RPGaDAY Day 29: System

 #RPGaDAY2021 Day 29 'System'

Running late today especially out in China, but in the spirit of not missing a single prompt, today I'll very quickly talk about my favorite system.

When it comes down to it, D&D5E is the best system for me warts and all. It's easy to play without being overly simplistic. There is a huge user base, so with a little looking you can usually find a group to play with. Since most people are familiar with the system and apps like D&D Beyond make character creation easy, it usually doesn't take long to get right to playing. Even when WotC isn't producing supplements that I want, I find that 3rd parties are constantly coming up with things that I do. Almost everything I like to play runs on the 5E engine either directly or with tweaks.

I have to mention Runehammer Games once again. I am crazy for Index Card Roleplaying Game which is stand alone, but also lets you plug several gimmicks in to make 5E better. Then there's D&D Hardcore Mode which makes 5E feel a little more oldskool.

There is a new product coming from Runehammer Games--which just partnered with Modiphius for distribution--called Viking Death Squad. It is a stand alone game with nothing to do with D&D as such but I can't wait to play it because the art and ideas from Runehammer have been great so far.

https://www.modiphius.net/collections/new-arrivals-1/products/viking-death-squad

#RPGaDAY2021:Day 28--DELVE

 #RPGaDAY2021 for day 28 I rolled a '4' and got 'Delve'.

From a quick Google search I get this:

"What does it mean to delve deeper?

to examine something carefully in order to discover more information about someone or something:

It's not always a good idea to delve too deeply into someone's past".

Depending on one's level of sensitivity that might be good advice. Sometimes one can look back on a person's life--particularly someone we admire--and find statements they may have said or beliefs they held that would be problematic--so called--in today's society. Even more tricky is when the person is no longer with us to defend themselves or clarify their statements. Of course my hope would be--in the case of most TTRPG pioneers--that they would double-down on the "offense" and tell the snowflakes to grow a pair, but I digress.

Notwithstanding the fact that I am far more offended by what is deemed, "acceptable, normal behavior" today, than what was common in the fairly recent past, it wouldn't take too much digging to find something published or said that one doesn't agree with. That doesn't mean you need to CANCEL the past or clutch your pearls and add disclaimers to the front of everything.

We're focused on TTRPGs here, but clearly this happens with all sorts of media. I'm not sure when people became so sensitive and started "straining on the gnats while swallowing the camels" to paraphrase another book from the past that people get offended by, but it certainly wasn't that way back in the 80's and 90's.

All that rambling and preambling to say that for those who are daring enough to delve deep into the dark past of Dungeons and Dragon, you should checkout 'Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History'. No doubt it has probably been sanitized for our consumption, but there is a lot of great artwork showing how D&D evolved from past to present--including some "spicy" advertising campaigns that will probably have snowflakes demanding the book come with a warning label. I'll give one myself.

WARNING: Product was produced in 2018 and the level of WOKENESS among the professionally offended grows exponentially with each passing year. BEWARE!

Side Note: If you never watched 'Song of the South' you should rectify that at your earliest convienence. While everything is subjective to the viewer's own tastes, I find it to be a sweet and gentle movie with a lot of classic animation and humor that only the flakiest snowflakes would find offensive in the least.

RPGaDay2020--Day 27--Fraction

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 27. I rolled another '1' and got 'fraction'. I'm not going into any depth at all for my responses during these final days.

I will say that I hate all forms of math including fractions and that way back when I took the S.A.T.s it was proof. I had a natural '20' in English but a '1' for the maths.

The other things that pops into my head about 'fractions' is that in spite of all the TTRPGs I own, I only play something different than D&D 5E a small fraction of the time, and in spite of what my wife may think, I only back a small fraction of the group funded projects that I wish I could support.

RPGaDAY2021:Day23--Surprise

 #RPGaDAY2021 Day 23 and yet again I rolled a '4' which means 'surprise' is the topic.

We're 23 days in, so no doubt about it my thoughts are starting to peter out, but I always try to make at least a short comment each day even if it's only as an exercise for myself.

So, what has surprised me most about the hobby in recent years? I have to again mention the popularity of the crowd funded indy projects.

I don't back every project that I want--I'm like a kid in the candy store and my wife would file for divorce if I did--but here is final tally on the recent projects I backed:

Adventures in Oz--$187,125

Anime 5E--$608,702

HECKNA!--$653,970

Some made more than others, but each one is a huge success in my mind. My most recents happen to be running on the 5E engine, but I have backed several other successful projects that had nothing to do with D&D...and now we have this one:

Avatar Legends $6,870,567 (as of this post 10 more days to go)

This one isn't for me, but in my mind this kind of money isn't being spent on a dying hobby. It's showing me that the sky is the limit even for imaginative independent creators...especially if they can get a hold of a well-loved IP.

RPGaDay:Day 22--Substitute

 #RPGaDAY2021 Day 22:Substitute

This will be the shortest one yet. Here in no particular order are the RPG (related) activities that I enjoy: 

* Reading rulebooks and old modules

* Reading or listening to novels based on TTRPGs

* Watching TTRPG discussion or unboxing videos 

* Working on my VTT campaign

* Commenting on the hobby--just like here

* Watching streaming games

* Playing RPG style video games

* Playing non-RPG style video games

* Watching movies with RPG themes

* Playing on a VTT

* Running on a VTT

* Playing a one-off live table with strangers

* Playing a one-off live table with friends

* Collecting older RPG materials including: dice and toys

* Backing TTRPG crowd funding projects--much to the wife's chagrin. 

All of these activities and any I may have missed are fun for me and keep me in touch with the TTRPG hobby when I can't play, but each and everyone of them are just a substitute--and sometimes a poor one--for playing in a regular live table with a group of well-known, life-long friends.

RPGaDAY 2021--Day 17: Trap

 #RPGaDAY2021 Day 17. Rolling a '1' again today for the prompt 'Trap'. We'll go more for stars than mud today, but it won't be a long one.

I find that traps as a game mechanic are very often more deadly than the combat. Quite often the trap doesn't have to meet a number to hit a character. Either the damage is automatic or else it requires the character to roll a save to avoid or lessen the damage.

As far as D&D goes, traps have certainly lost some of their punch over the years. There seemed to be a lot more save vs. death traps in the older editions. Although I never played in an original D&D game, it seems like characters needed to use a 10ft pole a lot more than they do today. It might have been fun for players at the time, but I think I like the passive perception mechanic more than constantly saying 'check for traps' every few steps. One thing is for sure, no matter how good the roll seems to be the DM will always answer 'you don't find any traps'. Some funny and inventive traps came out of the Grimtooth's series.

RPGaDAY--DAY 16--Villain

#RPGaDAY2021 I rolled a 3 which means today's word is villain.

I'm sure this is a predictable response for those who have been following my comments this year.

A lot of well-meaning SJWs--if that isn't a complete contradiction in terms--may have started out as or were at least close to being heroes. They fought to bring people to the hobby. There were arguably real issues with women and the now popularly called POCs not feeling welcome at the table. With each passing year these "marginalized" people became more and more accepted into the TTRPG community such that is. Even to this day at peak popularity, TTRPGs are realatively small potatoes in the world of entertainment, so If these newly minted hobbyists were there to play the game and leave the politics at home, then most groups would be glad to have them. In other words, even the oldskool fans were willing to show tolerance--in the traditional sense of the word--to new players of every stripe. The more the merrier.

But somewhere along the line, rather than letting gaming be gaming, many of those same SJWs are by their own words pushing the original TTRPG fanbase away from the table. They don't want tolerance, they want celebration and anyone--player or gaming company--unwilling to 'take the knee' gets called a 'phobe' or an 'ist' and gets 'cancelled'. I can speak and write as I like, but I'm not trying to sell a product to anybody. It seems for the producers of TTRPGs if you don't bend over backward to appease the vocal minority WOKE crowd you'll never prosper. 

RPGaDAY2021:Day 12--Think

 For #RPGaDAY2021 and day 12 I rolled a '1' and thus the topic is 'think'.

If everything is more or less going well for you, you have the luxury of spending free-time thinking about subjects like the state of TTRPGs.

It should be well documented for those reading my entries, that I'm not happy with the WOKE direction the mainstream wing of gaming is headed. I fight in the culture wars on the social media battlefield waving the flag of traditional conservative gamers who want gaming to remain fantasy and keep identity politics or politics of any kind for that matter out of it--but I can only do that because I'm in a position to do so. If I were thinking about where my next meal was going to come from or whether or not there was a roof over my head, the fact that soyboys have D&D prom gender fluid edition heading toward the market wouldn't even be on my radar. The question becomes then, should it be on my radar now? It's not as though I'm forced to buy the thing and there are more than enough legacy products and OSR clones of such to keep one busy for a lifetime. I think that's something I should really think about.

RPGaDAY2021: Day 10--Light

 #RPGaDAY2021 it's day 10 and I rolled a '3' which makes today's topic 'light'.

A part of the fun of doing these entries is just to see if I can come up with something to say for 31 straight days. Today is going to be one of those writer's block days with the 'light' topic. All I can really think of is 'Rules-Light' and how I prefer that style of game to the more "crunchy" games of yesteryear. I think a lot of it has to do with the availability of free-time.

I enjoy reading new systems and even creating characters and scenarios for games that I'm very unlikely to even get the chance to play. I'm sure a lot of you do the same since I'm preaching to the choir, but most people just don't have that much time to engage in the hobby. Rules-light systems are easier to get into and a lot easier to explain to players who may not purchase or read the game rules. Almost all modern games are heading in this direction or at the very least provide a 'quick start' version. I would argue that D&D 5E on the whole is fairly rules-light already, but I really like what was done with Index Card Roleplaying Game. It shifts a lot of things around and even adds a mechanic or two, but overall it streamlines 5E like nobody's business. I'd also mention the starter sets/beginner's boxes for Cyberpunk:RED and Pathfinder (haven't played the 2E BB yet, but I'm sure it's good) are in my opinion good enough to keep playing without expanding to the full-rules sets especially for the casual players.

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RPGaDAY 2021: Day 9--Percentage

 Day 9 #RPGaDAY2021...yet another '4' and today's topic shall be Percentage. I can't resist doing this one so:

TRIGGER WARNING!!!

It is well-documented in the culture wars that a certain vocal demographic has demanded and unfortunately, brought about changes to various hobbies and pop-culture IPs including TTRPGs--and old timers like me aren't happy about it. From my perspective these WOKE, pandering companies are bending over backwards to please what is estimated at roughly 5.6% of the U.S. population. Keep in mind that far, far less than that have even a passing interest in TTRPGs, so why all the virtue signaling for such a small group of people often at the expense of the existing fanbase? I can't answer that, but I want to give some more facts and percentages that Wizards of the Woke and Panderizo may want to think about.

<from this article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130604134550-284615-15-statistics-that-should-change-the-business-world-but-haven-t

* The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20% – Marketing Metrics.

*For every customer complaint there are 26 other unhappy customers who have remained silent –Lee Resource.

*A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10% – Leading on the Edge of Chaos, Emmet Murphy & Mark Murphy.

* A dissatisfied customer will tell between 9-15 people about their experience. Around 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people. – White House Office of Consumer Affairs.

*A 5% reduction in the customer defection rate can increase profits by 5 – 95% – Bain & Company.

*It costs 6–7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one – Bain & Company.

*eCommerce spending for new customers is on average $24.50, compared to $52.50 for repeat customers – McKinsey.

*96% of unhappy customers don’t complain, however 91% of those will simply leave and never come back – 1Financial Training services.

So, what's the take away if that was TLTR? Companies should want to expand their audience, but not at the expense of the audience that actually..you know...buys their products. D&D in specific and TTRPGs in general are probably more popular than they've ever been, but are all the new SJW types lifers or are they as flighty as I perceive them to be? As for me...

RPGaDAY2021: DAY 7: Engage

 #RPGaDAY2021 Not believing it, but I rolled yet another '4'...starting to think Roll20 isn't randomizing properly. At any rate that makes today's topic 'Engage'.

I guess with that prompt the question is how do you engage a player if you're running things, and what is it that engages you as a participant. I think the answer will vary for everyone, but for me whether I'm running the game or playing in it--and I really should practice what I preach more often--explaining the lore in too much detail is a recipe to lose engagement.

As and example I'll tell you a bit about a short 5E campaign I was able to play in a couple of months ago. Now, the DM didn't go into too much detail with the set-up just stating that we were in a party traveling through the woods to a town and that we soon found ourselves right in the middle of a murder investigation. Bam! we're hooked, and the rest of the campaign was just the party solving the murder. No need to know where we were in Faerun or if we were even there at all. No need to know which forest we came from or where to find the town on the map or its geopolitical situation as it wasn't that kind of campaign.

From a player's perspective--and this was a random Roll 20 pick up game BTW--I didn't need to write pages of backstory for my girl. In the creation phase, I mentioned that the generic town we were visiting happened to be my character's former hometown, and the DM just ran with that. My girl knew far more than I did as a player and certainly more than the other characters, but it all worked out wonderfully and details about the characters and even the town did emerge as we played It was one of the best experiences I've had bar none--but especially good for a random online deal.

So, my opinion keep the player engaged by giving them the steak and not focusing so much time on the sizzle.

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