06-13-2019, 09:08 PM | #221 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
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06-13-2019, 11:57 PM | #222 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
Sure, but when I do that sort of thing (and I do, as like you I enjoy some good Lovecraftian Horror) I prefer to go a bit further off-brand from D&D. Far enough off-brand that the Players aren't going to hear the description and immediately say, "Oh, an Aboleth".
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06-14-2019, 01:47 AM | #223 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lancashire, UK
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
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Two caveats: Building the game’s own iconic monsters is also important as that is what people latch on to, in my experience. People talk about that epic fight with a beholder or desperate fights against mindflayers. Just copying the art and not having similar crunch is probably counterproductive, however I don’t think that is what happened here. I think they bought some cool, existing art and put stats to it, irrespective of what it was originally intended for. Given that art seems to be one of the most risky parts of RPG production (many KickStarters cite this as the reason for slipping) I can understand the desire to repurpose existing images. |
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06-14-2019, 05:58 AM | #224 | |
I do stuff and things.
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
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The answer: "Likely a yes." More info: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/2536563
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06-14-2019, 07:02 AM | #225 | |
Join Date: May 2019
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
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06-14-2019, 07:20 AM | #226 | ||
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
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I am thrilled when I read campaign write-ups (and I read them!) where something I invented is instrumental to a memorable game session. Other games might have things that look like as-Sharak, bronze spiders, ciuaclán, Demons from Between the Stars, electric jellies, ice wyrms, peshkali, spheres of madness, spore clouds, and watchers at the edge of time – and now bleeders, deep beyonders, kroa-kroa, mindhounds, ramices, reskinned, snāw wihtu, and tomb bugs – but those are my monsters, often created for my campaigns. When other gamers start talking about them, that's the sign we're building a new tradition of our own. Despite that, I've taken pains to deliver many classics: angels, chimeras, demons (galore), dragons, elementals, fungi, gargoyles, giants, goblins, gryphons, jellies, liches, lizard men, minotaurs, molds, nagas, ogres, oozes, orcs, puddings, skeletons, slimes (many slimes), specters, striges, succubi, trolls, vampires, werewolves, zombies, and numerous beasties (apes, bats, bears, lions, rats, snakes, spiders, tigers, weasels, wolves, and bizarre bugs). A good proportion of these write-ups offer notes on how to create variants. And there are many more write-ups that file off the serial numbers despite what I said above, or that offer a classic under a new name. Together, these vastly outnumber the originals. But . . . While I seek to deliver an experience familiar to players of D&D- or Diablo-series games, I don't seek to replicate those games down to the very last monster. In fact, if I did that, we'd be looking at a lawsuit! Monsters that don't obviously come from the public domain might be "classics," but we can't use them; you're never going to see beholders, mimics, or owlbears for this reason. The serial numbers have to come off completely, and while I can defend a sphere of madness not being a beholder because it has arms, eats brains, and doesn't shoot rays, there's far less a person can do to make an owl-headed bear their own. What complicates this is the average gamer's lack of knowledge of what's in the public domain. Many people believe D&D invented bugbears, but it didn't; many people think slaadi come from some mythology somewhere, but they were invented for AD&D. Plus many monsters of myth have powers completely different from those in D&D . . . but gamers expect the D&D powers, which we can't use. If we present those monsters, we have to use the traditional lore or make up our own. Quote:
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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06-14-2019, 07:49 AM | #227 |
Aluminated
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: East of the moon, west of the stars, close to buses and shopping
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
I gather that it's also expensive. I mean really, really expensive. I've seen a number of people describing the business end of making games, and one of the repeated themes is that while the most expensive single part of making a game is usually the printing and assembly (that is, paying some company off in Hong Kong or Vilnius or wherever to print the physical pages, assemble the box, cut out the meeples, and so on), getting art for it is a very, very close second. Even if new art is 100% on schedule and perfect, it still costs a lot of money, so recycling art, which is vastly cheaper, is a way to massively cut costs.
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06-14-2019, 08:44 AM | #228 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
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Hour per hour, artists are paid more than writers. That isn't a complaint – it's a statement of fact. Art is used essentially "as is," with only small tweaks, so artists are paid comparably to writers and their editors and proofreaders. We could afford to pay writers like that only if their work were perfect, which is rare. Art isn't always perfect, either, but unlike game stats, facts, or grammar, it doesn't have an objective measure of error. And I said "hour by hour" . . . but what matters more is square inch by square inch. The art that fills a quarter of a page takes many more hours to create than words that could fill the same space. As a professional writer, I can – and have, on countless occasions – fill a quarter, half, or full page in the minutes before something is released. Writing can be fast. You can't rush illustration the same way. Multiplying "lots of hours" by "more per hour" leads to high costs for art. The best workaround for that is to purchase the right to reuse art rather than to buy all rights to original art. The latter is the red-carpet, first-class, blue-plate treatment, and you have to be very sure you will sell scads of copies to invest that kind of capital.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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06-14-2019, 09:33 AM | #229 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
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06-14-2019, 10:31 AM | #230 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Reprint
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One thing that I don't think folks get about those early D&D monsters is that almost every monster in Monsters & Treasure comes from popular culture or mythology. I think the purple worm and the slimes are pretty much the exceptions, and the slimes have simple elevator pitches ("Ooze that eats you") or come from The Blob (Arneson liked monster movies on WTCN-11). You didn't start to get original monsters until Greyhawk, and even many of the monsters in it have mythical origins (e.g., golems, stirges). Blackmoor is filled with giant animals and sea monsters, many of which come from mythology or popular culture as well. I think what I'm saying is that new players don't pick up gaming material to fight beholders, but that they fight beholders because they're in gaming material that they bought for other reasons. Original monsters are great, but they fill niches that the game brings out. They don't lure new players. I realize that DFRPG isn't pitched much at folks who are new to RPGs (Evil Stevie told Salon.com back when D&D 3e came out that GURPS is there for when formerly new players start looking for a little more, and this is true of DFRPG as well), but there has to be some common currency. Last edited by Rasputin; 06-14-2019 at 10:38 AM. Reason: Making clear that I don't have sales experience |
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