This was an interesting year for some of the most venerable role playing game publishers out there as they were handed over to the winds of fate, changing hands in ownership rather unexpectedly.
HIGH: Chaosium returns to classic form
Chaosium was returned to Petersen and Stafford early this year, which seemed like a fascinating turn of events, especially after it was revealed how close the company was to folding as a result of the debt it accrued due to the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Kickstarter (or rather, the lack of money to afford fulfillment). Most of the year was spent paring down Chaosium's focus, making it leaner and tighter, all while focusing on fulfillment. Late in the game Runequest became a major focus as well, as BRP fell to the wayside and the company at least on the surface seems to be repurposing itself to old fans of Runequest 2 and those tolerant fans hanging on patiently for CoC 7.
LOW: Chaosium's return to classic form fragments the BRP crowd
The downside of all this is that all of the established licensed products and support are now a thing of the past. The Design Mechanism's Runequest won't be the "official Runequest" which seems odd to all the people who've come to identify Pete and Loz as the life-bringers of the setting. A generic edition will no longer be a thing as Glorantha returns to the fore, much to the delight of the Gloranthaphiles but also to the detriment of the fans of the system but not the setting.
2016 will definitely be the year we see how this all affects the niche corner of gamer fans who love their BRP gaming.
HIGH: Paradox Entertainment Buys White Wolf
Paradox, a computer game company known for non-AAA budget games that usually are pretty good, bought White Wolf, saving it from a slow death at the hands of CCP, the copany behind EVE Online. Suddenly it looks like we'll have a new 4th edition Vampire: The Masquerade, continued support for the Old World of Darkness (now just plain old World of Darkness), Onyx Studios support for Chronicles of Darkness (what used to be the "New" WoD), and promises of a computer game, possibly an RPG.
Onyx had done a great job reviving and keeping World of Darkness alive, but only if you knew where to look. This new direction from Paradox is a good sign.
HIGH: Design Mechanism does get to continue supporting its own system
On the plus side, Chaosium is fine with Pete and Loz continuing to provide support for the system formerly known as Runequest 6. Fans of the system got a taste of how versatile it can be in the Luther Arkwright expansion, and now maybe in 2016 for many of us we won't need to stress too much about Chaosium's future because Design Mechanism has a perfectly viable Glorantha-free alternative out there.
Predictions: if Chaosium stays solvent, meets its Kickstarter obligations, and produces a great edition of Runequest that everyone can get behind then they will see some smooth sailing by close of year. If too many of these goals are not met then the future will look grim. Meanwhile I predict White Wolf will have a lot going on and will at last get exposure on a retail level again, possibly growing its fanbase, and it will hopefully do well under Paradox. Meanwhile I expect Pete and Loz to produce at least 2-3 high quality books powered by the Design Mechanism House Engine before Chaosium gets Runequest 4 out.
Next: OSR!
Showing posts with label year in review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label year in review. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
2015 Gaming Year in Review Part II: Kickstarters and OGL!!!
This was the year a lot of Kickstarters came to fruition, and also the year Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls finally materialized. It was also a major year for consumers to finally wise up and start scrutinizing wayward Kickstarters, especially serial offenders like Ken Whitman (alias Ken Whitless) thanks especially to Erik Tenkar's research efforts. Some highs and lows...
HIGH: Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls arrives
It almost missed 2015, but it did finally see release, and the Deluxe T&T core rulebook was a real pleasure to read and look at, a definite labor of love for both the authors, artists and fans.
LOW: The Ken Witman debacles
Not something I wrote about, but Tenkar's Tavern did a great deal to expose this serial con artist and his rampant abuse of crowdfunding, part of a long history of swindling and chicanery, it turns out.
HIGH: D&D 5E Gets Some Kickstarters
First Frog God Games did it in late 2014, with the fruit of their efforts coming out early in the year. Later 5E Kickstarters included Primeval Thule (which should be in my hands now if the Post Office can figure out how to forward mail....Sasquatch, remember to ask backers if there's an address change before shipping!!!), Tome of Beasts from Kobold Press, and more Frog God projects that seem to be experimenting with how much 5E interest there is (hint: a lot, but you need to make the Kickstarters easier to figure out and less risky).
Unfortunately all of the 5E books mentioned so far are produced on a more conventional fair-use basis because....
LOW: Still no OGL
I thought we'd see one by now, but maybe heavily modified with a lot of legal protection in place. Instead, we have no OGL going in to 2016, no word from WotC, and some suggestions from Kobold Press that maybe WotC is happy people are publishing without it, taking a bit of pressure off of the company to figure out how to support the game.
It's not bad in some ways; most 3PP have figured out now that you can produce your own content and publish it anyway, or are using the original OGL and just being careful.
LOW: Call of Cthulhu 7th
Call of Cthulhu 7th is not here. Backers might see it soon, in early 2016, but only because Chaosium is back on life support and breathing steadily, it seems. Will this Kickstarter come to pass? Was the Runequest 2 reprint another way to rob Peter to pay Paul (or whatever that expression is)?
LOWEST: Goblinworks Almost Goes Belly Up
Yeah I beat this dead horse last post, but it's worth mentioning because no one seems to be overly worked up about the fact that the Pathfinder Online game had two big, costly Kickstarters and ultimately ended up crashing Hindenberg style when Goblinworks admitted it missed its funding goal for completion by 75% and laid everyone off.....did Kickstarter backers ever actually get fulfillment on what they paid for? It seems to me this was not happening, not even close. For many (like myself) this was not a surprise....anyone who follows video game development could tell Goblinworks was designed to fail in their expectations and promises, but both Kickstarters had promised lofty goals, and I suppose did so cleverly....with one promising to fund a demo, essentially, and not the actual game. The other one fulfilled lots of print book promises, which apparently was what the backers really wanted. The Kickstarters ultimately felt very shady, in a "we met our obligations --technically--" sort of way....but if Goblinworks had been, say, Paradox Interactive or CDProject Red I think they would have been slammed, badly, for how they handled all of this. (Of course neither of those publishers would have done such a stunt in the first place).
PREDICTIONS: well, more Kickstarters loom (duh), as despite the bad ones there are many more success stories....and Kickstarters now are doing a better job of qualifying themselves by demonstrating prior successes. We will probably see CoC 7th in print but if there's still not CoC7 by the end of 2016 then I'll suggest it might be because Chaosium folded.....but the success of the RQ2 reprint Kickstarter suggests that shouldn't happen if they are careful. Meanwhile I predict that it will be shocking if Pathfinder Online is still, well, Online by this time next year.
Next: the more things change...
HIGH: Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls arrives
It almost missed 2015, but it did finally see release, and the Deluxe T&T core rulebook was a real pleasure to read and look at, a definite labor of love for both the authors, artists and fans.
LOW: The Ken Witman debacles
Not something I wrote about, but Tenkar's Tavern did a great deal to expose this serial con artist and his rampant abuse of crowdfunding, part of a long history of swindling and chicanery, it turns out.
HIGH: D&D 5E Gets Some Kickstarters
First Frog God Games did it in late 2014, with the fruit of their efforts coming out early in the year. Later 5E Kickstarters included Primeval Thule (which should be in my hands now if the Post Office can figure out how to forward mail....Sasquatch, remember to ask backers if there's an address change before shipping!!!), Tome of Beasts from Kobold Press, and more Frog God projects that seem to be experimenting with how much 5E interest there is (hint: a lot, but you need to make the Kickstarters easier to figure out and less risky).
Unfortunately all of the 5E books mentioned so far are produced on a more conventional fair-use basis because....
LOW: Still no OGL
I thought we'd see one by now, but maybe heavily modified with a lot of legal protection in place. Instead, we have no OGL going in to 2016, no word from WotC, and some suggestions from Kobold Press that maybe WotC is happy people are publishing without it, taking a bit of pressure off of the company to figure out how to support the game.
It's not bad in some ways; most 3PP have figured out now that you can produce your own content and publish it anyway, or are using the original OGL and just being careful.
LOW: Call of Cthulhu 7th
Call of Cthulhu 7th is not here. Backers might see it soon, in early 2016, but only because Chaosium is back on life support and breathing steadily, it seems. Will this Kickstarter come to pass? Was the Runequest 2 reprint another way to rob Peter to pay Paul (or whatever that expression is)?
LOWEST: Goblinworks Almost Goes Belly Up
Yeah I beat this dead horse last post, but it's worth mentioning because no one seems to be overly worked up about the fact that the Pathfinder Online game had two big, costly Kickstarters and ultimately ended up crashing Hindenberg style when Goblinworks admitted it missed its funding goal for completion by 75% and laid everyone off.....did Kickstarter backers ever actually get fulfillment on what they paid for? It seems to me this was not happening, not even close. For many (like myself) this was not a surprise....anyone who follows video game development could tell Goblinworks was designed to fail in their expectations and promises, but both Kickstarters had promised lofty goals, and I suppose did so cleverly....with one promising to fund a demo, essentially, and not the actual game. The other one fulfilled lots of print book promises, which apparently was what the backers really wanted. The Kickstarters ultimately felt very shady, in a "we met our obligations --technically--" sort of way....but if Goblinworks had been, say, Paradox Interactive or CDProject Red I think they would have been slammed, badly, for how they handled all of this. (Of course neither of those publishers would have done such a stunt in the first place).
PREDICTIONS: well, more Kickstarters loom (duh), as despite the bad ones there are many more success stories....and Kickstarters now are doing a better job of qualifying themselves by demonstrating prior successes. We will probably see CoC 7th in print but if there's still not CoC7 by the end of 2016 then I'll suggest it might be because Chaosium folded.....but the success of the RQ2 reprint Kickstarter suggests that shouldn't happen if they are careful. Meanwhile I predict that it will be shocking if Pathfinder Online is still, well, Online by this time next year.
Next: the more things change...
Monday, January 4, 2016
2015 Gaming Year in Review Part I: Green Ronin & Paizo
As 2015 goes away I thought I'd look at the highs and lows of the year, followed by some predictions.....and in 2015 for tabletop gaming there were more than a few!
HIGH: Green Ronin finally released Fantasy AGE and completed Dragon AGE.
...long in coming, this was a book everyone was waiting for, literally, for years. The first Dragon AGE boxed set released in 2010, and fans had been waiting very patiently for five years to see a playable "generic" edition as well as the completed Dragon AGE set, letting you at last run campaigns all the way to level 20. Fantasy AGE was so well received it blew through it's first print run and had to get an entire second print run to meet demand.
The high point was only offset by the low point....
LOW: Green Ronin's Mystery Setting Announcement Was...???
In January Green Ronin released a news piece about the first Fantasy AGE setting, suggesting it would be talked about for a long time to come. I provided my own biased suggestions for what sort of setting would be worthy of such monumental impact. As it turns out, Green Ronin actually only announced two settings this year: a Blue Rose Kickstarter and the Titansgrave "Ashes of Valkhana" book that was the initial companion campaign to the Fantasy AGE rulebook. Neither of these were worthy of the implied shock and awe that Chris Pramas implied, although I suppose one could imagine (based on the announcements written about it) that they had the strongly inclusive Blue Rose RPG in mind. The problem, of course, is that not that many people were all that excited about Blue Rose; it's a setting which has it's fans, and they are happy....but for the rest of us, it was more of a "okay, cool, so what's the shock and awe setting?" moment. And Titansgrave is, while fun, not even remotely newsworthy unless you have some weird fascination for Wesley Crusher.
....So, no setting announced worthy of the hype, unfortunately.
HIGH: Pathfinder keeps chugging along
We received the really cool Bestiary 5 this year, the complex and dense Occult Adventures (which was something I was very intrigued about but my group has found to be relatively difficult to actually get in to), even more interesting but impenetrable Pathfinder Unchained, and lots of other stuff. Pathfinder is holding its base, which is good since there are enough people to keep it going. This demonstrates that the market has room for a range of complexity in fantasy gaming: from ultra simple OSR games to the mid-tier D&D 5E to the top-of-the-heap Pathfinder.
LOW: Goblinworks and Pathfinder Online
I saw an end-of-year announcement from Lisa Stevens that Goblinworks had found a mystery backer willing to foot the bill for the completion of the game (or something to that effect). This could be good news, because the big deal in 2015 was that they had to lay off almost all staff and go into maintenance mode for the title, as they admitted they had fallen short of about 75% of their necessary funding to complete the game. Pathfinder Online remains a perplexing title for many....it's a game, and there may be a niche market for the kind of game it is, but it's not a Pathfinder game in the sense that most people would think of it, and not something Pathfinder fans like myself would be interested in. That, coupled with horrible animations, a current playable version that feels like a crude alpha build, and the general suck level of the Unity engine means that any backer stepping up will hopefully have the oomph to completely revise this project....but I suspect that's not its ultimate destiny.
PREDICTIONS: I expect Green Ronin to announce more content for Fantasy AGE in 2016, hopefully an "advanced set" with more player content and a GM's book and/or more robust bestiary. My worry is that we'll see more Blue Rose and Titansgrave and not much else. My dark fear is that this is Green Ronin and we won't see any of the desired content for another year or two....but I think that's a bit unfounded; the only real delay they experience is with licensed properties.
For Pathfinder I will be surprised if we don't see an announcement by close of 2017 that involves a possible rules expansion, but I doubt we'll see a "Pathfinder 2.0" under discussion. The 3.X engine it is built on is a contentious beast to redesign, as WotC itself has learned, twice. If Pathfinder Unchained was an effort at illustrating future directions for Pathfinder, then I suspect the road to 2.0 will be steep and treacherous.
Goblinworks meanwhile will probably be gone before close of year, unless this new mysterious backer is actually some real publisher with some teeth....but in the state the Pathfinder Online game is in I see no way it can survive 12 more months without serious cash and a new direction. Still.....a game like Alganon Online continues to exist (and on Steam, too!), so I could be wrong. My wife and I were playing it years ago before our son was born and marveling at the hidden promise buried beneath mounds of suck....although in Alganon's defense it's still more polished and playable than Pathfiner Online.
NEXT! Kickstarters And Stuff
HIGH: Green Ronin finally released Fantasy AGE and completed Dragon AGE.
...long in coming, this was a book everyone was waiting for, literally, for years. The first Dragon AGE boxed set released in 2010, and fans had been waiting very patiently for five years to see a playable "generic" edition as well as the completed Dragon AGE set, letting you at last run campaigns all the way to level 20. Fantasy AGE was so well received it blew through it's first print run and had to get an entire second print run to meet demand.
The high point was only offset by the low point....
LOW: Green Ronin's Mystery Setting Announcement Was...???
In January Green Ronin released a news piece about the first Fantasy AGE setting, suggesting it would be talked about for a long time to come. I provided my own biased suggestions for what sort of setting would be worthy of such monumental impact. As it turns out, Green Ronin actually only announced two settings this year: a Blue Rose Kickstarter and the Titansgrave "Ashes of Valkhana" book that was the initial companion campaign to the Fantasy AGE rulebook. Neither of these were worthy of the implied shock and awe that Chris Pramas implied, although I suppose one could imagine (based on the announcements written about it) that they had the strongly inclusive Blue Rose RPG in mind. The problem, of course, is that not that many people were all that excited about Blue Rose; it's a setting which has it's fans, and they are happy....but for the rest of us, it was more of a "okay, cool, so what's the shock and awe setting?" moment. And Titansgrave is, while fun, not even remotely newsworthy unless you have some weird fascination for Wesley Crusher.
....So, no setting announced worthy of the hype, unfortunately.
HIGH: Pathfinder keeps chugging along
We received the really cool Bestiary 5 this year, the complex and dense Occult Adventures (which was something I was very intrigued about but my group has found to be relatively difficult to actually get in to), even more interesting but impenetrable Pathfinder Unchained, and lots of other stuff. Pathfinder is holding its base, which is good since there are enough people to keep it going. This demonstrates that the market has room for a range of complexity in fantasy gaming: from ultra simple OSR games to the mid-tier D&D 5E to the top-of-the-heap Pathfinder.
LOW: Goblinworks and Pathfinder Online
I saw an end-of-year announcement from Lisa Stevens that Goblinworks had found a mystery backer willing to foot the bill for the completion of the game (or something to that effect). This could be good news, because the big deal in 2015 was that they had to lay off almost all staff and go into maintenance mode for the title, as they admitted they had fallen short of about 75% of their necessary funding to complete the game. Pathfinder Online remains a perplexing title for many....it's a game, and there may be a niche market for the kind of game it is, but it's not a Pathfinder game in the sense that most people would think of it, and not something Pathfinder fans like myself would be interested in. That, coupled with horrible animations, a current playable version that feels like a crude alpha build, and the general suck level of the Unity engine means that any backer stepping up will hopefully have the oomph to completely revise this project....but I suspect that's not its ultimate destiny.
PREDICTIONS: I expect Green Ronin to announce more content for Fantasy AGE in 2016, hopefully an "advanced set" with more player content and a GM's book and/or more robust bestiary. My worry is that we'll see more Blue Rose and Titansgrave and not much else. My dark fear is that this is Green Ronin and we won't see any of the desired content for another year or two....but I think that's a bit unfounded; the only real delay they experience is with licensed properties.
For Pathfinder I will be surprised if we don't see an announcement by close of 2017 that involves a possible rules expansion, but I doubt we'll see a "Pathfinder 2.0" under discussion. The 3.X engine it is built on is a contentious beast to redesign, as WotC itself has learned, twice. If Pathfinder Unchained was an effort at illustrating future directions for Pathfinder, then I suspect the road to 2.0 will be steep and treacherous.
Goblinworks meanwhile will probably be gone before close of year, unless this new mysterious backer is actually some real publisher with some teeth....but in the state the Pathfinder Online game is in I see no way it can survive 12 more months without serious cash and a new direction. Still.....a game like Alganon Online continues to exist (and on Steam, too!), so I could be wrong. My wife and I were playing it years ago before our son was born and marveling at the hidden promise buried beneath mounds of suck....although in Alganon's defense it's still more polished and playable than Pathfiner Online.
NEXT! Kickstarters And Stuff
Thursday, January 9, 2014
State of the MMO Nation
2013 was a weak year for MMOs in my household. My wife, who plays MMOs almost exclusively, began to migrate to other titles with her online gang such as Borderlands 2, Saint's Row III and IV and even League of Legends. I played a few on and off....here's a recap:
Defiance
For me the highlight of 2013 was Defiance, which despite being a game you'd think I would love (open-world third-person SF themed shooter with MMO design) I didn't play nearly enough of. The fact that Trion Worlds seems to have forgotten about it (only one of the five promised expansion packs was released in 2013, a bad sign if I ever saw one) doesn't help. I will continue to play Defiance at my usual measured pace, but suggest to future developers working on shooter/MMO hybrids that they consider carefully what the audience of both games might expect out of such a merger. Defiance could use something....I'm not sure what, entirely, but something....more diversity in explorable areas, maybe, and a better hub setup for people who just want to jump into the action? I will defer to Warframe as an excellent way of handling a multiplayer shooter experience online. Defiance, with it's MMO trappings, is still a different beast, though. I expect it to hang on until Destiny arrives and squashes the competition like a tiny bug.
Status for 2014: I will continue to play it casually and hope we see some of the promised future content.
Rift
2013 was the year Rift went free to play, and in doing so it changed the core feel of the game from the comfortable subscription model I enjoyed to a typical overpriced freemium model which I have now abandoned. Despite getting an enormous number of in game credits for my lengthy subscription time I was disenchanted with the way they structured the game and how they priced the "subscription equivalent" option to continue to get leveling perks (there was no longer a discount for buying in volume, basically). Moreover, after buying all sorts of cool looking armor with my given points I realized I had once again made a serious error in my play style: I now had blinged out characters who had done nothing in-game to earn the gear. For someone like myself who plays for the story and experience this is an unforgivable tresspass.
Of second note is the Storm Legion expansion content, which suffered greatly for casuals like myself who found the story hard to follow, the quests insanely grindy, and the overall experience just plain tedious. The magic of Storm Legion shortly after launch did not stick, unfortunately.
Status for 2014: Rift is now on hiatus until further notice. I have even deleted it from my computer. I may return if the itch grabs me. This is a real shame as I loved this game a great deal pre-F2P.
Guild Wars 2
I have hardly played this one at all, and I don't know why. For reasons I can't explain at all GW2 did not grab me as consistently as I expected, or as it honestly should; non-MMO open world titles sort of stole the show in 2013 for me, so games like Sleeping Dogs and Saint's Row III dominated my time, and as a side effect structured and ironically "less involved" worlds offered by MMOs like GW2 were simply less intriguing as a result. For a sharply contrasting example on GW2 see here, though.
Status for 2014: I will continue to periodically fire it up and see if I can get motivated. Meanwhile I will continue to be enamored by much more interesting open-exploration titles like GTA V. Saint's Row IV and Skyrim. One approach I am going to take is to follow Zubion's advice on how to hit GW2 for an hour a day and still feel like you're making progress/doing something. Zubion seriously loves GW2, and I'd love to be into this game in the same way.
World of Warcraft
I reloaded it late in November, finally purchased Mists of Pandaria (like two days before it went on sale) and enjoyed it immensely for about a week before experiencing severe WoW fatigue again. I really want to have some characters ready to go at level cap for the forthcoming Warlords of Draenor, which on the surface appears to get WoW back to its roots somewhat while finally offering a graphical overhaul to the geriatric character models of the original races. But....I just can't muster enough interest to devote the time. It is a "been there, done that, can't stomach doing it for hundreds of hours again" problem. Sorry WoW.
Status for 2014: we'll see if Warlords of Draenor motivates me to slog through the game to get ready. I....think this may be the end of my relationship with WoW, however.
Neverwinter Online
Something about the whole Neverwinter experience is just off. It's got some fun gameplay, but the game keeps you on such a tight rail that the freedom of choice in character design it offers is purely illusion, the characters will all suffer from the same narrow pool of gear choices in terms of looks unless you pony up to the store, and Perfect World's method of handling freemium means you'll have to navigate a treacherous web of purchasing confusion on numerous levels. I am very done with Perfect World managed games, and even though I enjoy the gameplay....they're just too greedy for my tastes.
Status for 2014: I may try it again if they magically manage to add several more classes into the game.
Dungeons & Dragons Online
My burnout on DDO know know limits. The ability to reach the high level content where all their new expansion modules can be found is an onerous and soul wrenching task for one such as myself. I have given up on DDO entirely, the grind was just too much.
DC Universe Online
The surprise end-of-year discovery was DC Universe Online. I recall playing this a bit shortly after it went F2P and my wife and I were more into Champions then so we ignored it. When I got the PS4 I noticed DCUO was available on it, so I downloaded it. This game was meant to be played with a controller, for one thing. It's got very smooth, fluid and fun gameplay. My recent resurgence of interest in DC Comics has helped keep me interested in DCUO as well. I bought the expansion packs on sale over the holidays and have been enjoying leveling up my small gang of oddball characters, including Doc Futurity, Doctor Tachyon, Bowman Thirteen, Ladybot Moxietron and the Smouldering Demon.
Status for 2014: I expect to play a lot of DCUO as a place holder until Elder Scrolls Online arrives.
That's it for the 2013 wrap-up on MMOs and the projection for 2014....see you in the game!
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