- Joined
- Nov 20, 2018
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)
- Thread starter Surtur
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- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
That's Kobold Press though. Pretty much par for the course.
They came so close and then tripped and fell on a dick (which they then deepthroated & swallowed). When you make every race able to be the same, there are no differences anymore. If someone wants to be a jack of all trades, that's what rolling a Human is for.
Its less that every dwarf comes out of the womb knowing how to swing an axe, its more that
A) Why the ever loving fuck would you roll a dwarf if you AREN'T going to swing an axe?
B) All things being equal Dwarves are just better at swinging axes than anyone else and that's just how things should be. That's not saying no one will ever be better than dwarf; a lvl 0 dwarf peasant can't match a lvl 5 halfling fighter in axe swinging,
No one is saying all Orcs should be INT 3 Int 2, tops but why the fuck are playing a orc if you're going to make a nebbish wizard?
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
ACKS II is still moving along.
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2015
Wizards of the Coast president Cynthia Williams is out.
Cynthia Williams will be stepping down as Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming’s president and CEO on April 26th, according to an SEC filing from the company’s owner, Hasbro. No replacement has been named at this time, but the toy company responsible for Peppa Pig, Transformers and - more germane to tabletop - Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, is “conducting a process to identify her successor, looking at both internal and external candidates.”
Williams joined Wizards of the Coast in 2022, replacing Chris Cocks as president when he took Hasbro’s reins as CEO. Her role consisted of managing two of the biggest names in the tabletop industry, along with Hasbro’s suite of other analogue games - Scrabble, Monopoly and Cluedo, to name a few. She helped implement Cocks’ Blueprint 2.0 strategy, which narrowed Hasbro’s focus on licensing the company’s most profitable brands and emphasizing digital products as much as possible.
When reached for comment, a Hasbro representative said this: “We’re excited for Cynthia to take the next step in her career and grateful for the contributions she has made in her more than two years at Wizards and Hasbro. We wish her the absolute best in her next endeavor. We have started the search for our next President of Wizards of the Coast and hope to have a successor in place soon.”
Williams previously worked as Microsoft’s general manager and vice president of the Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team, and before that clocked 10+ years at Amazon where, according to BusinessWire, she “led the global growth of their e-commerce direct-to-consumer business Fulfillment by Amazon.” Amongst all the corporate title bloat is a clear skill set that Hasbro wanted inside their machine. Experience in digital gaming, direct-to-consumer sales and the commercial positioning of products ostensibly fit Hasbro’s ambitious plans for Wizards of the Coast and its flagship games.
That blueprint has not materialized in the way Cocks wanted. The company faces an extremely tough 2023 and laid off 1,100 workersin order to salvage a bump in stock prices at the end of a tumultuous year that saw both the OGL fiasco and the miraculous success of Baldur's Gate 3. We can’t say for sure that Williams’ departure signals yet another new phase within the flagging toy giant or if the Wizards’ president found an opportunity to deploy her golden parachute before things get worse.
An interim president will likely be announced prior to Williams’ final day on April 26th, so keep checking Dicebreaker for more information as it becomes available.
Williams joined Wizards of the Coast in 2022, replacing Chris Cocks as president when he took Hasbro’s reins as CEO. Her role consisted of managing two of the biggest names in the tabletop industry, along with Hasbro’s suite of other analogue games - Scrabble, Monopoly and Cluedo, to name a few. She helped implement Cocks’ Blueprint 2.0 strategy, which narrowed Hasbro’s focus on licensing the company’s most profitable brands and emphasizing digital products as much as possible.
When reached for comment, a Hasbro representative said this: “We’re excited for Cynthia to take the next step in her career and grateful for the contributions she has made in her more than two years at Wizards and Hasbro. We wish her the absolute best in her next endeavor. We have started the search for our next President of Wizards of the Coast and hope to have a successor in place soon.”
Williams previously worked as Microsoft’s general manager and vice president of the Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team, and before that clocked 10+ years at Amazon where, according to BusinessWire, she “led the global growth of their e-commerce direct-to-consumer business Fulfillment by Amazon.” Amongst all the corporate title bloat is a clear skill set that Hasbro wanted inside their machine. Experience in digital gaming, direct-to-consumer sales and the commercial positioning of products ostensibly fit Hasbro’s ambitious plans for Wizards of the Coast and its flagship games.
That blueprint has not materialized in the way Cocks wanted. The company faces an extremely tough 2023 and laid off 1,100 workersin order to salvage a bump in stock prices at the end of a tumultuous year that saw both the OGL fiasco and the miraculous success of Baldur's Gate 3. We can’t say for sure that Williams’ departure signals yet another new phase within the flagging toy giant or if the Wizards’ president found an opportunity to deploy her golden parachute before things get worse.
An interim president will likely be announced prior to Williams’ final day on April 26th, so keep checking Dicebreaker for more information as it becomes available.
Illumithotty
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2022
I got to the part about the Confederacy myself and never bothered browsing past that and the retarded explanation in the Marshal's Section. For those unaware, Deadlands used to be about the weird west and the prolonged North-South Civil War; to blunt any possible sharp edges that could snag on someone's feeling, the newest edition circa 2020 decided that the Civil War is now over. Kind of foundational to large portions of the game's theme but whatever, I guess it's time to just end the war and move things forward at least a little bit. But nope! They didn't even do that. It was some retarded metaplot - which Deadlands as a whole is fucking infamous for, between GMPCs running around dictating how adventures are supposed to go and don't you dare change it! - where Mordred runs around the Wild West and summons his mom and then ??? so no there's no more Confederacy.
Also I did look briefly at those gun tables and the numbers, which I guess were just pulled out of the air at random. All those Weight values? Completely fucking meaningless. The LeMat and the Dragoon did weigh about 4lbs but everything else was just over 2, and the rifles have the same discrepancy between a 9lb Spencer and a 14lb Sharps. It was probably just written up for GURPs and then lazily ported over, if not just made up on the spot without any oversight or editing.
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2021
Its like people can't think in statistical averages or in means or something.
Pentex
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2020
I guess Cynthia couldn't get grogs to turn into 'recurrent spenders' similar to video games.
TTRPGs will continue to be undermonetized.
SAD!
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2018
Another Loss for Wizards, I guess 2024 is going to be unforgiving as last year
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2019
The post about games that spawned out OGL drama got me wondering what happened to that Advanced 5e "system" that was being developed well before the OGL drama. It came out and nobody cared, which is not surprising since they had advertised as "fixing" 5e lack of depth but all they did, from what I can recall from the prerelease and gather from post release comments, was add bloat.
Seeing their website does not inspire confidence either.
Seeing their website does not inspire confidence either.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
Did they even have any OGL content to remove?
Literal mechanical niggers from
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- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Because nobody fucking expects the Wizard to cast Haste and Mage Armor on themselves and then double as a fighter, that's why.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
This is why wizards rule though.
Sunflower Samurai
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
afaik one of the reasons they started working on II was to remove all traces of it, so i think they did to an extent
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2019
Given how dogshit WotC is now, I’m going to play the smallest possible violin for them as they shit the bed. Don’t let the soymen convince you that they’re “acktchually doing great” when their products continue to suck.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
Yes, there are bits and pieces of text lifted from D&D SRDs.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
It really depends on what you're looking for there.
Generally speaking, "skill based" games like Savage Worlds and Call of Cthulhu have more natural skill progression. Though SW is still level based. For CoC, I've not read the rules myself, but my understanding is after each session you roll your skills you used that session, and if you roll over your current value, it goes up.
As for gear based, DnD does that with magic items and consumables. Starfinder goes all in on this with gear tiered by level. The idea of disposable items being the source of the PCs power was a key focus of Cypher System.
I should also mention mech games like MechWarrior and Lancer, since progress is based around building bigger mechs. Games with a survival element (there was a Deadlands spin off I forget the name of). These games have the players scrounging for supplies early on, but are capable of getting powerful gear. Finally, there are board games, especially the Fantasy Flight Arkham and Eldritch series. Descent is another one, and plays almost like a simple RPG.
I like Savage Worlds a lot. It has it's weaknesses as a system, but it's benefits often make up for them.
It's a system that makes a lot of sense, especially for modern setting. It's a low numbers game, and since characters almost never increase in HP, a punk with a pocket knife is still technically dangerous if he gets a lucky stab in. I've read on the internet that SW plays a good zombie game, likely for this reason, and I've successfully run SCP like horror games in it. I also like it as a DM because, once you have the basics down, it's easy to house rule or even stat enemies and npcs on the fly if you need to.
The problems are character creation isn't intuitive. There's also complaints that combat is "swingy", and traditional boss fights are often screwed over as the potential for unlimited damage means that PCs walking into a room and kill the boss with a god roll. The biggest flaw however is the players. Non-gamers struggle to understand the basic concepts and character creation, but once they have the gist down they take to it easily. Meanwhile, gamers are the opposite, maxing out the two combat skills and then not knowing what to do after that, or they try to game the system with a jack of all trades build. They also struggle with concepts like exploding dice and bennies.
The game works best when using action movie logic. James Bond, Indiana Jones, that kind of thing.
Another system I can sort of recommend is Tiny d6. The rule books, not so much as the newer ones are often poorly edited and have missing content, while older books are less refined in their rule set. But the system itself works great for short games and one shots due to limited progression in both stats and gear.
Can confirm. I tried to play an investigator genius type, kind of like that Sherlock Holmes movie. But they basically worked like monks with extra steps. I vaguely remember liking the idea of the expertise dice, but not enough to use the rules system over vanilla 5e.
They keep coming up. They are connected to Sweet Baby Inc somehow too.