Changeover Poll

[Scribble]

Nahhh, don't think so. Beyond the simple but major dichotomy of cooked vs uncooked, most people aren't going to change an opinion of something they don't like to eat based on eating more of it. After a certain point, all they're doing is torturing their taste buds.

I can usually tell if I'm going to like a band within 3 thirty second samples of a band's music, assuming they are representative of their stylistic breadth.

Similarly, if you send in submissions for publication in a fiction magazine, the editor is only going to give you a few pages MAX before he decides whether to read further or send you a "Thank you but no" letter.

While I don't dissagree with the part about the editor giving a few pages max, I don't agree this means he read enough to determine if he would have liked the whole piece had he continued. It just means the begning failed to grab him enough to continue.

There have been a LOT of AMAZING and award winning indipendent films for instance that probably would have (and actually have) failed to grab a producers interest enough to get him to finish reading the script.

Aside from that, as far as needing to play it:

RPGs are designed to be played. I think the experince will almost always be different when you actually play it then when you read it or have it simply described.

Which might be a case for making sure a game DOES read well... Like the editor who only reads a few pages, if you fail to grab the reader, he might have less of an incentive to PLAY the game as intended.

As far as needing to play it more then once:

I think the idea is that many people go into a situation with a number of preconcieved ideas and notions that can sometimes cloud their experience.

IE they might not realize a certain rule or concept has changed, which creates a ripple effect on how other things play out.

They might also not understand the intent or feel of a rules system until they get used to it. IE if someone goes right from a D&D hack n slash style game into a white wolf Vampire the Masquerade game the experience might be jarring until they get the feel of the game.

Just a few thoughts.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Shrug, I've gaming about as long as you and I'm pretty sure you are wrong. I have seen more than one game that read great and played badly and the other way round.

I haven't encountered a game like either- I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

If you think you know what a game is like after reading the rule book you are making a decision on very little information and your prior is likely contributing more to the decision than the data you have.

This isn't science- this is entertainment. I may need hours or even years to determine if a scientific theory is true or junk, but I definitely don't need hours of testing to know I don't like something.

Btw, the same is true in the entertainment models you described. An editor that gets way more than he can publish will read everything with the assumption that it's not publishable.

Not IME, and not according to what most of the editors themselves say. (They could be lying, of course, but why?) They tend to go into a decision HOPING they've found a diamond and are disappointed when its only a piece of glass.

Some even go so far as to have a third pile between the green lit pieces and the rejected ones- the "needs work" pile. Someone- maybe the actual editor himself- will send the rejection notice but with the additional notation that if certain changes were made, then it would be acceptable.

It happens in publishing. It happens in music. It even happens in sports and other areas.

Do errors get made? Sure- two types, and you mentioned them before: Errors of Rejection (tossing out something of quality) and Errors of Acceptance (greenlighting something bad), but they are by far in the minority. And the latter is orders of magnitude more common.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You should check out Magic Pie. Their sound is not easy to represent in 30 sec clips, but most prog is like that anyway being that the prog spectrum is pretty wide.

I'm a big fan of prog in all its forms, and despite the general preference for long songs within the prog genres, I still can tell pretty quickly if I'd enjoy a prog band.

I'll take a listen to MP, though.

EDIT: I did- sounds like mainstream prog rock to me. Not astounding enough for me to put it at the top of my "must buy" list, but good enough for me to consider buying it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There have been a LOT of AMAZING and award winning indipendent films for instance that probably would have (and actually have) failed to grab a producers interest enough to get him to finish reading the script.

But they all eventually found their market.

The editor is just making the decision that what is in his hands is not appropriate for his company to put into the market, not that it has no market whatsoever.

RPGs are designed to be played. I think the experince will almost always be different when you actually play it then when you read it or have it simply described.

That hasn't been my experience at all. As the saying goes, though, YMMV.

At best, I have found that certain games are better in the hands of a GM who really understands how to run the system- really, how could it not be- but I have yet to find one that I've wanted to run myself, even after having it run for me by such a GM.

I dislike GURPS. I've played uncounted hours of it (probably even 120+), including a playtest, out of friendship. Even though I've participated in some fantastic campaigns in the system, I still have ZERO desire to ever run a GURPS campaign myself. At most, I'll only ever be a player. At most, I'll only ever buy the odd supplement (because they are so well researched) or a basic rulebook if I'm ever again in a group that is heavily GURPScentric (because it sucks having to constantly borrow books to run your PC).

 

[Scribble]

You should check out Magic Pie. Their sound is not easy to represent in 30 sec clips, but most prog is like that anyway being that the prog spectrum is pretty wide.

Does MP have a song called Orc?

 

[Harlekin]

I haven't encountered a game like either- I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.


This isn't science- this is entertainment. I may need hours or even years to determine if a scientific theory is true or junk, but I definitely don't need hours of testing to know I don't like something.

Yes, because once we have made such a snapshot decision, we are more likely to defend it, even with somewhat irrational arguments than to reevaluate it. Because we could not function if we reevaluated everything in our life all the time.

And given that it is entertainment, it does not really matter if we enjoy something or if we tell ourselves that we enjoy something.

Not IME, and not according to what most of the editors themselves say. (They could be lying, of course, but why?) They tend to go into a decision HOPING they've found a diamond and are disappointed when its only a piece of glass.

Some even go so far as to have a third pile between the green lit pieces and the rejected ones- the "needs work" pile. Someone- maybe the actual editor himself- will send the rejection notice but with the additional notation that if certain changes were made, then it would be acceptable.

It happens in publishing. It happens in music. It even happens in sports and other areas.

Do errors get made? Sure- two types, and you mentioned them before: Errors of Rejection (tossing out something of quality) and Errors of Acceptance (greenlighting something bad), but they are by far in the minority. And the latter is orders of magnitude more common.

I don't think they are lying, but they have to have a mode of operation that lets them deal with the amount of submissions they are getting. It works the same in science.

And if most of what they are getting submitted is crap than you would expect that most of what survives the editorial process is still crap, though one would hope that it's a smaller proportion.

 

[catsclaw227]

Does MP have a song called Orc?

Nope....

But you should still check them out. Magic Pie Official Website

 

[Harlekin]

But they all eventually found their market.

The editor is just making the decision that what is in his hands is not appropriate for his company to put into the market, not that it has no market whatsoever.



That hasn't been my experience at all. As the saying goes, though, YMMV.

At best, I have found that certain games are better in the hands of a GM who really understands how to run the system- really, how could it not be- but I have yet to find one that I've wanted to run myself, even after having it run for me by such a GM.

I dislike GURPS. I've played uncounted hours of it (probably even 120+), including a playtest, out of friendship. Even though I've participated in some fantastic campaigns in the system, I still have ZERO desire to ever run a GURPS campaign myself. At most, I'll only ever be a player. At most, I'll only ever buy the odd supplement (because they are so well researched) or a basic rulebook if I'm ever again in a group that is heavily GURPScentric (because it sucks having to constantly borrow books to run your PC).

Btw, I would love to have this discussion in person. If you ever come to Ann Arbor, drop me a line and I will buy you a beer.

 

[Scribble]

But they all eventually found their market.

The editor is just making the decision that what is in his hands is not appropriate for his company to put into the market, not that it has no market whatsoever.

Sure I'm not arguing whether they did or didn't find their market. I simply dissagree wih your statement that reading a snippet lets someone know how the whole is overall.

The producer might end up picking the script that in reality is worse overall, but simply has a better first 5 minutes.

That hasn't been my experience at all. As the saying goes, though, YMMV.

Yep.

 

[mmu1]

That hasn't been my experience at all. As the saying goes, though, YMMV.

My experience has been similar.

While I have seen a good DM run an enjoyable game despite using a bad rule set, that didn't magically make a bad system into a good one. That was just not using the rules as written.

And while I've certainly come across individual rules that I had misgivings about that turned out OK in play, or mechanics that seemed like great ideas that fell completely flat, I have yet to come across a system that, in its entirety, turned out to play significantly differently from my expectations.