Tabletop & Board Games

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Mongrel
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Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jan 23, 2014 2:42 am

Right then, bland and inoffensive thread titles it is.

Anyway, looks like things at Games Workshop front may in fact be worse than imagined.

http://careers.games-workshop.com/2014/ ... ingham-uk/
We are looking for someone to spend the next two years turning over every – and we mean every – stone to find opportunities for how we can improve the customer experience in our stores and recommend the ones that will work. We aren’t talking about incremental improvements; we want to completely re-imagine what it is like for people coming into our stores, engaging with and buying our wonderful miniatures.

Emphasis theirs.


If this doesn't smell of incredible desperation - not to mention total cluelessness - then I dunno what does.

I mean, what publically-traded company loses 25% of stock value in 12 hours and then puts an ad in the paper the next day asking "Can someone please come and tell us what we're doing wrong?"
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Büge
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Büge » Thu Jan 23, 2014 12:35 pm

Mongrel wrote:If this doesn't smell of incredible desperation - not to mention total cluelessness - then I dunno what does.

I mean, what publically-traded company loses 25% of stock value in 12 hours and then puts an ad in the paper the next day asking "Can someone please come and tell us what we're doing wrong?"


So, the board of directors have completely lost touch with what made the game successful?
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jan 23, 2014 12:40 pm

THAT we already knew about.

In other frightening news, apparently GW destroys molds once they stop producing a figure D:
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Büge
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Büge » Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:17 pm

They also destroy unsold figures by melting them down.

RIP, Sisters of Battle
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jan 23, 2014 2:02 pm

They still sell the Sisters of Battle.

For now.
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Z%rø » Sun Jan 26, 2014 1:18 am

I'm attempting to learn a few new systems in order to run a modern setting game with a potential side of Scifi and horror. Currently up on the theoretical drawing board is Nemesis. It uses ORE (One Roll Engine) which is a very interesting system, but it seems to suffer from almost too much randomization without an easy way to correct.

It runs off of dice pools, specifically, d10 dicepools and you're looking for matches.

Say you're trying to drive a car in the middle of a chase. That's a static check, and you'd roll your Coordination + Driving [Car] skill. Lets say thats.. 3d + 3d? So you roll 6d10. You would then look for pairs. Lets say its.. 6 2 4 6 5 10. Your success is a 2x6. The Width is 2, and the height is 6. The width (generally) determines the speed, and the height determines the level of success. It's pretty straightforward like that!

Combat gets a bit more complex. Too much so for me to explain here, but basically it becomes DAMAGExLOCATION in the pairs. The same roll as before would be 2 damage to Right arm. (And of that, there's shock/lethal, as well as armor to take into account..)

I don't know. I'll probably end up running this system, because it's interesting, but I'm still looking for a good modern system.
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Bal » Sun Jan 26, 2014 7:11 am

Modern systems that don't incorporate some kind of "modern supernatural" setting tend to be ass. Basically because in the real world people die really easily, and in the modern world you are likely to get fucking shot. Even in a relatively realistic medieval setting you can justify party members wearing armor that can legitimately repel, to a point, the weapons of the day, but in a modern setting that's just not the case. Even people in military and police forces require special gear to stop anything bigger than a handgun.

Every system I've seen that is meant to be used for a modern setting has had an unacceptable level of jank to it.

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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Z%rø » Sun Jan 26, 2014 9:37 pm

So Mongrel what's the drama surrounding these MTG Counterfeits I'm hearing about now? I was linked to a youtube video offhand, but I couldn't stand to listen to some guy go on for literally 20-30 minutes about POSTED PICTURES and WIZARDS LEGAL OMG. (MTG Lion was the guy.)
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby zaratustra » Sun Jan 26, 2014 10:56 pm

Bal wrote:Modern systems that don't incorporate some kind of "modern supernatural" setting tend to be apple. Basically because in the real world people die really easily, and in the modern world you are likely to get fucking shot. Even in a relatively realistic medieval setting you can justify party members wearing armor that can legitimately repel, to a point, the weapons of the day, but in a modern setting that's just not the case. Even people in military and police forces require special gear to stop anything bigger than a handgun.

Every system I've seen that is meant to be used for a modern setting has had an unacceptable level of jank to it.


Well, that's what you get when you make combat the primary activity of your system. Yes, people die if shot, but realistically they aren't shot at very often.

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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jan 26, 2014 10:58 pm

Ziiro wrote:So Mongrel what's the drama surrounding these MTG Counterfeits I'm hearing about now? I was linked to a youtube video offhand, but I couldn't stand to listen to some guy go on for literally 20-30 minutes about POSTED PICTURES and WIZARDS LEGAL OMG. (MTG Lion was the guy.)


Any extended discussion should probably be in our shiny new MTG thread, but the short version is that a Chinese seller was openly selling mass-printings (thousands of cards) of excellent-quality counterfeits on a major Chinese online retailer (alibaba). This was a print-on-demand system where customers request a group of 50 cards of their choosing and they print as many copies as you like (minimum 50 per card). The sales were removed, but it's possibly only a matter of time before they return.

The cards themselves are still identifiable as fakes because of a few key errors: over-round corners, bad text kerning, etc. But they pass a number of crucial tests people rely on to identify counterfeits - blue layer, light opacity, bend test, etc. The remaining issues are actually very fixable.

One guy who claimed he was one of counterfeiters even put up a video saying how they were following the online discussion to identify and fix their mistakes.

For years I've said that the high price of MTG singles was begging for a resourceful counterfeiter, possibly even linked to organized crime, to swoop in and make money. It's extremely low-risk (you're breaking copyright and trademark law, not counterfeiting laws), it's very easy to move product, you have a ready international market, and it has the potential to be extremely lucrative. But I never imagined it would be on such a massive scale or so blatant.

For now there's a lull, but the worst-case scenario involves a total collapse in the MTG singles market. Wizards is introducing foil stamps for rares and mythics starting in M15, but that may not slow anyone down. The next year should be very interesting.

My own views are that Wizards have brought this on themselves by being so stingy with their ridiculously tight-fisted reprint policies, which have resulted in all-time highs for average singles prices. I understand that there are decent reasons for it, such as to support retailers and drive new product sales when they do offer drips and drabs, but that's essentially short-term thinking. If undetectable counterfeiting ever takes off, there's no going back. They will be flat-out screwed with no real defence. They needed to disincentivize counterfeiting in as many ways as possible and removing or reducing the financial incentive is the single biggest tool they have to do so.
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Bal » Sun Jan 26, 2014 11:26 pm

zaratustra wrote:
Bal wrote:Modern systems that don't incorporate some kind of "modern supernatural" setting tend to be apple. Basically because in the real world people die really easily, and in the modern world you are likely to get fucking shot. Even in a relatively realistic medieval setting you can justify party members wearing armor that can legitimately repel, to a point, the weapons of the day, but in a modern setting that's just not the case. Even people in military and police forces require special gear to stop anything bigger than a handgun.

Every system I've seen that is meant to be used for a modern setting has had an unacceptable level of jank to it.


Well, that's what you get when you make combat the primary activity of your system. Yes, people die if shot, but realistically they aren't shot at very often.


Yeah, obviously if you run a non-combat focused or driven campaign you won't run in to very much combat, but that's true of any setting. Every system needs to have some kind of combat resolution in it, even if that's not the focus of the system, and modern settings provide the most headaches in that department in my experience.

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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mazian » Sun Jan 26, 2014 11:43 pm

Mongrel wrote:For now there's a lull, but the worst-case scenario involves a total collapse in the MTG singles market. Wizards is introducing foil stamps for rares and mythics starting in M15, but that may not slow anyone down.


I haven't been a MtG player in a long time, but isn't the real money in the much older cards anyhow? I did sell off the last of my collection barely a year and a half ago, and made a month's rent from RV dual lands alone – and the prices the buyer was offering for the original Power Nine made even those look cheap. Can't exactly retrofit those with foil stamps.

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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:46 am

Mazian wrote:
Mongrel wrote:For now there's a lull, but the worst-case scenario involves a total collapse in the MTG singles market. Wizards is introducing foil stamps for rares and mythics starting in M15, but that may not slow anyone down.


I haven't been a MtG player in a long time, but isn't the real money in the much older cards anyhow? I did sell off the last of my collection barely a year and a half ago, and made a month's rent from RV dual lands alone – and the prices the buyer was offering for the original Power Nine made even those look cheap. Can't exactly retrofit those with foil stamps.

Yep. It's Legacy and Modern cards that are the big problem - though Standard cards have high value too these days and who scrutinizes Standard cards for counterfeits?

The real problem is Modern.

Let's say the MTG market craters due to a total loss of confidence in the cards. Let's also say that Wizards is able to develop cards that are much harder to counterfeit (unlikely, but not impossible). Wizards then has the nuclear option of saving MTG by forcing all sanctioned tournaments to only allow "secure" cards - all old cards would be effectively banned from sanctioned tournaments of any sort.

In Standard, this is no problem. Standard will become de facto "secure" in only two years after these cards are introduced by default due to it's relatively fast rotation and short lifespan. Similarly, this would be a non-issue for Limited.

Older formats are a problem.

For Legacy, Wizards has two options, both of which are pretty shitty but not fatal. One, they could break the Reserved list on the basis that counterfeiting has already destroyed the market (they will not move to a system of "secure cards only" unless the market has already been severely damaged), thus negating the main legal argument preserving the List. or, as is more likely, they may have to abandon Legacy as a sanctioned format, sending it adrift like a plague ship cut from it's moorings. The latter is the more likely of the two, I think. Wizards themselves already only have two major tournaments per year for Legacy (though SCG and other third-parties have many events) and there's always the rumour that Wizards eventually plans to do that anyway to just focus on Modern, where they are unaffected by reprint restrictions.

But Modern, man, they can't abandon Modern. They would have to institute massive reprint programs if they want it to be secure cards only. Even if they only reprinted rares and Mythics, that's still a vast amount of cards. Or they could allow "old" unsecure cards for Modern events only, while still facing a destroyed Modern market. It's really hard to say what would happen.

__________________

Also: Can a mod please move the MTG posts to the MTG thread? Thanks.
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Tue Mar 25, 2014 9:52 pm

Tyranids army reskinned as a Lovecraftian horror show: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthrea ... n-Tyranids

Highlights include a truck full of madmen

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The Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred riding a Byakhee

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Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos

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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Büge » Tue Mar 25, 2014 10:27 pm

Mongrel wrote:a truck full of madmen


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"Come on, we just wanna eat your skin!"
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby zaratustra » Wed Mar 26, 2014 10:07 am

Demon: The Descent is the latest book from White Wolf. You can read nearly the entire thing from the link on the kickstarter page:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/20 ... ge-edition

It develops on the God-Machine Chronicles setting that came... last year? Anyway, it's about God as a Lovecraftian-SCP thing that drives the human masses to power its own unknown designs and maintain the status quo as per standard WoD antagonist protocol. The angels and demons (which are still fallen angels, but now because they have gained a 'glitch' known as free will) are usually human-robot-things; it's a bit disappointing that you're basically still humanoid, and can't just be, like, a tower of gears and light extending into the heavens that fires fucking lasers.

A lot of play goes around maintaining Cover: You have an artificial life that keeps you from the God-Machine's eyes (home, car and even children appearing from nowhere when you Fall into the world). Demonic pacts are built into the lore at this point: you can actually buy someone's marriage, Quesada-style, so that your Cover now is married to someone and the other poor sap isn't.

The powers (called Embeds and Exploits) suffer from Promethean-itis that they're very minor niche abilities: float dots from one attribute to the other, produce objects from nowhere, compel people, etc. If you discover the four Embeds that compose your character's secret Cypher, you gain a bigger combined power.

Overall, an interesting concept, but that doesn't want to really fly with the idea of demons as alien reality-hackers.

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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Sat Mar 29, 2014 1:10 am

A story from a Swede I know:

In my youth, I had to paint half my army for a tourney the night before the start. However, our club has this rather silly tradition of hosting a great "drink as much as you can until you throw up"-parties before this particular party. So, being young and easily seduced into sinful behaviour, half my army was painted in a horrible daze. To make the whole thing sparkle of superb workmanship, my even more intoxicated mates decided to base some minis for me.

And when we ran out of static grass, one tried the theory of cutting of pubic hairs and painting it green. Since it looked so good at the time, about 20 or so miniatures had that special version of static grass.


Somewhere out there, those minis lurk still...

EDIT:

He updated with this further reply:

I shouldn't mention that this is sort of a tradition? At least two armies, with the static grass au natural, has won best painted on the biggest tourney...
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Lottel » Fri Jul 04, 2014 2:17 am

The latest edition of Dungeons and Dragons is now sort of out. The basic rules are free for download at the WotC site. A "basic rulebook" of 110 pages. The PHB comes out on the 15th and the DMG like in August? Shits weird for that.

But hey. Free rules.
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Classic » Fri Jul 04, 2014 12:03 pm

I haven't played pen and paper d20 since 2nd ed, and haven't played computer RPGs with rules past 3.5 (and even those were... dicey (on accuracy)).
A long time ago, someone bottom-lined 4th to me as diablo-ifying the genre and kind of flattening out classes. e.g. If you want to be a buff-slinger or have AoE damage, you no longer have to be a wizard or cleric, you can get those kinds of powers from other classes. And you have MP in the form of surges.
They also dropped vancian magic???
Is all that... mostly accurate?

Could someone bottom-line the new set for me?

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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Lottel » Fri Jul 04, 2014 1:25 pm

I've not been able to take a peek at the new rules as I've been preoccupied with other stuff but my good friend who I trust on matters of tabletop gaming summed it up as "Remaking the older games with sleeker modern rules" The free rule set doesn't have feats or a lot of other things, so it'll be hard to get a great summary until all the books come out.
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