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The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

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Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rifts has a wonderfully gonzo setting saddled with possibly the worst rules system available in this century. The Savage Worlds conversion is pretty cool, though.

LOL, I loved Palladium's weirdo rules, particularly the SDC/MDC distinction with Rifts and a few others. Don't think I've seen/heard anything about a Savage Worlds conversion. Do you have any details on that? And it's a shame how Palladium died, small company got fucked over by their accountant

They didn't die. Kevin Siembieda sold a bunch of art prints and asked fans to buy books direct from the web store, and they got back in the black. That was 12 years ago and they're still alive.

Siembieda has a habit of going all-in on bad ideas and then blaming everyone but himself afterwards. E.G., there was interest in a Rifts video game, so he licensed a studio to make one...for the Nokia N-Gage, despite all his fans urgently telling him that it was a dumpster fire. Then when the game flopped like everything associated with the N-Gage, he announced that no one could have seen this coming and clearly video games weren't a good avenue for Palladium. More than once he's commissioned a book, talked up the author in a big way, then by the time the manuscript is half-completed he's decided to cancel the book and tell everyone that it's because the author just didn't get it.

And apparently a lot of the losses to the crooked accountant happened because Palladium had no inventory control system, so no one realized stuff was vanishing.

All of which is to say, I suspect that anyone but Siembieda wouldn't have fallen victim to that guy in the first place.

(Oh, and there was a $1.5 million Kickstarter that somehow crashed and burned with 90% of the promised materials undelivered, even though all the tooling was ready and they were actually printing books.)

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#112
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rifts has a wonderfully gonzo setting saddled with possibly the worst rules system available in this century. The Savage Worlds conversion is pretty cool, though.

I know. I ran a campaign of RIFTs and globetrotting in that setting was awesome... But the rules were so very boring. Palladium crashed catastrophically, sadly. There was some kind of theft problem, and then they had a disastrous Kickstarter.... Such a shame they couldn't find a way to modernize.

They're still around, if that's what you're saying. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18862412

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same but they'll almost never admit to it at work. That, essentially, is the issue. If you don't already know they play Magic, you won't know they play Magic. Gambling, in most traditional forms, is seen as low-class and stupid, while in reality many, many people in this industry are compulsive gamblers.

It's called cryptocurrency.

That is what I was alluding to.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#115
Ironically, the best way to actually play D&D is...online, using Fantasy Grounds software. This saves on an incredible amount of time and micromanagement, creating time for actual RP and gameplay. Highly recommended, plus you can actually include your non-local friends.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#116
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FWIW: Pathfinder didn't win because it didn't have the name. The game itself is fine. But there can be only one D&D, and once WotC managed to figure out that the edition upgrade mill was a death trap and released a streamlined 5e, there wasn't much niche left for Pathfinder to fill. 5e was the second D&D edition released after Pathfinder, so I'm not really sure what “edition upgrade mill” you are talking about. > (…

OMG, we're actually having an edition war on HN! D&D really has broken through! Pathfinder beat 4e to market in a technical sense, but it absolutely exists because WotC announced it was moving away from 3.5e and the OGL with a new edition. Paizo never intended to release it to compete directly with 3.5, and it would have been insane to do so.

[deleted]

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#117
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing one's imagination seems more common than losing one's sight. :(

That sounds like a good thing to me. It would be unfortunate if going blind was more common

The more common a disability becomes, the less of a disadvantage it becomes - with some lag, of course - the world does tend accommodate for the (visible) average.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL, I loved Palladium's weirdo rules, particularly the SDC/MDC distinction with Rifts and a few others. Don't think I've seen/heard anything about a Savage Worlds conversion. Do you have any details on that? And it's a shame how Palladium died, small company got fucked over by their accountant

They didn't die. Kevin Siembieda sold a bunch of art prints and asked fans to buy books direct from the web store, and they got back in the black. That was 12 years ago and they're still alive. Siembieda has a habit of going all-in on bad ideas and then blaming everyone but himself afterwards. E.G., there was interest in a Rifts video game, so he licensed a studio to make one...for the Nokia N-Gage, despite all his f…

Oh I've heard plenty over the years about Siembieda's business chops. Glad to hear they are still around, I should probably check on these things :P

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#119

What a shame that all this attention goes to D&D. There are so many other good tabletop games with exquisite worldbuilding, languishing for attention... Vampire: The Masquerade, RIFTS (my personal fav)

In the 90s these were the #2 and #3 RPGs after D&D and they're both still around and have new books released. If Rifts had evolved in the same way D&D had and Siembieda wasn't so controlling maybe it would be as big or bigger than D&D now. See comments below about why Rifts/Palladium aren't as popular as D&D.

Re: The unlikely resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons

#120

Paradoxically, tech has actually made DnD much more accessible to the masses. When my friends and I first started playing 3.5 in middle school, we pooled our money for a single player's handbook (they were pricey back then!) and would constantly be passing it around any time anyone needed to do anything, which really slowed down the pace of the game and made it hard to get intimately familiar with the rules. Eventual…

Yep, what also adds in my point of view to its popularity is that due to highly successful DND inspired PC games and cosplay DND is generally not considered some weird thing. Also people tend to be ok with the fantasy part of DND.

When I started playing DND in the early 90th you were considered a creep with too much fantasy. :D

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