that plastic would be too expensive and also said that they were only able to get two multipart kits developed in time. Honestly, the whole operation feels a bit slapdash. If it winds up falling apart, I won't be surprised.

One Page Rules was originally partnered primarily with Only Games until recently, Only Games increased its pricing that pretty much lead to the OPR people axing its individual model listings, limited only to Army Bundles now.
OPR partnered with another 3d printing company less than half a month ago now due to how shit Only Games was. There were also various reports of bad service and shit quality as you mentioned

https://www.onepagerules.com/news/changes-to-our-only-games-store

Things could get autistic, they should've just had a MMF page with a merchant tier and let the free market decide which company ends up doing good

 

[BlazikenLover]

Crowd funding is all well and good, but wargames, even more than ttrpgs, live and die on community.

This, I've seen way too many board games, TTRPGs and miniature games getting crowdfunded but then you rarely see any discussion online and I recall reading how a lot of the time backers of TTRPG books just get them to put on their shelf and never use them.

But other than that the only major point of failure that i see is the shipping

This is where many crowdfunded projects shit the bed yes, if they screw the shipping then it's DOA.

 

[Ghostse]

Jesus Christ I didn't know/see all that shit and my take was "I have seen multiple projects done in by death via Kickstart success, so I'm going to wait until this shit is actually in people's hands and being painted/played before I give any sort of ruling".
I have friends who got in on the Darkest Dungeon TTBG and that shit was years and another something like $100/150 in shipping costs because the chinks they were partnered with for fulfillment left them high and dry once the checks cleared.

Also just going off that: said friends backed up to the full $500 or w/e level, but by the time all the shipping drama was done they basically looked at the figures, played a couple games, and its now collecting dust in their closet.


Also, while we're talking overpriced plastic spacemen, if you want some shit to clutter your shelves the Joytoy Warhammer 40K figures are pretty nice.

This, I've seen way too many board games, TTRPGs and miniature games getting crowdfunded but then you rarely see any discussion online and I recall reading how a lot of the time backers of TTRPG books just get them to put on their shelf and never use them.

I will confirm this is true even if you play the games you buy.
I backed the OSE kickstarter, but honestly the books usually stay at home (except for one of the "rules tomes" I have in my bag as a just-in-case) because its easier to either have some 8x11's with the class rules printed on them to hand out than have people pass around copies of the genre rules, or they can just the OSE wiki (or any B/X reprint). or totally legal PDFs. cough.

I also backed a "system independent" book about the underdark, basically "The Dungeon Masters Guide to Caving", and the book is a great resource. Its also beautifully put together with actual clothbacked saddle stitching... but having gone through it, I don't think I've touched it in the past year because I've injested the basics and if I do have a though about wanting to look up something, there's the PDF. Also I'm in between campaigns and the couple one-shots I run even if I wanted to theme them around caving, a one-shot isn't going to be getting that deep into the woods. So even if the content gets use, the book probably doesn't.

 

[LovisXVI]

I also backed a "system independent" book about the underdark, basically "The Dungeon Masters Guide to Caving", and the book is a great resource. Its also beautifully put together with actual clothbacked saddle stitching... but having gone through it, I don't think I've touched it in the past year because I've injested the basics and if I do have a though about wanting to look up something, there's the PDF. Also I'm in between campaigns and the couple one-shots I run even if I wanted to theme them around caving, a one-shot isn't going to be getting that deep into the woods. So even if the content gets use, the book probably doesn't

It baffles me why independent publishers do physical releases. All my experience with physical publishing is a nightmare of bloating costs and storage, and my experience is with single runs print according to order! So I imagine it's even worse for other ways. Digital books are just better for the gm since being able to search through them is just a great tool to have. I've yet to figure out how to control + f in real life.

 

[AnOminous]

It baffles me why independent publishers do physical releases. All my experience with physical publishing is a nightmare of bloating costs and storage, and my experience is with single runs print according to order! So I imagine it's even worse for other ways. Digital books are just better for the gm since being able to search through them is just a great tool to have. I've yet to figure out how to control + f in real life.

Grognards are used to physical books and like to have physical things.

 

[Ah ha']

Another thing about 3.5 d&d is that a lot of the art for the monsters is quite evocative and pretty to look at. For years before I ever played a single rpg I collected monster manuals starting with 2e.

The 3rd ed monster art in many cases is the same feeling I get from looking at the spritework of Homm3 it is just fantastic enough to seem like it could be real in a lot of cases. Of course there are some stinkers.

Sadly pathfinder and other games afterward could never capture that look again, in the case of Pathfinder it is simply too cartoony and the digitization of art production just doesnt look as nice in 5e.

 

[Ghostse]

It baffles me why independent publishers do physical releases. All my experience with physical publishing is a nightmare of bloating costs and storage, and my experience is with single runs print according to order! So I imagine it's even worse for other ways. Digital books are just better for the gm since being able to search through them is just a great tool to have. I've yet to figure out how to control + f in real life.

I like both, but for different things.
For my first read through of a book I like doing it on a physical book. Since I'm trying to compile a lot of information from various points, the real estate of a side-by-side 8.5x11 is unmatched by any e-reader to say nothing of no refresh delay flipping pages or ease of bookmarking. Plus a lot of books are still designed "Paper first" meaning scrolling a PDF isnt' the same as having 2-page spreads.
For this reason I do almost all my novel reading on a kindle, but my technical books I still get hardcopy.

After that initial data dump, I'm pretty much solely on the PDF because I'm searching for key terms - though if I'm not trying to move fast I'll go through the physical books becasue I have them and it sometimes results in me finding stuff I never knew i was looking for.

And I guess if I'm spending $20-50 on a book once a year or less, I'll pony up the extra $10-20 for a nice one.

Sadly pathfinder and other games afterward could never capture that look again, in the case of Pathfinder it is simply too cartoony and the digitization of art production just doesnt look as nice in 5e.

I never liked Pathfinders art direction either.

 

[The Ugly One]

It baffles me why independent publishers do physical releases. All my experience with physical publishing is a nightmare of bloating costs and storage, and my experience is with single runs print according to order! So I imagine it's even worse for other ways. Digital books are just better for the gm since being able to search through them is just a great tool to have. I've yet to figure out how to control + f in real life.

You can't ban electronic devices at the table if the books are on people's phones and tablets. IME, once I really know a book and have it tabbed, I find things in it faster than any PDF. I also just find navigating PDFs on tablet to be somewhat cumbersome and awkward. Maybe it would be different if people released the information in a format that was actually touch-screen friendly instead of making it just a sluggish way to read tiny text.

 

[strawberry15]

AD&D 2e is the greatest RPG ever made.

Truest thing ever.