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Help me sell RQG to my players


Marty Jopson

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3 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I'm also aware that Mongoose published a lot. And developed some aspects of RQ that 40 years otherwise had never been handled (well .. Or at all).

Could you point those out, please? They didn't scream out to me between the things that were, in your words, stuffed up badly.

 

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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5 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I am aware. 

I'm also aware that Mongoose published a lot. And developed some aspects of RQ that 40 years otherwise had never been handled (well .. Or at all). Obviously, some things were stuffed up (badly), but there are lessons Chaosium should learn from.

Babies and bathwater... 

Given that we have Mongoose's RQ sales figures (as part of the royalty statements), I think it can be safe to say the most important lesson is Don't Do What Mongoose Did.

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1 minute ago, Jeff said:

Given that we have Mongoose's RQ sales figures (as part of the royalty statements), I think it can be safe to say the most important lesson is Don't Do What Mongoose Did.

Yes please, try not to go bankrupt. I just got my fave game back after 25 or so years.

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4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Could you point those out, please? They didn't scream out to me between the things that were, in your words, stuffed up badly.

Off the top of my head (Shiningbrow has other things in mind, I am sure):

  • Hero Points
  • Legendary Abilities
  • Using Crafting to enhance weapons in a controlled and useful way
  • Rules on turning animal pelts into leather armour
  • Weapon enchantments

 

Edited by soltakss
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50 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Off the top of my head (Shiningbrow has other things in mind, I am sure):

  • Hero Points
  • Legendary Abilities
  • Using Crafting to enhance weapons in a controlled and useful way
  • Rules on turning animal pelts into leather armour
  • Weapon enchantments

 

TBH, I'm not sure about Hero Points... 

However, there were real, useable mechanics for Heroquesting and the possible spells used within them (granted, attributed to God Learners), which was something sorely missing from official RQ products (including right up until this day, I might add!)

(ETA: although I really disliked tangible Runes, and especially the requirement to have them for spellcasting, I *did* like that having a connection to those Runes had an in-game effect. And then, Mastery of the Rune and even stronger effect)

 

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

Given that we have Mongoose's RQ sales figures (as part of the royalty statements), I think it can be safe to say the most important lesson is Don't Do What Mongoose Did.

I see...so, baby ... bathwater ... bye bye.

There's absolutely nothing they did well (and different), huh? Sad. 

So, no Magic book. No specific races books. No pretty soft-cover books... 

I've loved Runequest, and especially Glorantha, since the mid-80s. As have many others here. I still have time for some of what they did (even if they did ignore the lore... ). 

Edited by Shiningbrow
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41 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

see...so, baby ... bathwater ... bye bye.

There's absolutely nothing they did well (and different), huh? Sad. 

So, no Magic book. No specific races books. No pretty soft-cover books... 

I've loved Runequest, and especially Glorantha, since the mid-80s. As have many others here. I still have time for some of what they did (even if they did ignore the lore... ). 

Let's be perfectly frank here. The Mongoose material was plagued with low quality production, bad art,  rushed writing (Mongoose's deadlines were absurd), and poor editing - and the collapse of their sales after the first book says a lot about how they handled the line. Greg and I stopped reading the books as in with few exceptions we were not even given the time to review them (despite any terms to the contrary). There are plenty of other publishers out there that have done more interesting and successful things with product lines to learn from. 

 

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46 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Let's be perfectly frank here. The Mongoose material was plagued with low quality production, bad art,  rushed writing (Mongoose's deadlines were absurd), and poor editing - and the collapse of their sales after the first book says a lot about how they handled the line. Greg and I stopped reading the books as in with few exceptions we were not even given the time to review them (despite any terms to the contrary). There are plenty of other publishers out there that have done more interesting and successful things with product lines to learn from. 

 

Yes, let's be perfectly frank (although, TBH, this isn't really the thread for it...).

I fully understand that Mongoose stuffed up, and there were a lot of unhappy people regarding the materials they published. That's not even remotely in question. I'm not intending to defend the publishing, management and logistics of Mongoose. I'm referring purely to some of the ideas for Runequest (as in, game rules).

It seems to me that this is being ignored purely out of emotion - and from a business perspective, making business decisions based on emotion (especially that of hurt pride or anger, which is what I'm getting from your responses) is always unwise. Business decisions need good clear thinking, weighing pros and cons with a rational, steady head.

Some of the writers at Mongoose on the MRQ project came up with some good ideas for the game, as @soltakss and I have indicated above (and, I believe, have been discussed elsewhere). I'm trying to look through my RQ collection now to see when the (officially published) idea of Acolytes (now, God Talkers) started, but I'm fairly sure it was MRQ (feel free to correct me, but I don't see them in RQ 1, 2 or 3). If the ideas we mentioned in the previous few threads are completely crap, please enlighten us as to why, and why Chaosium would never consider using them... (rather than merely, "not a bad idea, but doesn't suit our vision of Glorantha" - I don't think Hero Points work, although the Heroic Abilities do).

 

(just quickly -

58 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Mongoose's deadlines were absurd

is slightly ironic, given that Chaosium has had products "coming" for decades, and now doesn't even give ETAs... This isn't just my complaint, but one I've seen specifically mentioned by other lovers of the game on this very forum).

(Your definition for "bad art" is obviously different to mine. Sure, it could be much better, and there are a few not good pics, but on the whole, I don't consider it "bad"... just "not great",  with some exceptions)

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6 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

I'm trying to look through my RQ collection now to see when the (officially published) idea of Acolytes (now, God Talkers) started, but I'm fairly sure it was MRQ (feel free to correct me, but I don't see them in RQ 1, 2 or 3).

Acolytes are RQ3, mid 80s.  See Cults Book from Gods of Glorantha set.

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5 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Some of the writers at Mongoose on the MRQ project came up with some good ideas for the game, as @soltakss and I have indicated above (and, I believe, have been discussed elsewhere). I'm trying to look through my RQ collection now to see when the (officially published) idea of Acolytes (now, God Talkers) started, but I'm fairly sure it was MRQ

Acolytes as a name appeared in Gods of Glorantha.  In RQ2, they were known as associate priests.

 

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10 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

 

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

Mongoose's deadlines were absurd

is slightly ironic, given that Chaosium has had products "coming" for decades, and now doesn't even give ETAs... This isn't just my complaint, but one I've seen specifically mentioned by other lovers of the game on this very forum).

Don't confuse authors' deadlines with the time it takes to put out a finished product.

Imagine you have four weeks to complete a 60 pages roleplaying supplement, from the first time you hear about the project to delivering your finished text. And then the artist has had at best eight weeks for the first assignments (two weeks into the product you should have given the artist(s) all the art direction for your major illustrations) and four weeks or less for filler art to make the layout more pleasant.

A serious process of editing should include at least one back and forth of the edited text to the author(s) and back to the editor, then to proof-readers (ideally doubling as fact-checkers), before even being submitted to layout. And the text going from the author to the editor had better been proof-read and ideally fact checked before going to the editor. The author can submit art direction, or, if sufficiently talented, even prototype art to go with the text. All of that is time consuming. For an example of how much effort goes into such a project to approach a minimum amount of flaws, look up Martin Helsdon's Glorantha military thread here.

I have produced a few scenarios on demand, usually with a good idea what I wanted to write about and the structure of the scenario already in my mind, then taking pains to lay off the railroading. I've been on the editor's (and even lay-outer's, 1990ies hobby standards only) side of the equation for a few scenarios, too (tossed in without prior experience). There is a huge difference between creating a great scenario or even campaign arc for your own perusal, and doing so for someone who doesn't have all that background you bring into this project and who needs to be fed with the necessary information in a way that remains fun and readable.

 

Chaosium's early "coming products" often were the consequence of Greg Stafford being a visionary game developer who shared his visions with his friends and supporters. Unfortunately, the difference between a vision and a finished product is a lot of effort by a team of people against a great number of obstacles thrown into the way. We are better off for Greg taking that visionary approach as it provided us with that crazy complex setting that is Glorantha, but from a publisher's perspective in an era of direct feedback easily causing a huge stink or shitstorm giving ETA projections that can't be met for whichever reason is problematic.

One such bunch of problems which just managed to overcome most of the obstacles is Sandy Petersen's Gods War boardgame. Admittedly a project with a crazy scope and execution, but after Cthulhu Wars and the first test runs of Gods War, something within expectation of the backers.

Sandy and his folk coined the term "China ready" for such kickstarter projects, and their experience in fulfilling the Gods War kickstarter has made them re-define that criterion twice. Some of the commentary of impatient backers was ... typical for internet phenomena, to say it politely.

Dealing with such issues can distract from productive work. Avoiding ETAs, and instead admitting to process stage statements, is a wise policy of NuChaosium, as far as I am concerned.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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3 hours ago, Jeff said:

(Mongoose's deadlines were absurd)

1 hour ago, Shiningbrow said:

...is slightly ironic, given that Chaosium has had products "coming" for decades, and now doesn't even give ETAs... 

There's a big difference between products being delayed and products being rushed. The current Chaosium policy is largely because they want to avoid rushing out poorly edited products, so rather than being ironic, one is directly because of and learning from the other.

Edited by PhilHibbs
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3 hours ago, metcalph said:

Acolytes as a name appeared in Gods of Glorantha.  In RQ2, they were known as associate priests.

 

I've just checked my 1980 print of RQ2 - again -, and a 1979 Cults of Practice, and I'm still not seeing any reference to an Associate Priest. 

It's not entirely relevant or important, but care to point me to a page number?

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6 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

an Associate Priest.

RQ2 p.64 in reference to a priest joining a second cult. But it's not elaborated in the same manner as what became the Acolyte in RQ3.

Quite a few of my players ended with characters who were acolytes of their temples - it was a useful level.

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2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

There's a big difference between products being delayed and products being rushed. The current Chaosium policy is largely because they want to avoid rushing out poorly edited products, so rather than being ironic, one is directly because of and learning from the other.

I agree! Rushing isn't good... I also think holding off indefinitely without an ETA also isn't good. Nor is being well past an ETA. 

Question though - is a rushed product better than one you don't have? (I'm in this situation ATM from a kickstarter... I'm willing to wait a little longer, but with no ETAs, the idea of now and not perfect is much better than sometime later maybe...)

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2 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

RQ2 p.64 in reference to a priest joining a second cult. But it's not elaborated in the same manner as what became the Acolyte in RQ3.

Quite a few of my players ended with characters who were acolytes of their temples - it was a useful level.

Ah! Found it. Yeah, tiny paragraph. 

The elaboration was what I was referring to (which has already been shown in RQ3 GoG).

 

Thx for the quick response.

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For what it's worth, I've always likened Orlanthi to unruly, clannish Scottish highlanders and lowlanders, and Sartar to Scotland, though more heavily wooded. Lunars serve in the role of treacherous, civilized Englishmen,  though they are in practice more like Romans of course. Simple enough to start with, then you can embroider with the various Gloranthan complications. 

Indeed, wasn't this a very conventional view in the olden days? I certainly won't claim to be original in my thinking.

 

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3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Don't confuse authors' deadlines with the time it takes to put out a finished product.

Imagine you have four weeks to complete a 60 pages roleplaying supplement, from the first time you hear about the project to delivering your finished text. And then the artist has had at best eight weeks for the first assignments (two weeks into the product you should have given the artist(s) all the art direction for your major illustrations) and four weeks or less for filler art to make the layout more pleasant.

A serious process of editing should include at least one back and forth of the edited text to the author(s) and back to the editor, then to proof-readers (ideally doubling as fact-checkers), before even being submitted to layout. And the text going from the author to the editor had better been proof-read and ideally fact checked before going to the editor. The author can submit art direction, or, if sufficiently talented, even prototype art to go with the text. All of that is time consuming. For an example of how much effort goes into such a project to approach a minimum amount of flaws, look up Martin Helsdon's Glorantha military thread here.

I have produced a few scenarios on demand, usually with a good idea what I wanted to write about and the structure of the scenario already in my mind, then taking pains to lay off the railroading. I've been on the editor's (and even lay-outer's, 1990ies hobby standards only) side of the equation for a few scenarios, too (tossed in without prior experience). There is a huge difference between creating a great scenario or even campaign arc for your own perusal, and doing so for someone who doesn't have all that background you bring into this project and who needs to be fed with the necessary information in a way that remains fun and readable.

 

Chaosium's early "coming products" often were the consequence of Greg Stafford being a visionary game developer who shared his visions with his friends and supporters. Unfortunately, the difference between a vision and a finished product is a lot of effort by a team of people against a great number of obstacles thrown into the way. We are better off for Greg taking that visionary approach as it provided us with that crazy complex setting that is Glorantha, but from a publisher's perspective in an era of direct feedback easily causing a huge stink or shitstorm giving ETA projections that can't be met for whichever reason is problematic.

One such bunch of problems which just managed to overcome most of the obstacles is Sandy Petersen's Gods War boardgame. Admittedly a project with a crazy scope and execution, but after Cthulhu Wars and the first test runs of Gods War, something within expectation of the backers.

Sandy and his folk coined the term "China ready" for such kickstarter projects, and their experience in fulfilling the Gods War kickstarter has made them re-define that criterion twice. Some of the commentary of impatient backers was ... typical for internet phenomena, to say it politely.

Dealing with such issues can distract from productive work. Avoiding ETAs, and instead admitting to process stage statements, is a wise policy of NuChaosium, as far as I am concerned.

I was a (poor) kid back in those days, and living down under also meant delays in shipping anyway.

My reference to the extended time of decades was actually from a post on here about HQ coming "next year" for (apparently) 20 years. ("Apparently"... I don't know. HQ wasn't/isn't my thing.

 

Re: timing. What you wrote I understand and agree with! I was trying to point out a rushed finished product (for whatever reasons - not defending them) is better than no product at all. As I mentioned, MRQ gave the first HQ rules in the 30+ years of Runequest's existence. And still. For those who want to do HQs now, the options are house rules, or a fleshed out MRQ. I'd probably take the MRQ (it's not bad!) When chaosium has theirs in print later this year (or next year... Or whenever), I may change my mind... 

I mostly think there's a middle ground... Current ETAs with regular updates of what's happening. 

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1 minute ago, The God Learner said:

Indeed, wasn't this a very conventional view in the olden days? I certainly won't claim to be original in my thinking.

Yes, this was a conventional view, but it tended to drift away from the Bronze Age view (and by the time of the Genertela pack we got medieval knights in plate armor in the west) and bring in lots of Greco-Roman-Viking baggage (including making each of the cultures less unique and less original).

 

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1 minute ago, Shiningbrow said:

a post on here about HQ coming "next year" for (apparently) 20 years. ("Apparently"... I don't know. HQ wasn't/isn't my thing.

RQ2 and a number of works from that vintage had lots of ideas of works that could be produced - most of which weren't - including a HeroQuest book.

4 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

I was trying to point out a rushed finished product (for whatever reasons - not defending them) is better than no product at all.

I did not find cyberpunk RQ (aka MRQ) on the whole to be useful. Just caused me to go "really?" (I did get most of the books, but Dara Happa Stirs is the only one that I ended up feeling worth the price, even of a pdf.)

11 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Current ETAs with regular updates of what's happening.

And I do think we've been getting the updates of what's in the pipeline, as well as the ETA's once they are ready with a given product.  In the old RQ2/RQ3 days, we really had no insight into the pipeline or when anything would be released (beyond sporadic visits to the local game store to see if anything new had actually come out).

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2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I was a (poor) kid back in those days, and living down under also meant delays in shipping anyway.

My reference to the extended time of decades was actually from a post on here about HQ coming "next year" for (apparently) 20 years. ("Apparently"... I don't know. HQ wasn't/isn't my thing.

 

Re: timing. What you wrote I understand and agree with! I was trying to point out a rushed finished product (for whatever reasons - not defending them) is better than no product at all. As I mentioned, MRQ gave the first HQ rules in the 30+ years of Runequest's existence. And still. For those who want to do HQs now, the options are house rules, or a fleshed out MRQ. I'd probably take the MRQ (it's not bad!) When chaosium has theirs in print later this year (or next year... Or whenever), I may change my mind... 

I mostly think there's a middle ground... Current ETAs with regular updates of what's happening. 

In most cases outside of a kickstarter or other presold product, a rushed product is almost always worse than no product at all.

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8 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

 ... I was trying to point out a rushed finished product (for whatever reasons - not defending them) is better than no product at all... 

I will disagree with this... rather strongly, actually!

It enshrines crap as "canon."

It precludes (or vastly delays) anything quality on the topic.

It sours existing fans.

It discourages new players from picking up the game. 

It undersells/underperforms, hurting the publisher's bottom line & the profitability of the game-line.

It damages the reputation of the author(s).

 

And that's just off the top of my head.  I bet I could come up with more; I bet authors, publishers, line-developers, could each contribute to the list.

 

There's a new-ish saying, "no gaming is better than bad gaming" -- better not to game at all, than to not-have-fun with your gaming.  I think that it extends nicely to the notion that not having a supplement you want is better than having a bad supplement instead of one you like.
 

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28 minutes ago, g33k said:

I will disagree with this... rather strongly, actually!

It enshrines crap as "canon."

It precludes (or vastly delays) anything quality on the topic.

It sours existing fans.

It discourages new players from picking up the game. 

It undersells/underperforms, hurting the publisher's bottom line & the profitability of the game-line.

It damages the reputation of the author(s).

 

And that's just off the top of my head.  I bet I could come up with more; I bet authors, publishers, line-developers, could each contribute to the list.

 

There's a new-ish saying, "no gaming is better than bad gaming" -- better not to game at all, than to not-have-fun with your gaming.  I think that it extends nicely to the notion that not having a supplement you want is better than having a bad supplement instead of one you like.
 

You're automatically presuming that rushed always equals bad. And as I've said regarding the art in MRQ above, "not always good" is not the same as "bad".

 

Again, my point is and was on this topic - I find it odd that except for a few individuals, MRQ is ignored as the terrible black sheep in the family that everyone wants to ignore, pretend doesn't exist, and basically hates. .. In it's absolute entirety. @Jeff has a distinct problem acknowledging even one single positive point. 

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17 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Again, my point is and was on this topic - I find it odd that except for a few individuals, MRQ is ignored as the terrible black sheep in the family that everyone wants to ignore, pretend doesn't exist, and basically hates. .. In it's absolute entirety. @Jeff has a distinct problem acknowledging even one single positive point. 

Rather than waste people's time trying to change their minds or falsely claiming specific ideas  as being brilliant concepts invented by MRQ, just accept that the majority of people don't like it and move on.

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On 5/21/2019 at 6:22 PM, Marty Jopson said:

Based in these provisos, I do like the idea of the HeroQuest campaign Coming Storm etc. I will check it and the conversion thread out. 

I'm one of the authors. The community is great at helping out, but if you have any specific questions, then I am happy to respond.

Edited by Ian Cooper
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