Development Info Tim Cain at Reboot Develop 2017 - Building a Better RPG: Seven Mistakes to Avoid

[Roguey]

That you think I'm using an alt goes on to show you are probably one of those losers who do have one.

You don't think there's anything suspicious about replying to yourself with "A reasonable opinion"?

 

[Sigourn]

You don't think there's anything suspicious about replying to yourself with "A reasonable opinion"?

It's pretty obvious I quoted myself to say "I have a reasonable opinion, and everyone shits on it to be hardcore". Of course, when people have a hate-boner for me, they will look for witches everywhere.

I should ask: what would be the logic behind making an alt to say "I am right"? It makes no sense at all. Alts are only useful for rigging votes and bypassing bans, nothing else.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

what would be the logic behind making an alt

And say, what was the logic behind you changing your username and longstanding avatar?

 

[Sigourn]

And say, what was the logic behind you changing your username and longstanding avatar?

I asked Crispy for "Lucas" instead of "Lucas9", and if that was taken, then Sigourn. I didn't know we were forced to stick with one avatar throughout our stay here.

I get it that people here are butthurt as fuck over reality, but it doesn't help that you act like retards in front of what is the only possible solution to your predicament, and it certainly doesn't help that you ignore logic at all.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

New avatar urgently required for Sigourn!

 

[Wonderdog]

I've got to say I am very very disappointed by this. Incredible, deceptive shilling and excuses at its worst from someone I used to look up to.

• Mistake #1 - Steep Learning Curves: Tim thinks character creation in Fallout, Arcanum and other RPGs was too complex. He's experimenting with creating a completely numberless character system that uses geometric shapes to visualize attributes.
• Mistake #2 - Letting Math Trump Psychology: Revealing the influence of the years he spent developing Wildstar, Tim wants to develop mechanics that are psychologically satisfying and addictive, even at the expense of mathematical elegance. For example, he says the player's first attack against an enemy should always hit even if his overall hit percentage is the same regardless, and that rather than allow players to increase their critical hit chance, they should only be allowed to increase their critical hit damage.
• Mistake #3 - Conflating Player Skill With Character Skill: This one will be familiar if you've watched some of Josh Sawyer's talks. Aiming and hitting in an action-RPG should not be determined by character stats. On the other hand, things like the impact of recoil can be affected by stats, as well as the aforementioned critical hit damage.
• Mistake #4 - Misunderstanding Randomness: Here Tim lays out his frustration with the sorts of people who can't believe they could miss a 95% chance-to-hit attack three times in a row. His conclusion is that when people talk about "randomness", they often mean selecting a token rather than rolling a dice (ie, events can't repeat themselves).
• Mistake #5 - Forcing Linearity: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Tim says games are not movies, using Fallout's Tandi rescue scenario with its multiple solutions as an example of the sort of non-linearity he prizes.
• Mistake #6 - Being Non-Reactive: Tim seems particularly interested in the sort of reactivity where characters in the world have different dispositions based on your character's background, clothing and attributes, as seen in Arcanum. He also loves having different end slides based on the player's choices in the game, using Temple of Elemental Evil's evil ending as an example.
• Mistake #7 - Telling Horrible Stories: Tim uses this to emphasize again that games are not movies. Not every character in a game has to be important or advance the plot. Tropes likes the Chosen One protagonist and amnesiac protagonist are tiresome and should be discarded.

1. People like elaborate games, so long as they cater to their wants. OBVIOUSLY. That is pretty much the watchword of making a good RPG.

2. In games designed for 4 year olds maybe.

3. This is conflating RPG design with action game design. In an action RPG having less damage or missing because of low character stats is FINE. Again, obviously.

4. More like you have written really shitty random number generators and your 5 minutes of testing did not show the results all your fans got so you assume they are all lying idiots. This is what happens when you live in an ivory tower making games and never had a 'real' job as a programmer where saying shit like this simply won't fly.

5. Still better than fake linearity.

6. Saying this is like saying "make your game good". In and of itself it is meaningless.

7. Ditto.

I won't even touch the stuff about triangles. That is some Molyneaux-level deranged bullshit, even Bethesda would be shamed to come out with such tripe

 

[Irenaeus]

He's right and you know it, Infi

 

[Darkzone]

WoC have reduced the amounts of settings and RPG systems (ADD was outselling D&D).

OD&D has been over since, like, 1992. Even Mystara (the default OD&D setting) was converted to AD&D before being canned.

Some of us remember the red box, blue box and etc times. I was not into D&D, because the games shop seller said AD&D is the way to go and that was even before 1989 (AD&D 2E).
AD&D was introduced in 1977, so both lived beside each other for 15 years before the different settings for AD&D 2E killed off D&D in 1992. Mystera had to compete with FR, DL and GH, so it had no chance from the start. So you could technically say that AD&D has cannibalised D&D sales, but not that the settings cannibalised each other.

But because WoC have reduced the settings, they have naturally reduced the cosmology to focus on the core of DnD.

Planescape was using the D&D cosmology. Scrap Sigil, dumb cockney lingo and quirkyquirk genderfluid crap, and you end up with Gygax' Manual of the Planes.
By the time of 3e, the sheer number of planes was too big for an average mouthbreather to memorize. If 3e Planescape would somehow make it, it would have the current D&D cosmogony, not the other way around. That being, "down with needless symmetry, let's have, uh, Gloomwrough, Burnstoohot, Homolove and, uh, that should suffice".

To be honest i don't know the cosmology of D&D 3E, because as D&D 3E came out i was then making my own D&D 3rd campaign setting based on the 3rd party mayfair games Demons I and II, Sentinels, To Hell and Back and Apocalypse extentions for AD&D.
So i will trust in your knowledge about this topic.

Shannon Appelcline stated that CG were shrinking the industry and that TSRs own products were cannibalising their own sales, but i think that it is a false statement (since i bought many many of the supplements, and if you bought one then you bought more).

No, he was right. If you were into Ravenloft or Dragonlance, chances were, you wouldn't give rat's ass about anything Birthright or Dark Sun. Sad but true.
Strange that the same reasoning didn't particularly hurt White Wolf, but I guess they weren't as generous with their money.

And there is where we disagree upon. You assume with this statement that AD&D players played only one campaign and would also buy only one campaign material. In my experience with my own behavior and other players half of the players played at least two campaign settings.
Nearly all played FR or DL or GH, and some played RL or DS or PS. I have also ventured from FR to other campaigns, and because i have learnd much on this journey i would have quite a problem to play just FR now.
Also to add is that there were quite a lot of material that i didn't buy for FR, because it was quite meh in my opinion, like The FR Atlas for one example.

Just for the record what they have released of the DnD Next and 5th.
DnD Next from 2012 - 2014: Dreams of the Red Wizards I and II(Scourge of the Sword Coast, Dead in the They), Sundering Adventure I and II(Murder in Baldur's Gate, Legacy of the Crystal Shard).
DnD 5th edition releases of adventures 2015 - 2017:
Hoard of the Dragon Queen, The Rise of Tiamat, Prince of the Apocalypse, Out of the Abyss, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guild, Curse of Strahd, Storm King's Thunder, Volo's Guide to Monsters, Tales from the Yawning Portal (a collection of some old adventures). Next to be released is "Unearthed Arcana" in my opinion.

Not one campaign fucking setting? Not the fucking Forgotten Realms 5e? This game is officially dead, folks.

FR is the standard campaign setting for the 5e, and every adventure module is made for this setting. WoC has adapted the release paste of a pre 1992 boom, and they should focus on quality and not quantitiy. Their release behavior towards the end of D&D 3rd and 4th editon was rather bad. D&D 5th edition is a back to the roots thing and many people love it, since the past year D&D is rising again and Critical Role has contributed its share. Do not forget that D&D was under high pressure due all of the MMORPGs, but people seem to repent their sins.

 

[mondblut]

So you could technically say that AD&D has cannibalised D&D sales,

That's true too. But as far as D&D goes, they could as well ditch it back in 1980. There was absolutely no sense to keep them running alongside each other through the 80s, until they reimagined OD&D into casualized "kids' first AD&D" in around 1994 with Thunder Pass or whatsitsname.

And there is where we disagree upon. You assume with this statement that AD&D players played only one campaign and would also buy only one campaign material.

Not "I". Pretty much everyone, from genre historians to contemporary market analysts to ex-late TSR and early WOTC staff themselves. Everyone sings to the same tune, that the market was splintered into a myriad isolated niches by their own hand. I see no reason not to believe them. Sure, someone could have been into 2 campaign settings at once. Still definitely not into all 8 or what of them.

FR is the standard campaign setting for the 5e, and every adventure module is made for this setting. WoC has adapted the release paste of a pre 1992 boom, and they should focus on quality and not quantitiy.

Aha, "standart campaign setting" aka "It's dead, Jim". Just ask 3e Greyhawk

They supposedly retconned half the shit they brought in 4e, and we are expected to make it out from shitty Drizzt novels and an occasional online post in Dragon paid blog "magazine"? Nah, they can stuff their adventures and core rules back where they belong. Until they start producing proper campaign settings again, even if it's FR, they might just as well not exist.

 

[zeitgeist]

There is so much misunderstanding on this thread

There is no misunderstanding. You, as many game designers of yore, want to convince people that you're able to make a magical amalgam of two completely different games for two completely different audiences. Not a single one has done this successfully as of yet.

If you like making good RPGs, make them. If you don't have the money for it, make cell phone shovelware to finance them.

If you just like money and don't care about RPGs anymore, skip directly to cell phone shovelware. Wouldn't be the first, won't be the last.

 

[Darkzone]

And there is where we disagree upon. You assume with this statement that AD&D players played only one campaign and would also buy only one campaign material.

Not "I". Pretty much everyone, from genre historians to contemporary market analysts to ex-late TSR and early WOTC staff themselves. Everyone sings to the same tune, that the market was splintered into a myriad isolated niches by their own hand. I see no reason not to believe them. Sure, someone could have been into 2 campaign settings at once. Still definitely not into all 8 or what of them.

Fairfax stated that it was the hardcover novels as described in the book "Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D Retrospective)". So TSR's horizontal diversification into the novel market has killed them, despite a very good start. But i think that this is a bit more complicated and computer games already had a negative impact on the sales of the novels, while the gold box series naturaly issued partly the boom or silver age of AD&D,or generalised to D&D.

FR is the standard campaign setting for the 5e, and every adventure module is made for this setting. WoC has adapted the release paste of a pre 1992 boom, and they should focus on quality and not quantitiy.

Aha, "standart campaign setting" aka "It's dead, Jim". Just ask 3e Greyhawk

GH has already died once in 1986-1989 after GG has left TSR. So i don't get why WoC has made it the standard campaign in 3E, despite the fact that FR and DL was much more popular, on all accounts. I understand that the very good adventure modules are made for GH, but they should have just integrated them into FR. But perhaps GG had also some influence on this decision.

They supposedly retconned half the shit they brought in 4e, and we are expected to make it out from shitty Drizzt novels and an occasional online post in Dragon paid blog "magazine"? Nah, they can stuff their adventures and core rules back where they belong. Until they start producing proper campaign settings again, even if it's FR, they might just as well not exist.

Besides the awkwardness of 4E, WoC made many mistakes in this times. Dragon+ is for free on IOS and Android. I think that they should bring back PS, DS and RL for the 5E (since they already have the material they only need to adapt it to the new rules), in a good format.
Curse of Strahd seems to be good, but i don't know how much it is also about the campaign setting of RL. Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is a source book and can be considerd like a campain setting into the Sword Coast.

 

[ga♥]

Obsidian's best selling game is Fallout New Vegas.

What about South Park?

edit: ok someone asked already^^

 

[undecaf]

So TimCain , have you recovered from your Croatian jetlag for opening this stuff up a bit more?

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Tim Cain is a faggot.

 

[Sigourn]

I would have sex with TimCain , he looks like an adorable bear. My uncle would definitely have sex with him.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

I would have sex with TimCain , he looks like an adorable bear.

He used to look more like a hobbit back in the day tbh. They even based one of the halfling NPCs in Arcanum on his mug.

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

Tim Cain is a faggot.

And people wonder why he never came back to this thread.

 

[J_C]

I would have sex with TimCain , he looks like an adorable bear.

He used to look more like a hobbit back in the day tbh. They even based one of the halfling NPCs in Arcanum on his mug.

Eeeh, I don't think they look anything alike.

 

[Latelistener]

I'm more curious about this:

(Rik Schaffer, the composer of Bloodlines, and many other titles).

 

[Diggfinger]

HoW te F%%&ckk couLd I MySS thiz I for some reason completely missed this, didnt notice it in the front page:selfhate:

Tim Cain - Game Director fuck yea

 

[Roguey]

And people wonder why he never came back to this thread.

Drog's been saying things like that since 2011.

 

[Irenaeus]

It's not as if Tim Cain would actually return.

 

[Diggfinger]

Super excited: Tim Cain saying "if you love Fallout, you will love this" is enough for me. Dont mind 1st or 3rd person, but hopefully set in a dark and gory universe. And Boyarsky working on this as well!

 

[undecaf]

It has the potential to beat the dex's golden boy Geralt the Third.

 

[Wonderdog]

"if you love Fallout, you will love this" !

lol