What is the biggest debacle of RPG history?

[Surgo]

No, I'm serious, I have literally never seen anyone play a game of Vampire without LARPing.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Don't forget Exalted 3E's rape ghosts. That was an impressive detonation of an otherwise fairly successful brand.

While that wasn't the biggest debacle in aggregate, I think that pretty easily wins the crown for 'fastest implosion of a non-joke brand'. Granted, that bomb was pretty much guaranteed to go off sooner or later -- I'm just surprised at just how quickly Exalted's perception among the hoi polloi went from 'weird anime anti-D&D RPG' to 'rape ghost game'.

[Corsair114]

Does FASA and the Legend of the Lost License count? Then again, I suppose not as Battletech was more a miniatures strategy game than an RPG, though I recall there being a Mechwarrior RPG.

[name_here]

Do you mean the international copyright law incompatibility clusterfuck resulting in the Unseen, or is this something else?

[Corsair114]

Do you mean the international copyright law incompatibility clusterfuck resulting in the Unseen, or is this something else?

Yeah, that one.

[Koumei]

The only LARPing I've ever done was at a private venue where non-players were not in the area. Generally one-off games at roleplaying conventions (as one-off games you can do the crazier shit and it doesn't matter what the world looks like at the end because there is no "next session", so you can just have Cthulhu: the Musical or the Mad Science Convention), but I did join a Vampire LARP once that was different from normal:

• Sure, nWoD exists, but it can fuck off. This is oWoD.
• It is strictly held just at the gaming club, in gaming club time.
• It's not related to the official LARP thing with the online registration, it was in fact made post-Gehenna.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

imagine if they took the TT and then designed this con system where in the early days of the net you could track your character across all the players of WW games and follow a giant over arching story

Wasn't this sort of what they tried to do with One World By Night? Of course, that was basically the most terrible idea ever and an epic failure in every way imaginable, but I think that's sort of the idea they had going anyway.

White Wolf's LARP system is/was The Mind's Eye Theater system, it is superficially like the Storyteller system, but it uses Rock/Paper/Scissors (And occasionally Rock/Paper/Scissors/Bomb, Bomb beats rock and paper, but it beaten by Scissors) and a trait bid system to resolve conflicts, as stated elsewhere in the thread. I have it on good authority that one of the reasons they settled on a system that is both clunky and silly was to encourage people to rely on it as little as possible and rely on roleplay instead.

The "big" Vampire LARP organization is and to one extent or another continues to be The Camarilla, named for the main organization of vampires in Masquerade. It was originally a sanctioned but independent organization, which WW treated as a "Fan Club". WW bought them out at one point and everyone has regretted that since, as White Wolf got a floundering, poorly funded organization and the members got the offical metaplot stuffed into their campaigns whether they liked it or not.

From what I have heard One World By Night was founded by people who broke off from the Cam to start their own organizaton. While there are many, many reasons to not want to do business with the Cam, that doesn't mean they're much better. I have had dealings with both, they are both highly cliquish and and full of assholes, with people of higher rank who love to wag their dicks in your face. They're like High School lunch with tophats and fake fangs. Of course, this is exactly how Camarilla politics are portrayed in the game, but I got out of larping because I got sick of dealing with that.

They both wanted to create a worldwide network of campaigns, and from what I've been given to understand that part worked. An approved character in one venue was pretty much guaranteed to be allowed in another. You just had to then deal with the people in your new location.

[OgreBattle]

Don't forget Exalted 3E's rape ghosts. That was an impressive detonation of an otherwise fairly successful brand.

While that wasn't the biggest debacle in aggregate, I think that pretty easily wins the crown for 'fastest implosion of a non-joke brand'. Granted, that bomb was pretty much guaranteed to go off sooner or later -- I'm just surprised at just how quickly Exalted's perception among the hoi polloi went from 'weird anime anti-D&D RPG' to 'rape ghost game'.

whats this about?

[Winnah]

Exalted's Most Mature Content (A Mature Article) For Matures Only. Link to Something Awful's WTF D&D!? column. NSFW because of Exalted content.

[Whipstitch]

Sometimes I feel like that Zack dude is single-handedly trying to work off all of SA's bad grognard.txt karma. It's a Sisyphean task, but hey, good effort.

[wotmaniac]

(I'm a little behind ... just catching up)

Link from earlier in the thread

What the hell is RaHoWa?

You Asked. [pdf, NSFW, Not Acceptable Anywhere]

-Username17

Apparently, I must have glossed over that originally.
Way to rub it in.

[...informative info dump on RaHoWa ...]

Okay, at what point do you stop calling it a game, and actually start calling it a manifesto/call-to-arms that just so happens to be cloaked as a game (presumably to allow for greater circulation)?

Just sayin'.

[Corsair114]

Okay, at what point do you stop calling it a game, and actually start calling it a manifesto/call-to-arms that just so happens to be cloaked as a game (presumably to allow for greater circulation)?

Just sayin'.

By the end of the first paragraph.

[TheFlatline]

imagine if they took the TT and then designed this con system where in the early days of the net you could track your character across all the players of WW games and follow a giant over arching story

Wasn't this sort of what they tried to do with One World By Night? Of course, that was basically the most terrible idea ever and an epic failure in every way imaginable, but I think that's sort of the idea they had going anyway.

White Wolf's LARP system is/was The Mind's Eye Theater system, it is superficially like the Storyteller system, but it uses Rock/Paper/Scissors (And occasionally Rock/Paper/Scissors/Bomb, Bomb beats rock and paper, but it beaten by Scissors) and a trait bid system to resolve conflicts, as stated elsewhere in the thread. I have it on good authority that one of the reasons they settled on a system that is both clunky and silly was to encourage people to rely on it as little as possible and rely on roleplay instead.

The "big" Vampire LARP organization is and to one extent or another continues to be The Camarilla, named for the main organization of vampires in Masquerade. It was originally a sanctioned but independent organization, which WW treated as a "Fan Club". WW bought them out at one point and everyone has regretted that since, as White Wolf got a floundering, poorly funded organization and the members got the offical metaplot stuffed into their campaigns whether they liked it or not.

From what I have heard One World By Night was founded by people who broke off from the Cam to start their own organizaton. While there are many, many reasons to not want to do business with the Cam, that doesn't mean they're much better. I have had dealings with both, they are both highly cliquish and and full of assholes, with people of higher rank who love to wag their dicks in your face. They're like High School lunch with tophats and fake fangs. Of course, this is exactly how Camarilla politics are portrayed in the game, but I got out of larping because I got sick of dealing with that.

They both wanted to create a worldwide network of campaigns, and from what I've been given to understand that part worked. An approved character in one venue was pretty much guaranteed to be allowed in another. You just had to then deal with the people in your new location.

One World by Night had fucking Lasombra vampires with lightsabers. 4 Aggravated traits of damage. Which I believe was instant ash in the original health system.

I'm not shitting. Lightsabers. And someone authorized this.

Basically OWbN was supposed to be a network where you register your game and anyone can come in and play that's part of the network and generate experience.

In reality, you had shit like lightsabers and Lasombra (I don't even fucking *GET* how lasombra would want that since they're shadow vampires but whatever) because someone's game went FishMalk. If that didn't happen, you'd have some asshole from the city drive out to your game with his 800 xp character that he took to four LARPs a week and assrape your entire game and burn it to the ground because your players are all 40xp characters.

And you can't complain, you just bend over and take it because you agree that you're part of the OWBN "continuity"- there really wasn't the ability to censor players from your game just because they were mind-bogglingly overpowered.

OWbN was a fucking joke and laughing stock even for the psycho goths who breathed White Wolf for years. The Cam at least reigned in *some* of that shit.

However most LARPS simply did their own thing. I know my mage game did- I didn't spend time and effort setting up a story just to have some griefer come and kick my house of cards over and laugh in my face.

[Warthur]

*major customer relations mismanagement (Gamer Zero, the 'clouds across the sky' article)

I was aware of most of the other aspects, but hadn't heard of Gamer Zero - mind cluing me in?

[TheFlatline]

Exalted's Most Mature Content (A Mature Article) For Matures Only. Link to Something Awful's WTF D&D!? column. NSFW because of Exalted content.

Holy shit.

I thought the Bali book was in bad taste...

Who actually wants to *play* this shit?

[Username17]

Gamer Zero was the posting name of Mike Lescault, who along with Scott Rouse seemed to have the job of telling the public about WotC's terrible decisions. So he was the one who gave the interview where they said that the GSL was going to be incompatible with the OGL and revocable at any time, for example. He said a lot of things that made people really mad, but of course his job as herald for a company that was actually doing things that were necessarily going to make people really mad made that somewhat inevitable.

-Username17

[Prak]

Exalted's Most Mature Content (A Mature Article) For Matures Only. Link to Something Awful's WTF D&D!? column. NSFW because of Exalted content.

Holy shit.

I thought the Bali book was in bad taste...

Who actually wants to *play* this shit?

Actually, if we leave out the child tongue-rape, I'd totally be down for playing Exalted with a chick I know from the college... It's kind of like Vampire for even kinkier, fucked up people.

[TheFlatline]

Exalted's Most Mature Content (A Mature Article) For Matures Only. Link to Something Awful's WTF D&D!? column. NSFW because of Exalted content.

Holy shit.

I thought the Bali book was in bad taste...

Who actually wants to *play* this shit?

Actually, if we leave out the child tongue-rape, I'd totally be down for playing Exalted with a chick I know from the college... It's kind of like Vampire for even kinkier, fucked up people.

Okay yes if you strip out the rape, rape ghosts, 12 year old rape phylactery and the casual boring rape castle there's some interesting ideas here and there. But this isn't "mature", this is "I'm 14 and fucked up from hormones and probably something else too."

[shadzar]

Gamer Zero was the posting name of Mike Lescault, who along with Scott Rouse seemed to have the job of telling the public about WotC's terrible decisions. So he was the one who gave the interview where they said that the GSL was going to be incompatible with the OGL and revocable at any time, for example. He said a lot of things that made people really mad, but of course his job as herald for a company that was actually doing things that were necessarily going to make people really mad made that somewhat inevitable.

-Username17

. http://www.youtube.com/user/GamerZer0 .

My job is to try and manage all of this so that we're taking care of the entire community the best we can. In some cases, this might mean finding something exclusive for ENWorld. (and while Morrus may be technically correct about exclusives, I intentionally didn't promote the D&D XP interviews with Gerdie and Liz on any of our pages or forums because I wanted ENWorld to carry the story, since it was their folks who were kind enough to sit down and talk to GRZ on camera) In other cases, it may mean picking up a poking stick and walking around the office poking people to remind them that the whole of the RPG doesn't live exclusively on ENWorld, and that we need to support our entire community.

. http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/ ... Exclusives .

a so called video journalist who was only a mouthpiece for WotC as 4th was being worked on.

Here's an example of WotC staff running to ENWorld rather than posting here:

When it was announced that the magazine license was not being renewed with Paizo, WotC staffers chose to post on ENWorld well before they posted here. It didn't seem to matter that the community here wanted answers, wanted to vent, had questions, and so on. Bill S (and probably others) opted to go to another site, rather than supporting their own site.

I'm certain there've been other instances, but I don't recall them specifically.
John Ling
Freelance Writer/Editor
PM for availability

VCL for General Gaming and play-by-post groups

i think me an Z gave Mike hell for being a puppet and useless and full of lies (and Morrus of ENWorld too!). he really was just a commercial for 4th edition and leader of 4th edition fanboys until his departure from WotC. now like the creator of Wormy comic, he is nowhere to be found....

[Prak]

Holy shit.

I thought the Bali book was in bad taste...

Who actually wants to *play* this shit?

Actually, if we leave out the child tongue-rape, I'd totally be down for playing Exalted with a chick I know from the college... It's kind of like Vampire for even kinkier, fucked up people.

Okay yes if you strip out the rape, rape ghosts, 12 year old rape phylactery and the casual boring rape castle there's some interesting ideas here and there. But this isn't "mature", this is "I'm 14 and fucked up from hormones and probably something else too."

I wouldn't even go that far. There are some mediocre ideas, but it really comes down to White Wolf wanting some of that sweet D&D money, so they wrote a Typical Fantasy Setting, and then injected a ton of anime into it, including some of the really bad parts of anime, ie, lolicon and monster rape. And the only part which I strongly object to showing up in a game I play is the lolicon. If she wants to have rape ghosts and lunar intermorphic shenanigans going on, it's a game, I'm personally ok with playing in a game which includes those things (hell, I floated the idea of playing a Lunar by her, and she's cool with it).

[Warthur]

Gamer Zero was the posting name of Mike Lescault, who along with Scott Rouse seemed to have the job of telling the public about WotC's terrible decisions.

Huh. I can see the merit of having a mouthpiece for the company who cultivates a "just yer average gamer" persona, but at the same time I can't help thinking that you want that sort of person to be giving out stuff that people can get hyped for, not wheeling out the bad news - particularly news bad enough that it's going to cause a stink whoever says it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If we're just talking about 4E D&D, here's one:

Letting Bruce Cordell write the Forgotten Realms product line. He caused the FR brand, the moneymaker of D&D ever since it popped up, to completely implode and die in a ditch with his one-two punch of Keep on the Shadowfell and the FRCS. I honestly have no idea why he wasn't fired for that.

While we're on the subject, I don't see why OGL was a fuckup in of itself. In my opinion, shovelware doesn't hurt the primary brand/distributor as long as they're able to sufficiently distance themselves themselves from it. And I think that this was the case for 3E D&D's run. While people were complaining about low-quality brands like Mongoose being an eyesore on the shelves, very few people complained about books like Dawnforge wrecking game balance. I mean, we all sneer at shovelware brands like LJN and Acclaim and Activision and so on but they didn't really hurt the runaway strength of the NES/SNES/Wii because the primary core brands were good.

No, what caused the OGL to be a boat anchor wasn't the fact that it enabled shovelware but because it set a standard that D&D explicitly had to exceed with their next edition. When they didn't, well, now Pathfinder is wearing the D&D crown. And judging from how 5E is looking it'll probably continue to wear it when the game comes out.

[shadzar]

While we're on the subject, I don't see why OGL was a fuckup in of itself.

Bruce wrote that shit? Yeah, why didn't they fire him sooner?

the fuckup that was the OGL was that when Dancey probably suggested it, there were still people with TSR that could actually write. WotC let those people go or caused them to leave, meaning that WotC didn't stand a chance against the OGL since WotC had less quality writers than say... Pathfinder had. the very KotS you mention is proof of that as well as the Spellplague and such like DDN unified one cosmology to rule them all.

WotC might have some decent game designers, but their story department isnt the caliber of Greenwood, Weis, Hickman, Gygax, Lekofka, etc etc for their adventures/fluff. just looka t the shit Wyatt considers fluff and Mearls and Jon Shitheady. Why is the fucking Art Director trying to write fluff or mechanics even?

the people WotC has had as authors other than those that created the novel lines, as just shit. without decent fluff, no mechanics will be able to cover up the steaming turd that results. 4th proves that. so OGL created the problem by showing WotC how bad its design/writing staff sucked. 3PPs were able to create better stuff and/or more of it using the OGL.

WotC had roughly maybe 2% decent product, but the 200 3PPs out there with their "shovelware" producing more and more often had a larger percentage because they got more out there, and given enough time a room full of monkeys and typewriters will create Shakespare. WotC didn't have the capacity to create that much to find any diamonds in its rough.


*note: i don't know what WotC or 3PP publishers did, so this is based on hearsay and statistics of the volume of WotC product and 3PP products.

Had WotC had decent authors, they wouldn't have had to fear the OGL to try to make it illegal, but WotC was, as someone mentioned somewhere, bound by it for eternity. meaning WotC can't go back to AD&D, BD&D, OD&D, or even 3.x due to legal reasons.

ergo D&D is in its final death throws.

[Warthur]

The big thing with the OGL was that Wizards vastly - vastly - overestimated how valuable the brand name of D&D was compared with the rules. They figured that they could let everybody use the rules for free without too much in the way of negative effects - after all, thinly-veiled knockoffs of D&D with sufficient changes to text and presentation to avoid a copyright lawsuit plus a sprinkling of original ideas have been with us since the dawn of the hobby. They assumed that the name Dungeons & Dragons would be treated with such reverence that most third party publishers who weren't small press fly-by-nights would want to get in on the trademark licence, which was substantially more restrictive.

What they failed to realise (or, if you believe the conspiracy theory that Ryan Dancey gave us the OGL so that if Wizards crammed D&D down the shitter at some point in the future the fanbase would be able to save it, what they actually did realise but didn't let Hasbro's lawyers know) was that people would use the OGL in unexpected and unanticipated ways. Suddenly, you have a bunch of competing OGL games (D20 and non-D20 - see the mild Runequest and Traveller resurgences), you have Pathfinder, and you have retro-clones stretching as far as the eye can see.

Nobody cares that Pathfinder is called Pathfinder and not D&D 3.X, nobody cares that Labyrinth Lord is called Labyrinth Lord and not Basic/Expert D&D, nobody cares that OSRIC is called OSRIC and not AD&D 1E - people know what their preferred flavour of D&D is, and thanks to Paizo and the retro-clone crowd they can get current support for it. (And hell, if you really wanted to call your Pathfinder campaign a D&D game you can - Paizo and Wizards will almost certainly never find out, and even if they did trademark infringement requires the trademark to be used commercially, not by private individuals having a private game in their front room.)

Trademarks are only valuable if your customers see them as denoting a high-quality product which they would rather buy in preference to your competitor's knock-off product, and in the case of D&D that clearly isn't the case any more.

[Prak]

It helps that "D&D" is the generic brand name of rpgs, like Kleenex or Band Aid. If you and your friends are playing Vampire at a Dennys, and the server asks what you're playing, clearly having no idea what a pen and paper RPG is, you'll probably say either "Playing D&D (basically)," or "Playing Vampire the Masquerade, it's like D&D." It's vaguely possible that you'll liken it to WoW or a similar CRPG, but D&D is still the go to.