Monte Cook on target audience of RPG Supplements

[eyebeams]

It's interesting to watch how RPG discussions have evolved online. I remember back in the late 90s, and the early part of this decade, people would go on and on about games, but you rarely saw actual play reports or discussions. Say what you will about the Forge, but the focus some designers there brought to actual play and in-game experience has really changed things.

I generally distrust play reports that read as if they're excessively clean and organized, with no sense of the way the form works. In some cases, stuff is cut for brevity, but that stuff is usually what I'm interested in -- not the in-world story. Give me a couple of rewrites and *then* I'm interested in games as fiction. The thing that really made me cast a skeptical eye at AP reports was when an indie guy I know confessed that he'd lied about AP reports and thought that fibbing was rampant.

I find it really difficult to write about ongoing campaigns. It just gets too referential and nonlinear, and my group is pretty character-driven, so it doesn't resolve into a clean story. I will say, though, that play-based discussion is the lifeblood of a successful game, even if I'm pretty terrible at doing it

When I wrote for the old Mage, the most vocal fans were also the ones who played the least. They talked at length about the game's settings and metaphysics without thought for practical play considerations. They were pains in the butt, especially since they let slide serious system issues.

The new Mage? The guys who never played the old game but talked about it all the time troll the hell out of discussions, but people ask questions and make comments based on play experiences. I think that the indie community deserves respect for getting communities to spin off play into a separate set of discussions, but I trust what I see and hear with my own eyes, first.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

Designers at Wizards play games. (I'm not so sure about TSR).

Not sure how much Scott Rouse does, but I'm sure Charles Ryan was an active gamer during his time as D&D Brand Manager.

Cheers!

I was playing 3 hours every Monday in an Eberron campaign until about month ago when work for most of the group got to be so busy that we were always cancelling. "Wait no cleric, monk, and sorcerer this week? ok cancel (sound familiar?)". Between vacations, conventions, and other interuptions (sheesh, like work ) we decided to put it on hold until after GenCon.

Guys in WOTC R&D play a lot both at work and at home (which is kind of like work since they playtest a lot of stuff at home games). Andy Collins is in 3-5 games on regular basis and it seems most staffers are in 2 games per week.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

When I wrote for the old Mage, the most vocal fans were also the ones who played the least. They talked at length about the game's settings and metaphysics without thought for practical play considerations. They were pains in the butt, especially since they let slide serious system issues.

The Mage Usenet group was the worst for this. There was actually a lot of CONTEMPT for people who wanted to play the game.

 

[Arkhandus]

It's like you're trying to brag about how often you game, to all us poor losers that usually get to play only once a week or once a month.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I find it really difficult to write about ongoing campaigns. It just gets too referential and nonlinear, and my group is pretty character-driven, so it doesn't resolve into a clean story. I will say, though, that play-based discussion is the lifeblood of a successful game, even if I'm pretty terrible at doing it

I find it helps to have a lot of the campaign under your belt, so you have an idea of who the characters end up being, what the plot turns out to be, and so on.

 

[jdrakeh]

In fact, you can pretty much interpret the quote that way, too (not wanting to play with the "unwashed masses")

That's less true than people like to think. When hanging around at a 1/2 Price Books in Tacoma, I had a total stranger ask me to drop by his game session later that evening after we engaged in some casual conversation. Regretably, I couldn't attend (was hanging out with friends at Fort Lewis that night). I didn't realize until several weeks later that the the total stranger was a rather prolific game designer (I discovered it after reading his blog and seeing his picture). I missed out on quite an opportunity

 

[eyebeams]

I find it helps to have a lot of the campaign under your belt, so you have an idea of who the characters end up being, what the plot turns out to be, and so on.

What I mean is, have sessions where half the time is spent by people arguing in character about the ethics of a particular decision or how to decorate their (fictional) apartments. It's kind of Whedonesque, but without the forced cleverness.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's kind of Whdeonesque, but without the forced cleverness.

I don't know about you, but I only game with people who look 10 years younger than their actual ages and got 800 on the verbal section of the SATs. Problem solved.

 

[The_Gneech]

When I worked on Mage and Street Fighter I used to have happy dreams about someday being able to playtest anything I wrote. But usually by the time I had the opportunity to actually sit at a gaming table, the book had been out for three months.

One of the reasons I stopped was because I was tired of being asked on Friday for 10,000 words on Monday.

-The Gneech

 

[Thurbane]

Well, Here I Am. And I'm Not Leaving

I found this quote the most interesting. I've often suspected some games writers stopped playing rpgs long ago.

From the amount of glaring game-logic errors in many supplements (like sample NPCs for prestige classes who don't even meet the entry prereqs for the class they are representing, for one example) this doesn't surprise me at all...