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[generic] Whatever happened to....

Neil Gow

Neil Gow

Demi-God
A thread where knowledgeable folks can update people on systems which they have fallen away from, or lost track of, or which have seemingly disappeared from the gaming zeitgeist. Triggered by me getting an announcement of the Mutants and Masterminds 4e playtest and then realising that (a) I never knew there was a 3e, and (b) I hadn't actively remembered Green Ronin exists for years.

Quick thread rules: Just be pleasant and ask in good faith. Also, answer with information, not opinions. Please don't answer 'It disappeared because its shit and no one likes it.' etc.

So to kick us off.

Whatever happened to Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

In that a few years ago you could not get moved for Lamentations modules appearing, one after the other. So many, so fast, so controversial at times. Around the same time Liminal was released I had the pleasure of being on a stall at Dragonmeet next to a mic'd up James Raggi and he seemed to be doing good business. Now I haven't heard about this game for some time, and it's thunder seems - to my untrained eye - to have been taken by Mork Borg and its ilk. So whatever happend to LotFP?
 
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Whatever happened to ... FATE?

You'd think this one would be right up my street, but next to the Green Ronin thing, this was the thought train which launched this thread idea. I was pondering as I walked along the coast, and realised that there have been no 'big' Fate releases in ages. The last one I can remember was Fate of Cthulhu. Am I wrong? Does Evil Hat still do Fate or has it just turned to Forged in the Dark and PBTA games now? What's the Fate hotness that I am forgetting?
 
Neil Gow said:
Does Evil Hat still do Fate or has it just turned to Forged in the Dark and PBTA games now?
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Fred Hicks told me that he regards FATE as a mature and fairly complete game. He doesn't seem to think that there's any need to keep putting out new stuff for it, although I strongly suspect that dwindling sales is at least an additional factor. It's a pity, as I rather liked Evil Hat's stuff.
 
Big Jack Brass said:
Fred Hicks told me that he regards FATE as a mature and fairly complete game. He doesn't seem to think that there's any need to keep putting out new stuff for it, although I strongly suspect that dwindling sales is at least an additional factor. It's a pity, as I rather liked Evil Hat's stuff.
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I think that's a pretty recursive approach - no new releases of interesting 'stuff' equals reduced interest and nothing to bring new folks in. That said, they did so much stuff for it I could completely imagine them being a bit bored with it and feeling like it's done.
 
Neil Gow said:
Whatever happened to Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

In that a few years ago you could not get moved for Lamentations modules appearing, one after the other. So many, so fast, so controversial at times. Around the same time Liminal was released I had the pleasure of being on a stall at Dragonmeet next to a mic'd up James Raggi and he seemed to be doing good business. Now I haven't heard about this game for some time, and it's thunder seems - to my untrained eye - to have been taken by Mork Borg and its ilk. So whatever happend to LotFP?
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The Zak S cancelling happened, and probably took the wind out of the sales of the OSR generally at that point, and much more pointedly with LotFP.

LotFP were working very closely with Zak and he was front and centre as their rock porn star author. As it played out, some of the lines in support of Zak that Raggi took at the time didn't help LotFP, and there was a pretty large cooling effect on the business. I believe that they went close to going under, and certainly put out some books they described as needed to succeed or it was curtains. They're still going, and I believe that they are still producing at a high standard in the same space, but I ended up killing my email subscription to their mailing list as nothing they were producing really appealed to me. Having sued the hell out of a lot of people and won, my understanding is that Zak is working with Raggi again.

There's a lot of new stuff here: https://www.lotfp.com/RPG/ and Raggi has recently posted that he will be at GenCon.
 
Starglim said:
I noted the Deryni Adventure Game last year (I think there was a d20 predecessor) and more recently: The King in Giallo , Solarpunk 2050 No purchases made though.
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The Deryni Adventure Game was originally released under FUDGE, back in 2005. I've a copy and it's done very nicely. Not seen anything on an updated edition, but if they have done that then I'd definitely give it a look.
 
Sarah Newton has Chronicles of Future Earth in the pipeline that is her FATE interpretation. The second edition of Age of Arthur from @First Age and @dr_mitch is also in development using a very similar FATE engine to Newton's book.

I was a little bit sad that the M&M 4e play test was coming since I have never got 3e to table. Then I realised I had become someone who could just not worry and run the books I own. Which includes the DC RPG using the same ruleset. I think I have been a bit put off cause the biggest superhero fan I know is @Neil Gow and I am not sure how he feels about the relatively trad RPG feel of M&M, otherwise I would have pitched a Batman game, or Daredevil.
 
Neil Gow said:
Whatever happened to ... FATE?

You'd think this one would be right up my street, but next to the Green Ronin thing, this was the thought train which launched this thread idea. I was pondering as I walked along the coast, and realised that there have been no 'big' Fate releases in ages. The last one I can remember was Fate of Cthulhu. Am I wrong? Does Evil Hat still do Fate or has it just turned to Forged in the Dark and PBTA games now? What's the Fate hotness that I am forgetting?
Click to expand...

Started this post, so I'll now finish, though @Guvnor has covered my Fate angle.

I have thought the same, that Fate has peaked and that folk have moved on. It was great fun working on Chronicles of Future Earth, which is a more recent Fate title, and I think very well done in Sarah's distinctive style, though it now looks as though the line will not be completed.

I'm looking forward to getting Age of Arthur 2nd edition out as a released book, maybe 2026 now. I think it is still recognisably Fate, though we have diverted further from the main Core branch, and picked up some ideas from Sarah's book above.

I'm not seeing any other new main titles coming out powered by Fate, so think it is on something of a 'new thing' decline, played by a core of people, but not being picked up by newbies or new games.
 
@First Age - I hoped I had left enough "space" for you to tell us more about the FATE variation you are adopting.
 
First off, thanks for the updates from everyone on my two queries. Feel free to chip in with your own!
And with that in mind...
GuyMilner said:
Whatever happened to Duty & Honour?
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So, the last time I spoke to the author, he said this:

"It's complicated. I would love to do a revision of Duty & Honour (and Beat to Quarters too) as they are very close to my heart. However, it's just not that simple.

1. I don't have the Indesign files for the game anymore, so any revision would have to be a complete rewrite. That's a LOT of work. In the first instance I would far rather revise the current text but that's not easily doable.
2. That said, as much as I adore the system, there's been a lot of game 'tech' development since 2007. There's a LOT of the DNA of D&H which is mirrored (mirrored, not copied) in Forged in the Dark style games. I've even mocked up and ran a Forged in the Dark version of Beat to Quarters and it worked. It even had the card as resolution too. But doing that would be committing to do an entire FitD game. A whole new game.
3. The world itself has changed a lot since 2007 and well, lets just say that the Bright Young Things of the gaming community are going to be a bit more gobby towards a game about heroic redcoats (agents of the colonialist British Empire etc). Similarly, there is a heated balance between historical accuracy, literary accuracy (remember, the game is not a historic sim, it's a literary sim) and progressive games design. I really cannot be arsed to deal with it all. Big turn off, when my answer will always be 'Do what the f**k you want at your table!'

The one area that has changed is that I thought I couldn't be bothered with the publishing side of things anymore, but after my adventure of Kickstarter this year, I'm far more confident I could do that stuff again.

The game is 'dead' in that it isn't on Drivethru anymore as a product you can buy. Why? Again...

1. There's some holes in the rules which I really cannot allow people to pay for.
2. There's some writing in the book - references to women and other nationalities - which while being accurate in the literary representation, have been taken almost always to be literal representations of my thoughts. Which is hilarious really, considering...

It is, however, currently still active on Lulu, as someone wanted to grab a copy, and you can have the digital files from here, for free, if you want.

D&H Bundle – Google Drive

drive.google.com drive.google.com

Never say never, but 'Network' - my Carved from Brindlewood game of high drama TV news journalism - is more likely to be finished first, should the Liminal writing ever end!"

So yeah, that's what he said....
 
I expect those files will open in Affinity Publisher. I'll have a look when I get home.
 
Neil Gow said:
Lamentations of the Flame Princess
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Whilst controversy might have powered flame wars I suspect that what happened was Mörk Borg.
 
Pual said:
Similarly I think probably PBTA did for Fate
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I'm not sure I can see that, personally. They don't seem to have a lot in common; and while I prefer Fudge to FATE, I'll play either, whereas I played Apocalypse World once and that was enough for me to avoid anything resembling it.
 
Big Jack Brass said:
I'm not sure I can see that, personally. They don't seem to have a lot in common; and while I prefer Fudge to FATE, I'll play either, whereas I played Apocalypse World once and that was enough for me to avoid anything resembling it.
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I think I'm in agreement with you in regarding Fate and PBTA games. However, I really would like to try some more Fudge. I picked up The Princess Bride RPG for that reason.
 
Big Jack Brass said:
I'm not sure I can see that, personally. They don't seem to have a lot in common; and while I prefer Fudge to FATE, I'll play either, whereas I played Apocalypse World once and that was enough for me to avoid anything resembling it.
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Sticking within my own thread parameters of not turning this into a debate about the validity of game systems, I think from a market 'space' point of view, Fate and PBTA served the same segment - people who sit between the traditional gaming experience, as delivered by things like D&D, Traveller, BRP etc, and the cutting edge 'indie' experiences. They've been dubbed in the past as 'trindie' systems.

There was a time when Fate was flavour of the year for systems, and a noticeable chunk of new, non-trad, games were Fate driven. Then, PBTA came along and that segment split a bit, and then FitD came along and it split again. You could argue that Carved from Brindlewood is the next iteration of this division. As the spotlight turned to PBTA, it turned away from Fate.
 
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