Rockheimr's page

The thing is we have a looong mass cultural attachment to alcohol (and to a lesser extent tobacco) that cannot realistically be changed. Adding other dangerous substances which we don't really have much cultural link to historically seems a bad idea.

Anyhoo, that aside, I LOVED Part 1 of the Hobbit (and didn't mind the drug references), don't listen to purists - who were never going to like it, it's really good fun. Or if you're a purist, more power to you, but don't bother going - you won't like it. The only point I personally didn't like and thought unnecessary was the stone giant sequence - which was way over the top and really unbelievable imo. Okay, as with any movie there were little niggles, but really no more than in the excellant PJ LOTR movies - and less than I had with RotK.

Loved the main Orc bad guy, liked the Great Goblin, loved the (Gundabad-)wargs, but most of all (despite mainstream reviews to the contrary) the film splendidly succeeds in making the dwarves identifiable individuals and sympathetic. Thorin especially is very well done. I was able by the end to name almost all of the dwarves by sight - which is no mean feat for PJ to have achieved.

Oh and the scenes showing Dale and Erebor at their heights made me have a geekgasm in my pants. Brilliant visuals.

I'm not sure the 3d did much, beyond a couple of nice moments when a moth or a bird flew out over the audience, so I'd probably advising going to IMAX 3d for the first showing, and (as I will be next week some time) when you go for the inevitable second cinema viewing switch to a standard screen.

Btw, what potions of longevity have Elijah Wood and Kate Blanchett been guzzling? Those guys have not visually aged one jot.

Vader's return from the dead would be the final nail for me.

SW is practically dead to me anyway, but that would definitely bury it for all time as far as I'm concerned.

I expect they will just not reference the vast majority of EU stuff, they want a new fresh start, getting tangled up in canon most movie goers neither know nor care about would be pointless. The problem with setting a new SW movie in the future is who are the villains?

It's actually really hard coming up with new bad guys for SW. Look at the Prequels, they failed utterly imo.

The Empire was just such a fantastic baddy, it's ships looked great, it's troops looked great, it's vehicles looked great, it had Vader and the Emperor. It was the complete package. Coming up with something similarly iconic and memorable, well that's a tall order. On the other hand just bringing the Empire back ruins the end of RotJ.

I am curious to see what they come up with...

Stefan Hill wrote:

They have been sort of forced too by the fact that 4e didn't quite hit the mark with the D&D gaming community.

Rockheimr wrote:

4e has probably (we shall see) in the long term killed D&D, it was that bad - imo.

These are very bold opinions.

Since 2008 I've played 4e exclusively and haven't played PF once. Of the three 'general' gamer forums I frequent -- WotC (well, used to), ENworld, and rpgnet -- 4e has its share of fans and detractors. PF is largely viewed as a 3.5 clone, and often elicits comments like "Why play PF when I have my own house rules?" Should I take this to mean that PF didn't hit the mark within the D&D community, or that it's just that bad?

I hope you'd agree that this would be a huuuge assumption based on limited anecdotal experience.

Some people still play 1e, but I think we'd agree commercially that game is deader than a-line flared trousers with pockets in the knees?

I don't in fact 'play' PF, I prefer another system personally, but I do regularly buy PF books as they are extremely mineable for plot ideas, characters, interesting monsters, adventures, settings, locations etc etc. Everything that I've found 4e to basically ignore.

People used to say those of us stating 4e seemed to be failing were making 'huge assumptions' and relying on 'anecdotal evidence' ... and yet here we are, 4e's quickly seeming deader than corduroy, and 5e's on it's way. Sometimes personal anecdotes and opinions seem to be correct.

EDIT - I'm not certain D&D is dead, indeed in the short term it's not - 5e will inevitably create some degree of lift for it - I was saying long term 4e has probably killed it's previously monolithic overshadowing of the hobby. 5e will have to be something incredible to win back those of us who haven't bought a wotc book in the past 2-3 years.

The argument between railroad and open world games is a tricky one. I tend to believe the best way to play is somewhere between the two extremes, as with most things in life.

As a GM I strive to avoid railroading, but truly open world gaming either requires tons of work (much of which won't be used), or no work beyond random tables.

I don't personally classify a campaign having some story thread running through it as railroading. Railroading to me is forcing the pcs not only to follow a broadly detailed storyline, but also how they follow it, and yes having invisible 'it actually doesn't matter what you do' plots going on behind the screen. There's nothing worse as a player imo to feel like nothing you do makes any difference - I even had a GM once who had a mechanic that wouldn't allow us to suicide our pcs to get out of his damn 'story'.

Naturally, good GMs are good at covering up the mechanics of the campaign, I've used monsters I expected the pcs to fight at one location in a completely different location, when they missed them first time. They don't know that, so they don't care.

I hate time limit adventures personally, they often go hand in hand with railroading. You MUST go there and do this, and you must do it in this amount of time. Heck, how about you just run my pc for me then?

It's a fine line. I do like a detailed setting and story, truly open settings often lack direction ...

PF's success isn't just (or necessarily even primarily) due to it's rules imo, it's also due to the brilliant and prolific support materials; it's monthly AP books, it's modules, the extremely faithfully and well detailed and supported setting. I don't even use the PF rules, but I buy stacks of PF sourcebooks.

4e saw not the barest shadow of such support, I think 5e will require a change of attitude away from under-detailed and bland (imo) fluff.

Doom.

Monte leaving only increases my previous hunch 5e will not reverse the damage done to WOTC's customer base by 4e. People who love 4e will, I suspect, cry 5e 'goes backwards' (4vengers are very doctrinal, they talk about 4e like a religion, or philosophical movement), while the other side in the recently ended war (my side) will see too much of 4e in it.

There has been no real acceptance from WOTC that 4e failed, so I doubt 5e will mend any bridges.

Mind you, I'm not bothered, 5e's success or not makes no odds to me one way or t'other tbh.

(My game of choice these last few years has firmly been BRP. Though I buy and respect Paizo's PF products, as they are easy to convert and have that essential traditional feel.)

@Rockheimer: Yes incoporating your point into a Monty Python sketch makes your point true... No wait?

And there was me trying to make with the funny. Let normal *very serious business* resume.

Man walks into a game shop carrying 4e corebooks.

"Hello, I wish to register a complaint."

Guy behind the counter;

- "Sorry we're closing for lunch."

"Never mind about that my lad, I wish to complain about this edition of D&D I purchased not a year and a harf ago from this very FLGS."

- "Oh yeah, 4e, what's wrong wiv it?"

"I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's dead, that's what wrong with it."

- "No, no, it's a great success, din' ya know, being outperformed in certain markets is no indicator of failure induced death."

"Look my lad, I know a failed edition when I see one and I'm looking at one right now."

- "No, no, remarkable edition 4e ain't it? Got beautiful balance 'int it?"

"The balance don't enter into it ... it's stone dead."

- "No, no, it's quite normal for editions to be renewed within 3 or 4 years - look at -erm- some wargames."

"Look my lad, I've had just about enough of this, this edition is definitely deceased ... and when I bought this edition not a year and a harf ago, you assured me it's lack of movement from the shelves was just anecdotal evidence and therefore meaningless."

- "Nah, wotc are just trying to expand it's success, by -erm- broadening it's appeal."

"Broadening it's appeal? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat at the table the moment I got it home."

- "Yer 4e's made for a slower pace of game, beautiful edition, lovely balance ain't it?"

"Look matey, this edition is. No. More. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet it's maker. This is a late edition. It's a stiff. Bereft of live, it rests in peace. If you hadn't propped it up on the shelf it'd be pushing up daisies. It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-edition."

- "Well ... I suppose I'd better replace it then."

"To get anything done in this field you have to complain till you're blue in the face."

Oh dear, what a mess.

If this gets a second season I'll eat my Firefly boxset.

It's just so ... monster of the week, with a tagged on end sequence blatantly trying to make you want to watch next week, just to learn about the arc plot. So in other words, unless you do as I was doing by episode 3 and watch the first and last 5-10 minutes, you watch 30 minutes of 'criminal of the week being bad' which is dull, to get to the 5 minutes or so that is actually what you want to see.

That isn't good tv. I want the whole of a show's episode to be interesting, not just the 'please keep watching' bit at the end.

As other's have said the main leads are miscast. Except Sam Neil and some of the senior prison staff (the bald head warden guy is kinda great). The fat guy isn't just miscast, his character is entirely unbelievable; a comic book store guy who's a super-duper-genius, knows everything about Alcatraz, is enormous - yet rarely seen eating, and who despite being suposedly super-smart blurts the details of his new secret job to the hired help.

I am officially stopping watching this one now. Terrible.

noretoc wrote:

The world according to Scott. You don't like the new game? Clearly you are in the wrong.

Yes, because I said that, right? In a post? Somewhere?

Well, two posts up from this one you state wotc 'overestimated' it's customers. That seems to strongly imply you think the customers were in the 'wrong' to me. As does the tone and content of the generality of your posts in my opinion. You seem to believe most of us who didn't like 4e never played it, or never were going to like it, that we are all overly emotional, irrational creatures, unable to see the light because of our childish tantrums. That ultimately we have no valid reasons for disliking 4e.

Y'know you post as if you have a hotline to the ultimate truth about everything connected to this subject, you present opinions as facts as much as anyone, yet I strongly suspect if we'd asked you last year whether the advent of 5e (and by implication the commercial failure of 4e) would have been likely to be announced before the end of January 2012 you'd have poo-pooed the very idea. Indeed you still poo-poo, or at the least imply doubt, that PF is in fact outselling 4e (or matching it, which amounts to the same difference) over recent quarters - something just about everyone else online seems to accept to be the case.

I'd respect your position more if you just said; hey, I have perhaps overestimated the support for 4e amongst the customer base, however I love 4e, I think it worked. Clearly many people did not, let's hope wotc ensures it does the right things to make 5e liked by more people.

That you continue to mount a relentless campaign of (forgive me) often slippery seeming, post-chopping, arguments, ignoring questions you find too difficult to answer ... I dunno, what good does it do?

Blaming, or implying blame on, those of us who did not like 4e for reasons we believe to be good, for it's own failure is getting really old. Really quick.

As to wotc overestimating it's customers - that's rubbish, and Mr Mearls himself agrees. He said 4e aimed too low, that it assumed it needed to aim at the lower denominator, not the higher. If anything wotc has admitted it underestimated it's audience with 4e.

deinol wrote:

@Steve Dark Heresy and it's companion games is tapping 25 years of pent up desire for a 40k RPG. It doesn't need 3PP because A) FFG produces a lot of support product and B) there's nothing else on the market that comes close to competing in that genre space.

There are some good fansites that expand into really niche 40k areas too.

Not to mention the juggernaut of Games Workshop, which draws new players into the wargame hobby, and from there, they become potential players of Dark Heresy or Warhammer Roleplay.

Hm, maybe, but do be aware GW HATES rpgs. I mean properly hates them. Has done for many, many years.

Little test for you, go into your local GW store and ask for some advice about the 40K rpgs. If you get anything better than a blank look I'd be amazed. Even when DH was first released I can recall going into the store round the corner and they'd not only never heard of it, they had zero interest in what it was once they heard it was an rpg.

Now, bear in mind many of the chaps who work in GW stores are 40K-fluff obssessives ... and yet not one single member of staff I've ever spoken to in a GW store has even picked up a 40K rpg book. Many barely seem to know they even exist. I find that mind boggling, I've many times tried to explain to them that the rpg books are full of canon fluff about the 40k setting ... by which time eyes are glazing over and they are getting fidgety and trying to change the subject to the inevitable;

"So have you thought about buying an army."

I've had many a futile discussion asking why they don't stock the 40k rpgs in their stores.

"We don't have room."

Err, yes you do, we're talking a few books, there's room over there.

"We don't do rpgs."

Yes, but if you stocked the 40k and wfrp books it would only be good, you could cross-sell between people who only roleplay (like me) - selling them codexes and stuff that also contain setting fluff, and wargamers could pick up rpg books for extra fluff and setting detail too.
Heck, you stock the novels (which is why I go into the places.).

"We're all about 'The Hobby'."

I genuinely believe that someone high up in GW believes they will lose customers who were buying armies of minis, if they get into rpgs.

EDIT - Mind you I still won't forgive GW for what they did to White Dwarf, once the best rpg mag on the market (a looong time ago of course), we saw over a course of several months the rpg articles being dropped, until it was entirely gutted of any useful rpg content and became the cheapo minis catalogue it has remained ever since. Prior to this wargamer coup d'etat there was an increasing sense that wargamers in GW were trying to do away with any involvement with rpgs. Bastards.

VR Day (Victory in Roleplaying) draws closer sooner than expected!

Last week I refered to a recent article by Mearls and Dance about 4e as seeming like they were in a bunker moving markers for armies that no longer exist around a map. Seems I was more on the money than I guessed. ;-)

They are, as I said, in a thorny situation - half their customers seem to have left them, some more bitterly than others for sure. Getting them to come back will require some kind of reversal of the core ideas of 4e I'd imagine, if they don't somehow show it's not just going to be an extension of 4e ... why bother?

Love the way Scott tries upthread to claim players of 4e as more imaginative than others btw, that's hilarious. Scott - Mike Mearls himself stated this month that 4e may have failed (in his opinion) because it was specifically designed for the less imaginative players and GMs. It was such a blunt thing for him to say it surprised even myself.

Anyway, no matter how you paint it Scott, surely you're not still trying to say 4e was a success? Whether you like the rules system or not, that it has been a cataclysmic failure for WOTC is surely undeniable now? You can argue the reasons why it's been a failure, but not that it is a failure.

I think the article reads as the WOTC guys coming up with some pretty odd reasons for 4e's low sales over the past couple of years. (Or as a friend of mine put it; 'Moving markers for armies that no longer exist around maps in their bunker.')

As someone mentions upthread Mearls seems to say 4e was written for the unimaginative. (I can't read his words any other way.) Hardly tactful.

Ryan Dancey says tabletop rpgs are dead or dying. ...Not clear why a 'VP of rpgs' would say that, seems like publicly saying you are no longer needed to do your job?

They toss and turn with comments about 'eras of rpg decadence'(!?), and how 'perfectly balanced' 4e is, like they are priests of a dying faith. Seriously guys, if the rpg industry is dying, how come smaller rpg companies such as Paizo are booming?

Tabletop rpgs are not dying, D&D (4e) is. It's that simple. I'll let you in on a secret, you don't need to wrack your brains over roleplaying philosophies, just make genuinely good roleplaying products. I only don't buy WOTC products these days because each and every time I idly pick one up to browse in the shop they don't appeal to me - they seem shallow, lacking in colour, setting detail, and flavour, to me they seem to lack interesting stories, characters, and settings. Even the art style doesn't appeal to me.

WOTC does of course have a major problem with the inevitable 5e, if they go back they would not only have to eat major crow and backtread on almost every press statement they ever made about 4e, but they'd piss off the very vocal pro-4e lobby and possibly lose customers there ... but if they press ahead with a version of 4e upgraded a bit, then it would be unlikely to reverse the apparent downward plummet of their sales figures, as those of us who hate 4e as an rpg system would be unlikely to embrace a somewhat amended version of it. Tricky.

Personally I think their only chance to turn it around is try something rather more radical. Try to create a new system that is as good at non-combat stuff as combat, that allows the diversity of pcs that the 3e variants do, but which avoids the absurd problems and fiddly complexities inherent in 3e (3.5 etc). Also accept roleplayers like 'fluff' (if you'll forgive me the use of the word), and give it to us, like Paizo does so ably. Without fluff D&D might as well be checkers. 4e often seemed doctrinally averse to good and detailed fluff, for me to start giving WOTC money again they need to start doing some of my GM word for me - creating good fluff is essential for them to address.

It might piss off the most ardent 4vengers, but I think a genuinely new system, might win back curious players and curious 4e players too.

I've transplanted the concept and some of the specifics of the Kingmaker adventure path to my homebrew setting, and have addressed some of the problems/issues the OP references.

Firstly I have replaced Brevoy with one of the larger central nations in my setting, this nation has just endured a 5 year war against 'the Blight' (a Skaven nation led by 'the God Rat'), the east of the nation has been flooded with refugees from the west.

The pcs are sent by an eastern nobleman (possibly without the backing of the insane Emperor, or his shrewd heir who now is in fact running things) precisely with the intent of creating a new barony that can be settled by the swarms of refugees draining the resources of the eastern provinces.

Small bands of adventurers are being used to explore and then perhaps receive landgrants and titles of nobility, because the Prince behind the Charters wants to keep the plan on the down low for the time being, possibly because he means to build up a string of border statelets loyal specifically to him. In theory at least.

I've also made the pc's bit of the Stolen Lands (which I've placed into my homebrew setting) include some of the wilderness bits of Darkmoon Vale too (without the towns).