In Case You Were Confused....(AKA Dog headed opinion time)

To all want-to-be RPG designers, I feel it is my public duty to point out an issue that seems to be being overlooked in many new RPGs, and that seems to confuse many recent authors: RPG rules are not a venue for publishing your short (or interminable) gaming fanfic.

Not only is it blatantly inflating the page count (and price), but publishing your own fiction  in your own game is self indulgent vanity wankery of the first water.

I understand that a setting has to tell a story (really, I do) and yes, adventures need setting up – but neither of these are effectively accomplished by including interminable short stories about the tragic hero with a long duster, a shiny gunswordpowerthingie, and a tragic backstory attempting to make up for incomprehensible motivations stereotyped personality traits and pathologically confused  social relationships.    Okay ?  

Repeat after me: "A good RPG author is not automatically a good fiction author, and vice versa."  

Rules need playtest; stories need editorial criticism.   One doesn't substitute for the other. 

Cut it the hell out.   When I want crappy adventure fiction, I’ll read Gor; for crappy SF, there’s always Blake 7.


As an afterthought, the lack of actual fiction sections alone can be considered a major strength of the OSR and pocket/lite RPG design schools.  Even if I hated everything else about them, (and I don't) that alone would endear them to me.

Some last thoughts on the T5 Kickstarter

Well, it broke 2000 backers and $250,000; as has been posted elsewhere, to the grump all this proves it that it is mindless peer pressure and fanboi lack of critical thinking (1) ;  a somewhat questionable assumption, but perhaps they know best.  However, reading one reasonable complaint (2), I realized why I chipped in, and it has little to do with critical thinking (of the kind that weighs everything in terms of what fungible value it gets for me right now)

Here's my thought on the matter:

Honestly, I could not care less [about where the money raise over and above producing the promised product if there is any] . Seriously, I get a product I already like the beta version of, in a format that is, by todays expenses, worth the basic retail price: 75$. If the extra money goes to Marc and FFE for their 501K, no problem for me. plus, consider how much of the final price of any gaming product does not go tho the actual author - I can easily see it as helping him getting a better than 20% return for each dollar you spend on his product when it goes thru normal production. Basic wholesale is 30 -40% of cover -and ask Matt how much of that gets lost due to every other damned thing before the owner gets paid.

See, I like RPGs, I appreciate the work and passion that goes into them, and the ways they enrich my free time and friendships. Assuming even 75% of the money is over and above the upgraded version that the stretches represent, amortize it over 40 years of RPG design for Marc, and it is a small annuity indeed.

Frankly, too, of the main designers of my favorite hobby, a distressing number of them can hardly be said to have profited by their efforts; and if one of them gets a bit of a bump at the end of his career, well, okay by me. Perhaps that will encourage the next generation when faced with the choice of making a decent living from not doing RPG design work or following their muse, and thus making my life more entertaining. In fact, it represents about a $ 2.50 per person per year 35 year subscription for the 2000 backers alone. Not a bad deal for 35 years of traveller fun; especially given the number of crappy movies and books I've plopped down more than 2.50 (or even 25.00) for in any given year, each of those years.

Honestly, for what we give to creators vs what get, we have a great deal going; and I'm speaking of the whole industry here.