I am a player and lover of Dungeon World waiting patiently for Inglorious. Sage-Kobold seems to have developed a “go do it yourself” attitude about a lot of things. Which is not fair considering they did not just make DW for themselves, it is a rule set sold to people, it should work as advertised. Which was as a complete game. It says something when a free rules guide had to be made just so that RPers could use the book. Fans should not be accused of being lazy or pedantic when they are clamoring for more guidance or having trouble adjudicating fictional disputes with the current rules. (Like PvP.) And this attitude is sadder still because they received a lot of money do make these products. It doesn’t take years to make these things, it takes a little dedication.
I am a player and lover of Dungeon World waiting patiently for Inglorious.
I am a player and lover of Dungeon World waiting patiently for Inglorious.
Wat
Yeah, DW is a complete game.
This is in reference to the final two stretch goals from the 2012 Kickstarter. The last update (in regards to this) was Sep. 2014. Here’s a bit of it:
“First the important bit: we have a completed draft of Inglorious that’s undergoing our first developmental edits this weekend. Once we make sure that the structure isn’t changing too much we’ll order art. The first complete preview will probably be available in the next few weeks.
Juntu’s completely written and just needs layout.
Why are these taking so long? Because we want to give you the best stuff possible. Since these are PDFs we can deliver at any time, so we want to deliver them when they’re ready, not just to tick them off our list.”
I don’t see the problems with the game that Sir Savage does, but I can understand his feelings about Inglorious. The KS was funded in June of 2012. We are now 3.5 years out and there doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency to deliver the remaining bits promised. That seems negligent.
Sir Savage you will have to comes with some references when you.make accusations like that.
They delivered the main part of their Kickstater and is working on the rest, Can’t see the problem.
The last update can find is from September 2015: “Anibal: Not yet, but soon! Both are completely laid out and we’ve got most of the art for Juntu. We’ll probably tweak some things in Inglorious. In both cases, we want to make them perfect, not hit an arbitrary date. Our backers will be the first to hear when they’re ready.”
I am with Sir Savage. Ehi, how easy is to say “Stay calm, we are aiming at the Perfect Book, so wait for it”… And say it EVERY passed year. I know other people doing the same thing (Pirate Worlds or The Sprawl, anyone?), and they are taking their good dose of blames, scoldings, and update requests. So, no different treatment, for Adam and Sage.
Except it’s just an extra. The main game is out, functional, and great.
Andrea Parducci sure we have to keep fire going under Adam and Sage.
But what Sir Savage is claming is way out of line without some evidence or references.
Making a good product takes time, I can understand your frustrated it is not out yet, but that’s how it goes sometimes, when your not a big publisher.
Hell just look a G.R.R.Martins publishing record 😃
So, I think this post is conflating three things:
– a stretch goal not being delivered
– Putting out a complete game
– a general attitude of not pushing out many supplements and instead encouraging hacking and fan-made work.
The first is regrettable, and criticism is totally understandable.
However, accusing Sage and Adam of not putting out a complete game is unfair, as DW is complete and functional in and of itself (I agree PvP is clumsy. DW is also very explicitly a party-oriented game, where PvP is understood not to be the focus). Also, the choice of not putting out many supplements, in general, is completely understandable and legitimate.
PvP is and always will be clumsy in any tabletop RPG. Board games and CRPGs have the luxury of airtight rules. RPGs are evolving fictions and conversations. PvP requires two mature people who want something cool to happen and aren’t worried about their characters.
A bold and kind of indefensible accusation you have put forward there, I’d say. I have been playing for the last year and it works fine so far. Nothing incomplete that I know of, but maybe if you ask about any rules clarifications or pieces you feel are missing, people here could help you out?
There are also several supplements for purchase that are not Sage-Kobold but are available right now and make interesting reading.
Hope that helps.
As Alberto said, the OP is conflating various things.
The whole part about Inglorious is fully legit.
Also, Juntu’s Iced Hell or something similar. I found 2013 messages here asking for news.
Ray Otus I don’t have personal experience here, but from what I have heard other PbtA games have more robust mechanics for dealing with pvp conflicts. DW is unique among PbtA games in that it assumes the players are generally working toward the same goal. I don’t think that makes it incomplete by any means, but I could see how someone could come in with an expectation of something more competitive.
Side note: me too have no problems with PvP in D.W. When it happens (rarely) I use the standard rules (so, quite different from standard RpGs, but not so weird for D.W.). I absolutely love D.W., while even I have some issue and preferences (i.e. I fairly hate the Druid main mechanic).
I backed the Dungeon World Kickstarter more than most. I am totally unconcerned with any of the things Sir Savage is talking about.
Sorry, I remove this post. Useless ranting.
Andrea Parducci may I point out, with the greatest of respect, Kickstarter is not a shop. You are paying to develop a product, not purchase one or a service.
I paid $40 to back an RPG and got nothing. Dungeon World cost me $10 for a year+ of entertainment.
Some investments pay out and some do not.
Paul Ooshun and with the same respect, I don’t subscribe your point of view. When I go for a Kickstarter, I know 2 things:
– I’m expecting to have the products that the Kickstarter’s creator is trying to create (and he’s trying to selling them – yeah sell – thru that beautiful page, with captivating video, stretch goals, promises like special/limited editions, custom characters, extra stuff etc.)
– I’m paying in advance. This is great, for the author, ’cause he can forsee if that project will be a success, or a useless idea no one is interested in. I mean, it’s really a great thing! Almost no risks, for the author. He should simply be savvy enough to correctly manage those money.
I know another thing, of course:
– Projects like these, and paying in advance, it’s risky. I do it because I love this hobby, and I respect the authors that, like me (in my dearest dreams), are trying to create something for the community without the support of the “big names”. BUT, if the authors of a Kickstarter took those money, and after passed years they 1) don’t deliver ALL the products they was describing so well at the start 2) they don’t give updates (realistic, sensible, sincere updates) than I have ALL the reason to complain, rant, and pretend respect.
I’m not speaking of this specific Kickstarter, of course, I’m speaking about all the failed, abandoned, half done projects I saw these years. However, when I see (for example) Adam playing videogames for hundreds of hours (and you can count them, he’s online twitching), I understand he has other priorities.
On the contrary, if I see an author putting his not-ready files online, asking the help of the community ’cause he understands he started a project bigger than him; an author that keeps updating, that tells “sorry people I have big health problems” or a direct “Ehi, people, you know what? Screw you, I have zero will to continue the project this month, see you next month, when I regain stength”; an author that add every day 10 rows of freaking well written text, then, then I can wait. Patiently wait. Because I see honesty, in the other side.
However, in general, I (as other angry people around) learned the lesson. So now I’m very choosy with the kickstarters, while I’m sorry and sad for the humble, honest authors still out there. I prefer to wait for the finished products. If I can, I try to read them before to buy them. Sure, I became more “heartless”, because I feel that the Kickstarter is a great way to have money first and lower risks, not a way for disorganized bunglers to gain extra bucks for their other beloved hobbies.
Andrea Parducci – this is OT, and maybe we shouldn’t continue down this road.
However, I’ve seen many italian argue forcefully that KS is a buying or preorder service, when in fact, it’s not. It’s investment, and the website is very upfront about it.
I still believe that KS authors should fulfill their obligations, of course. But getting the two models confused doesn’t help.
Kickstarter isn’t a buying or preorder service, but it isn’t an “investment” either. Kickstarter is merely a risk transfer machine, where backers can help creators out by taking the risk of creation onto themselves. You are in no way an investor; that is something else.
I’ve backed over 600 kickstarters. I’m not an “investor” in any of them.
Well, Alberto Muti, I read REALLY well the FAQ section in the Kickstarter site, a few times. And I feel I have a good grasp of the whole thing enough. As I said, I well know about the risks, and that this isn’t a “pre-order service”, however, there I keep reading that creators have to be honest, that they have to share regular updates with bakers, that a project has to be clearly defined, with deadlines etc.
For example the part called “
What should creators do if they’re having problems completing their project?”
and ” What is a creator obligated to do once their project is funded?”
I read that authors should find good solutions WITH the bakers, if big problems arise (side note: including, eventually, refunds).
I’d love more people reading that FAQs.
Of course, sometime they write something about “helping the creators to bring their dreams to reality” and similar phrases, but that is the core part: bring something to reality, not “paying for hoping for a complete project with no updates for months, no deadlines, and no transparency at all”.
So, staying In Topic, what Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel can do in the specific, after reading the FAQs, to stay in touch with their bakers, to explain the situations, to give a definite project, to set deadlines, etc.? I’m positive and curious about that, I’d love to hear their voices. You know, that surely will be better than nothing for years / months, and then a sporadic “we are almost here, we are making the perfect product / layout”.
(final note: I’m trying to stay respectful and kind and passionate, like every good Italian, and English is not my first language, so please take no offense from my words. I’m trying to describe a situation, not doing blind attacks).
This is mostly on me. In typical Kickstarter fashion I’ve had more and more things eat up my time (most recently a new kid), and it means I don’t make stuff at nearly the rate I did.
Juntu is literally just art left at this point, so I’ll see about posting it tomorrow, minus the final art order. Inglorious’s monsters are being tidied up, but I appreciate how delayed they’ve been, so let me see how quickly I can churn through them.
In general, promising future work was the stupidest thing we did for the Kickstarter. DW itself happened in the time it did due to lots of factors, like our jobs, that changed soon after.
I’d also like to point out that we established our final two deliverables as PDFs specifically tonallow ourselves as much time as we needed. We’ve delivered every part of the original Kickstarter, the only remaining items are expansions.
Thanks Sage for the reply. I think this is a good, and honest, start.
slightly off-topic question… any chance to acquire (buy) these PDFs for those who didn’t know of the kickstarter gig but were conquered by DW later…?
Matteo Casali yep, of course, we’ll make them available somehow.
Sage LaTorra having a child is like having a second job in terms of the time it takes up, and I think quite a few new parents seriously underestimate the impact on free time. I’m hoping you’ll get around to publishing these some day and I’ll pick them up when you do. Don’t feel pressured, and thanks for replying.
Okay, to Sir Savage’s points:
“I am a player and lover of Dungeon World waiting patiently for Inglorious. Sage-Kobold seems to have developed a “go do it yourself” attitude about a lot of things.”
This part I actually agree with! We wanted to make a framework for people to make their own stuff with, and went to some lengths to make sure that that was as easy as possible (including making the whole text of the game Creative Commons licensed).
And, from my point of view, it’s worked. We see lots of people making great stuff, from the high quality published content (Perilous Wilds, Angelkite, Class Warfare) to all the little fan-made classes and projects. It’s wonderful! Adam and I shouldn’t be the source of all things Dungeon World.
“Which is not fair considering they did not just make DW for themselves, it is a rule set sold to people, it should work as advertised.”
I’m not sure what part of anything doesn’t work as advertised? If there’s something we didn’t make clear or presented badly I’d be happy to clarify.
“Which was as a complete game.”
I feel DW is totally complete and that the rules speak for themselves.
“It says something when a free rules guide had to be made just so that RPers could use the book.”
Yes, it does, but I don’t think it says what you think it says.
First off, I’ve grown to really dislike the Guide in a lot of ways, because it gives this impression that the book is incomplete. If we’d read the Guide and thought it was necessary reading, we would have added its content to one of our several subsequent printings (a few extra pages would have done basically nothing to the cost of the book, and I’m sure the authors would have been amenable). We made the mistake early on of promoting the guide, which gave the idea that it was required. It’s not. It’s more like one of those articles on “How To Take Your Game To The Next Level” or whatever: a useful tool if you’re looking for it, but not required.
The reason the guide exists, IMO, is that a lot of people come to DW expecting certain things to work like in specific other games, and then they don’t it sometimes requires a larger explanation. This is something we had to balance really carefully when writing the book, because every extra paragraph for people in this category is a paragraph where the people who already get it have their eyes glaze over a bit more. We erred on the side of trying to say things once and clearly, which leaves room for documents like The Guide that help people from some gaming backgrounds figure it out.
“Fans should not be accused of being lazy or pedantic when they are clamoring for more guidance or having trouble adjudicating fictional disputes with the current rules.”
I don’t recall ever calling anyone lazy or pedantic, and I’m sorry for anything I did that gave that impression.
“(Like PvP.)”
I should talk about PvP again somewhere, maybe in the Tavern. We didn’t spend a lot of time on PvP because it’s not the focus of the game, and writing about it tended to steer people towards it. For us it was kind of like talking about rules for courtly dancing in Moldvay: there’s probably some case where yeah it’ll be important, but it isn’t worth dedicating part of the book to it because then everyone is going to think they need courtly dancing in their games.
“And this attitude is sadder still because they received a lot of money do make these products. It doesn’t take years to make these things, it takes a little dedication”
We did get a lot of money, and thanks to everyone for that! But none of the things you seem to be concerned about completing the game are in our remaining stretch goals (an adventure and a topical supplement).
Getting these done does take dedication, and we may be somewhat lacking in that, but the bigger shift is in Adam and my lives. We went from both having jobs where we could literally email with each other for most of the day, just working on DW stuff, to having real responsibility. And on top of that my home life has changed a lot, eating into my time.
Promising future work from a Kickstarter is a bad idea, and I wish we hadn’t done it. But we did make sure that these last items are just bonuses, and that they’re PDFs, so we can deliver them any time without much set up. While this is a huge benefit, it also makes us more likely to tinker with them endlessly, which is a problem. We have Juntu absolutely complete except for placeholder art, and I intent to talk to Adam, Jason, and Marshall about releasing the current non-art-complete version so that people can at least see what we’ve done.
But even these don’t address what you feel are some of the failings of the game itself, which I’d love to hear more about.
Speaking of Juntu, we just for this awesome piece by Isaac Milner right before Christmas, and I dropped it into layout today: https://plus.google.com/u/3/+Dungeonworldrpg/posts/WbSBJTgSo5S
Wow I expected a lot of heat for this but not so many well thought out, well written, and respectful comments. Thank you to all who did that. I certainly did conflate a few things.
First, the incompleteness complaint comes from misconceptions about the role of the guide, that Sage has cleared up. Also I’m beginning to see that DW was never intended to be as robust mechanically as many other RPGs.
Secondly the “go do it yourself” attitude is mostly in reference to the Immolator Class and conversations I have seen here and on blogs elsewhere between the creators and fans. (http://daegames.blogspot.com/2015/03/giving-immolator-cold-shoulder.html) When people have argued that the Immolator is broken or incomplete the responses I saw seemed to be telling the fans to hack/fix it themselves. Aside from the fact that the Immolator doesn’t fit with the old school revival theme of the rest of the book (I believe the Monk was a fairly common homebrew/custom class back in the day, more common than the barbarian even.) I digress–the class should have more moves that work better.
And thirdly, Inglorious and Juntu. Those commenting here seem to think I was mistaken and that these things were not part of the original kickstarter. I apologize if I was mistaken about Inglorious. But, although I agree with people about kickstarter being a place to invest, I feel receiving 10x the capital investment asked for pushes the transaction from an investment to a purchase. Glad to see Juntu being pushed out. And if Inglorious was never part of the kickstarter then I guess I have egg on my face.
Thanks for your responses Sage. I appreciate it a lot.
re: the Immolator
My comments there are in line with my general stance on people making their own stuff. I think the Immolator, as it stands, is a great class. The person who wrote that post… has a lot of baggage on the whole thing, and was maybe hoping for a different class? I don’t know.
The person who wrote that post just has a different opinion on the class, and I didn’t want to drive-by their blog with comments on why we think the class should stay as-is, but here are responses to why it’s not changing.
The Stats
Yes, this class requires a lot of stats, because it’s a class about burning yourself up. If you could handle your flaming soul with just a couple of good stats it wouldn’t be much of a fire to play with. It’s meant to be a class that is a stretch, that eats you up, that requires you to use it’s other (cool) moves to compensate for the things the fire requires of you.
The Salamander
I guess the author wants this spelled out, which we just won’t do. What a salamander means depends on how you want to read it, just like elf and dwarf and halfling and all the rest.
The Human
It doesn’t get rid of debilities, because that’d be kind of insanely powerful.
Why not more?
Because we don’t think dwarves are firey? They’re stone and beer, not flame and blood.
Burning Brand
I’m leaning towards this person never having played this class, because this move kicks ass. Being able to walk around un-armed can make you a better spy than the thief, and a better intimidator than the wizard or fighter.
Damage really, really isn’t the point.
Pandering
sigh, I wouldn’t call this pandering, it’s our love for making DW a pop-culture stew. Off the top of my head we have moves that reference GoT, Breaking Bad, Clerks, Dune, Conan, Lieber, Star Wars… and that’s what I can recall off the top of my head.
Fictional justification
We have a lot of places where we leave the fictional justification to the specific players and GM. How does magic work? How does a paladin laying on hands look?
…and at this point I’m going to cut my loses on explaining every design decision.
Some people are going to hate anything, and in this case since I don’t agree that most of these things need to change, the best response I can see is: go make something better! Adam and I aren’t the source of truth on DW, and maybe I’m totally wrong about how and why all of these moves work. But we’ve played a lot of DW, and I like the ways we ended up with this class.
re: Inglorious and Juntu
I don’t think anybody is saying those weren’t part of the original Kickstarter, they 100% are, for sure.
They are massively delayed, yes, but they’re far from the central projects of the Kickstarter. We fully intend to do everything we set out to do, but I would say we’ve accomplished the vast majority of the Kickstarter, even many of the parts that in retrospect I kind of hate that we even tried (WHY DID WE DO PENS!?). Every physical thing has gone out, and the only remaining digital rewards are a small part of the overall game.
As far as what we’ve been doing since then (as the blogger who hates the Immolator asked): some DW stuff, a lot of overhead keeping books in print and doing taxes, some other projects, and our real life jobs.
As always Sage LaTorra your responses are eloquent and thoughtful. Thank you. And fair enough about the Immolator class being purposefully nerfed as far as stat requirements go. A friend of mine took it out for a spin and felt that their character had been useless during the adventure, because they failed first at setting a fire and then at making a weapon with their Burning Brand move. Perhaps we misunderstood the move, does rolling a 6 or less mean no weapon of flame is created? Should she have been able to set a fire without rolling? Or even when having rolled a 6?
Its like any 6, GM move. I tend to lean on “offer an opportunity with a cost” for the Immolator: they can create their brand, sure, but maybe it’s a consuming flame and when it’s gone they have to consume a ration or become Sick. Or maybe the brand is created, but the flame burns bright across the planes: it draws attention of some sort.
In general, I pretty much always let the miss still create a brand.
Thanks for the tip.