Kickstarters Thread

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Ptolus Kickstarter now up. If you want PDF you can get both flavours for $40...

It looks to me like a re-tooling if the 3e version, as opposed to a re-write, at least until they get into stretch goals...

The $60 version had a lot of stuff included and seemed like too good of something to pass up, even if my new location appears to lack any sort of gaming community. Who knows -- maybe someday I will convince the locals that winter is intended for indoor activities
 
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Weapon Damage is based on SP of Damaging Attribute. 1 SP = 3 Base Damage. Damage increases by a factor of 1.41 per SP, such that each increase of 2 SP doubles it. So 3 SP = 6 Damage; 5 SP = 12 Damage; up to 15 SP = 380 Damage, and so on.
I see...this is basically on the same scale as Health points but shifted down about 3.8 or so. In other words, they are both approximately scaled 1.4 per SP, i.e. the root of two. So you should be able to take about four Green hits from someone with a damage SP equivalent to the health SP, which means one red or orange hit should take someone out where the health and damage are equivalent SPs.
When it is a character’s Panel in the Page, he can perform up to three Actions.
These rules are nice; they give you a lot of versatility and they are pretty simple. One thing I'm wondering about, though, is how you'll simulate super-speed characters who might conceivably attack many targets per round. Is that some kind of special feat?
Mathematically, color results of Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red are the equivalent to 0, 1, 2, and 3 SPs respectively, or non-logarithmic values of 1, 2, 4, and 8.
Looking over the CHART in more detail, I see what you're doing with that. If I'm using this system, it's simpler to factor the baseline difficulty into the DV and use the colors to represent superlative success. But I suppose some GMs will like to have the option, sort of how you can use DC or advantage for 5e checks.
To address your point from above, on non-combat tasks it is absolutely the case at RV+1 and above that success is virtually assured and that the open question is how well you succeed.
I've struggled to represent this kind of thing in game mechanics that I've designed. There are some bodies of knowledge where you either know it or you don't...or you're right on the cusp. That seems to be what you're going for here. The struggle is how to unify this concept with conflicts that aren't entirely one-sided, and you've done that simply by making combat challenges halve the effect of differences. That's a pretty straight-foward approach that definitely works for the genre.

These rules are a bit mathier than I generally prefer, but you have to make allowances for the genre, and your mechanics are fairly "elegant" i.e. consistent, seemingly robust and not over-complicated. So yeah, looks pretty promising.
 
The $60 version had a lot of stuff included and seemed like too good of something to pass up
I’ve buddied up with a couple of the other guys in our group and so far we’ve backed at the $150 level and added in the smaller of the two big maps.
 
I’ve buddied up with a couple of the other guys in our group and so far we’ve backed at the $150 level and added in the smaller of the two big maps.
The map is very tempting as the idea of having it on the wall during the game seems like it might improve play considerably.
 
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It is a pretty map. Get the smaller one if do it. The big one is unwieldy.
The map is very tempting as the idea of having it on the wall during the game seems like it might improve play considerably.
 
That was pretty much my thinking. I want something usable, rather than as a wall feature
 
Both the supers game and the bronzepunk game in this thread sound fun. I definitely don't need another game in either of those genres, but I'm still tempted:grin:!
 
Patrick Stuart has a KS up for his seminal OSR adventure Deep Carbon Observatory Remastered, with new maps, formatting and new material added. Love this adventure so I’m thinking of pulling the trigger for the proper hardcopy release if the UK shipping won’t push it into the absurd in terms of price. Thankfully he is keeping the controversial Scrap Princess art, just bigger with better presentation, which I personally really dig.
 
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I mean... I don’t like it, but I don’t really see how anyone could be upset by it?
She's done a lot of work on the artier end of OSR, specifically collaborating with Stuart on a lot of his projects (including the first edition of DCO). Her style is very "scribbly," as you can see from Voros Voros' post. I personally wouldn't call her controversial but I think there is a certain contingent that considers her stuff to lie a little too close to "my kid could do that." I totally disagree with this assessment, but I've run into it.

I think her worst stuff can come across as lazy, but her best work is highly expressive. She can capture a surprising amount of nuance with a few (extremely messy) lines. There's a gritty, violent quality to her style that goes very well with OSR, and has its own very distinctive mood. I believe that her contribution to DCO went a long way towards establishing the unique tone of that work.
 
Only time I remewmber ever being ...angered...by art in an RPG was Blood of Heroes.

The above example doesn't elicit any response from me.

It's better than the art in OD&D....
 
Damning with faint praise, here.

well,...

I googled her stuff, some of it I rather like, just for the energy...

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...it reminds me of the illustrations from some Raold Dahl books.

But then there's stuff like this...

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..and I'm like "ok, that's not really art, that's just shitting on the page". I know, I do plenty of it myself.

My point in regards to OD&D is that it was obviously a case of "oh, I know this guy who can kinda draw", but no one in the OSR sits around complaining about it. It is what it is.

This seems like someone with some talent, at least, even if they obviously are not always trying very hard.
 
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Another question for A archon_ascendant:

One thing that struck me today thinking about your CHART is that it's not symmetrical with regard to the RV. Does this system typically assume an "active" and a "passive" roll in opposed tests? How does one simulate, say, an arm wrestling match between two PCs of unequal Strength? Does one roll at RV +1 or does the other roll at RV -1?
 
I don’t mind her art at all, but I do tend to mind the graphic design elements of the layout of the books her works typically feature in. It’s like the desktop publisher got inspired by her frantic messiness and decided to make the layout match it. Which frequently makes it a literal headache for me to read and use.

like that one monster manual where there are zero margins or text formatting other than deliberately amateurish typewriter scraps loosely glued or taped onto her more abstract works.It actually makes me feel ill.

Vornheim causes the same nauseous effect to me.

I blame learning InDesign and some basics of desktop publish for my distaste and frustration. But also my education on Accessibility and how some text presentation and art can literally cause anxiety to some folks.

But I understand that art can be made deliberately to cause unpleasant cognitive reactions. So success!
 
I don’t mind her art at all, but I do tend to mind the graphic design elements of the layout of the books her works typically feature in. It’s like the desktop publisher got inspired by her frantic messiness and decided to make the layout match it. Which frequently makes it a literal headache for me to read and use.
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This. ^ ^ ^

I actually worked as a typesetter for a while and while I am a pretty terrible graphic designer, I did at least learn how to make a readable and usable layout for a book. Since then I've written many, many large technical documents - mainly specifications and IT governance related things like PIDs - and learned a thing or two about how to make a complex document that's designed to be used.

While role playing games do have a creative element, they are not fine art that you buy and install in a lobby somewhere. RPGs are a product that is also meant to be used, so clarity and discoverability are a big deal in the design of a RPG rulebook or supplement. I'd rather have something with a straightforward layout and decent editorial work than an attempt to make the book look atmospheric by overdoing the illustration and layout.

The other day I got a couple of the Mothership books and was somewhat underwhelmed by their interior layout, which came across as something out of a death metal 'zine. At the other end of the spectrum, for all their lack of interior artwork the Traveller LBBs did a much better job of explaining the rules clearly and packed a rich body of content into three tiny splat books. Yes it's a bit bland, but it does actually work at its primary job of explaining the rules and providing an easy-to-use reference.

TL;DR: Don't try to be arty for its own sake (or at least be circumspect with it), and especially don't sacrifice readability for it. I've seen plenty of rulebooks that could establish a tone with just a handful of illustrations. I think there is a reasonable argument for less is more.
 
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Yeah Graphic Designers gone wild often forget to keep things readable without a strong editorial hand.


I think there's a big divide between the publisher world aimed at gamers and that aimed at people who read and talk about games. Within our niche hobby there is definitely a subset online of people who's "social cache" is based on the new hawtness, and the more avant-garde, the better. Playability/readability isn't even really a concern.

I think White Wolf kicked off this trend, or at least were the first to recognize/cater to it,but it's been growing ever since the turn of the millenium and the creation of forums.

I'm not complaining/criticizing. I can appreciate a feast for the eyes (or at least an attempt at one), but when it comes to actually sitting down and gaming, I prefer a reference manual with a robust index over some shiny.
 
I saw a copy of Juxtapoz magazine in the Inbox of my workplace’s Graphics dept, that to me along with mags like Raygun and Interview, which I don’t know if they still exist, are the epitome of The Graphic Designer Gone Wild ethos.
 
In general I find the ‘non-creative’ roles are all under appreciated and the first to be ignored as non-essential. Kickstarter campaign seem to be super-vulnerable to this.

Project managers and editors are the obvious casualties and it is the product that suffers.
 
The hobby does seem to have suffered from a particular dearth of copy-editors since the dawn of time.

I bet one could fill an entire book just pointing out typos in RPGs (I'd title it "See Page XXX")
There is a famously enormous Traveller errata document kicking about on the interwebs. For all their other faults the Traveller grog set are very good at keeping track of this sort of thing. Megatraveller, in particular, was particularly bad for slack editorial standards and its errata are legion.

I like Donald Knuth's approach to errata and bugs in TeX. He used to give a cheque for $2.56 to the first person to discover any error. Most of them got kept or framed and never cashed, and were viewed as a kind of status symbol.
 
I rather enjoyed the marriage of art and layout in one of the last books by He Who Must Not be Named, called Frostbitten and Mutilated. It has the artist’s crazy loose style but the text was relatively easy to read with plenty of white space. However, it maintained its stylish cred.

Mothership is right at the border though. Looks really neat but feels claustrophobic (which is appropriate to the theme of the game, for sure, but still)...

Anyway, it can be done well. That Mork Bork book looks really gorgeous and readable too.
 
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Project managers and editors are the obvious casualties and it is the product that suffers.
This is, of course, the complete opposite of I.T. in the financial services sector where the normal response is to hire more managers. Because what a project that's struggling with its workload needs is more managers, right?
 
You guys suck...

$263 for the game + shipping and then I had to go over to Amazon and pick up the Complete Batman the Animated Series for another $57. I just couldn't pass up all those wonderful figures.




22 hours to go for any other fence sitters. :devil:
 
Interesting that we're getting Supergirl now, a character at a very different scale of power.
 
Interesting that we're getting Supergirl now, a character at a very different scale of power.

Did she ever turn up in an episode? I would have thought Superman a more likely add on since there was a Superman Batman team up complete with a Lex Luther / Joker pairing.
 
Did she ever turn up in an episode? I would have thought Superman a more likely add on since there was a Superman Batman team up complete with a Lex Luther / Joker pairing.
She's in "Girl's Night Out" in The New Batman Adventures.
 
Can someone please tell me why Ptolus is such a big freakin' deal?

It seems like such bog-standard fantasy to me. Why are people gushing over it so hard? Did a YouTube celebrity praise it or something?

50$ CAD is an AWFUL lot for a PDF... There's no way that this hobby must have so many "must have" products at such decadent prices.
 
Can someone please tell me why Ptolus is such a big freakin' deal?

It seems like such bog-standard fantasy to me. Why are people gushing over it so hard? Did a YouTube celebrity praise it or something?

50$ CAD is an AWFUL lot for a PDF... There's no way that this hobby must have so many "must have" products at such decadent prices.
If you count Monte Cook as a youtube celebrity then one could say so - in a manner of speaking.

Ptolus the biggest RPG supplement published in its day and got a lot of attention for this at the time. Apparently it had a fairly large art budget and was quite expensive to produce - big enough that even TSR/WOTC had to think twice about producing it. I think everything else is memetics.
 
Monte is very good at marketing, producing beautiful products and knowing what whales will buy.

And they are great products. Top notch art, layout etc.
The original Ptolus is immense but we'll indexed and designed to be a reference book.
 
Ptolus the biggest RPG supplement published in its day and got a lot of attention for this at the time. Apparently it had a fairly large art budget and was quite expensive to produce - big enough that even TSR/WOTC had to think twice about producing it. I think everything else is memetics.

Wasn't Ptolus produced and published by Malhavoc Press?

As Bunch Bunch said above it's an immense book of 800 pages. But it's layout makes it very easy to use in a game. At least according to one of my friends, who I gave my physical copy too. Still have the pdf though.
 
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