Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[soviet]

But it is definitely idiosyncratic and the ideas are great, maybe even brilliant.

It has seeped into stuff in ways big and small. You can't tell me that the hidden religious warrior on a desert world with a new apprentice who is a moisture farmer wasn't influenced by Dune to some degree. Its fingerprints are everywhere.

You just repeated my own point back to me, but in a tone of disagreement.

 

[el-remmen]

You just repeated my own point back to me, but in a tone of disagreement.

Oops! I hate when people do that! I was only trying to agree.

 

[Thomas Shey]

RuneQuest, really? Palladium FRP definitely, but the RuneQuest I'm familiar with is the progenitor of Basic Roleplay System (same core as Call of Cthulhu). It DOES have ability scores mostly on a 3-18 scale (with 5 of the 7 overlapping with D&D), but it's a % skill-based system rather than class & level, HP don't increase over time, spells use mana points IIRC... Was original RQ closer?

Having been a friend of Steve Perrin, you can make an argument that its a D&D offshoot, but I think once you've done that the argument has essentially degenerated into claiming that about almost every trad game. There were too many elements of RQ that were really radical when viewed through a D&D lens otherwise.

 

[soviet]

Oops! I hate when people do that! I was only trying to agree.

No worries

 

[Thomas Shey]

I know a bunch of people who work in AAA videogames, and they definitely don't think they have the freedom to experiment once they get too big. It's pretty routine for them to take their golden parachutes and start a little indie studio to do so, once they no longer have to worry about things like paying for their mortgage any more.

No. The big publishers that have HR people and accountants, like Mongoose or Paizo or Kobold or Black Hat and the like aren't indie outfits any more. They have established game lines, customers with expectations of the publishers and their output, etc.

Indie publishers, IMO, are the ones that pop up, do a few weird things and may vanish without a trace. They're likely "based" out of a garage or more realistically a kitchen table and their accounting department is their mad scramble to set up QuickBooks before tax day.

In the traditional D&D-like RPG space, I'd say Cairn or Knave or the stuff put out by Flatland Games are indie and Paizo, Kobold, etc. are not. It takes more than just being "smaller than WotC," which is everyone, to be a small scrappy independent.

You've got some weird corner-cases too.

I'm pretty comfortable calling the Polyhedral Knights (publishers of Wicked Pacts and others) and Dragonsbane Entertainment (publishers of the Sabre RPG games) indie. It gets a little weirder with Design Ministries, given the Fragged Empire and related games are being distributed by Modiphus now.

 

[Mannahnin]

Having been a friend of Steve Perrin, you can make an argument that its a D&D offshoot, but I think once you've done that the argument has essentially degenerated into claiming that about almost every trad game. There were too many elements of RQ that were really radical when viewed through a D&D lens otherwise.

Right; I know that the Perrin Conventions for combat were originally to add a bunch more structure to OD&D combat (which had almost none; not even an initiative system), and that some of the concepts/procedures originally laid out there (like Strike Ranks) became part of the mechanics of RQ.

But for me, despite the similar ability scores and it having a fantasy setting they're very different. RQ being an early example of a "skill-based system", which for older RPGs is usually considered the other major contrasting category as opposed to "class & level systems" like D&D.

 

[Ryujin]

You just repeated my own point back to me, but in a tone of disagreement.

I don't know why, but this is suddenly in my brain.

 

[trappedslider]

Oddly, when I reread The Great Gatsby after something like twenty years, my experience was just about the same as when I read it in college--I enjoyed the heck out of it (though I might have seen more in it when I reread it).

Gatsby hits like a runaway locomotive as an adult, IME.

i tried reading the great gatsby but it was too shallow hides from Whizbang