Recent content by Thomas Shey

While I don't fault people for doing what they want, well--people pound nails with wrenches, too.

Yeah. Honestly there was a time when it was kind of endemic, though it had clearly spiraled out from D&D.

Dispute it all you want, but I know how commonly I saw it in the 70's, and the answer was "a lot". And one of the reasons it was so common was many, probably most players expected it was just "how it is." Its funny how people push back less when they take it as a given.

In a skill-based system you could have a specialized skill that improves over time to control navigation there.

The big problem with staggered squares is that if you want to use battleboards, they're difficult at best to find physically and as far as I know impossible to find digitally.

Well, "always" depends on how you interpret OD&D clerics, where there was simply no discussion of the matter at all. I suspect when Gygax dropped them he thought they'd just be pseudo-Christian and that was as far as it went, but other than a vague feel in that direction, OD&D actually had no...

Yeah, but there you have no choice: its your whole product. The people doing the stretch goals, on the other hand, do.

The problem is that even if you do that, there's no assurance that the pricing and practicality at the point you put them up as a stretch goal and at time of intended delivery will be the same.

Investigative horror games in particular have risk but they don't tend to assume a particularly high level of PC mortality.

Yeah, as one of the old farts of the board, I can say in the '70's that really top-down GMing was treated like it was the expected way for a long time, and as you say, that often translated into killer-DM tendencies (I'm ashamed to say I may have leaned into it a bit at the start). It doesn't...

I notice most of the experienced producers don't; even if they haven't had problems themselves, I think they've noticed the problem with others. (This is excluding the people specifically making things like dice, where you takes your chances or you stay out).

Which is why I said "Some of those."

Which was kind of the point I was alluding to; it produces a lot more failure states than a digital one, and thus more likely to leave you hanging. Its an extension of why I think physical stretch goals are a mistake.

I get that, but its still notable that the failures disproportionately include physical products, especially non-book items.

Some of those I can get requiring more effort to get right--Le Guin requires considerable nuance for example--but Norton's output was mostly adventure SF and fantasy with some romantic elements (particularly in the latter). You'd think it'd be exactly what they'd be looking for.