Tuesday, September 19, 2023

The Culture: This Is Why You Do Proper Product Development

What does an incompetent rules manual look like? This.

If you need to dig through a stack of books over a yard high if stacked together to find one half-assed suggestion that you have to squint at to find a useable procedure, then you have an incompetent technical manual for a hobby game product. It is unfit for purpose, and ought to be either fixed to become fit or replaced with something that is.

This example is another Palladium dunk, but there are plenty of other examples past and present that are just as bad that still got published by other parties.

Sooner or later, you get sick of doing the designer and publisher's job for them just to get a machine that works. People expect that what they buy Just Fucking Works; if it's not a literal Turnkey thing it's dogshit and should not be tolerated.

Stop giving money to people that disrespect you like this.

1 comment:

  1. I'd say that there are two RPG's that should be looked at if you are so inclined:

    The Dark Eye - Germany (english translation)
    Sword World - Japan (fan translations only)

    Both have consistently beat out D&D in their native markets once TSR didn't resume translations of new material, and the native product was able to effectively assume first-mover status.

    To date D&D has not been unable to unseat them in their home markets, as big as it is in other parts of the world.

    It'd be interesting to compare and contrast the rules sets.

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