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I suppose if you printed books full of Lorem Ipsum gibberish using MS Word default layouts and no art or design, and then were able to sell them directly off the press so you don't need to deal with storing, marketing, or distribution, that claim might be true.
(Seriously, my professional viability is predicated on the idea that good money is worth spending on editing, layout, and design, and that's after content generation and before post-production overheads.)
How many people worked on it? A significant portion of the price of the book, about 20% IF i were to low-ball guess, is in the physical aspects of the product (printing, shipping, warehousing, distribution). Then you have to pay all the creative people...and it was a hugely long development cycle, so that is expensive. ....then you have to pay the guy who cleans the toilets too
On the books themselves, maybe they are starting to turn a profit about now
License a videogame? Huge chunk of money up front with no effort PLUS residuals.
Straight sales numbers from @KameronHurley, and I wish to god more people were open about this. http://www.kameronhurley.com/the-cold-publishing-equations-books-sold-marketability-love/
this is a small problem...some say that taking INT below 9 means that you have to RP a char that's well...dim enough to not be able to speak common properly. ugh. I can do "country boy who learned Common from his single Orc mom", but trying to do someone who's flat dim-witted...
if the int stat isn't important to your build it shouldn't force you to play a character like an idiot in any way you didn't already decide to yourself
Our low Wis, high Cha characters are going to be hot with no common sense because we're going to have a lot of fun with that, not because we must or should do it that way.
If you want to talk about rules on these things... 3.5 Monster Manual, page 298.
> Intelligence: Reflects how well the creature learns and reasons. In most cases, it affects how many skills and feats the creature has. A creature needs an Intelligence score of at least 3 to speak a language; anything lower makes the creature no smarter than a typical animal. An Intelligence score of 4 to 7 represents a limited ability to reason and a certain low cunning. An Intelligence score of 8 or 9 approaches the typical human range. A score of 10 or 11 covers the human norm. [...]
But then contrast PHB 9, which says:
> An animal has an Intelligence score of 1 or 2. A creature of humanlike intelligence has a score of at least 3.
Handling wildly variable group composition: In any current session, it is to be asserted that everyone there was there all along. Of course the Vampire was there when we defeated the Lord of the Sun Plains. Yes the Centaur was with us when we were climbing that cliff. Of course it makes sense, stop thinking about it so hard. The scenario's ultimate nemesis is to be a god / a small civilisation / a mythical creature modifying peoples' memories en masse.
(naturally this is entire scenario and method of handling things is very silly)
Hmm. I think my skald is coming together. I've settled on probably two-handed longsword (maybe a glaive later for reach, but I wanna sword for a while first) for my main melee, and I know we have control covered, so I don't have to worry about that for my spells. Still have to think about rage powers, but I have a couple levels to plan that.
Hmm. I'm starting a new campaign. We sat and discussed our options today, and decided to go for a modern conspiracy/supernatural spy thriller type campaign. We're considering using Unknown Armies, since it's a simple system we're familiar with, but we're considering other options. I'd love some ideas.
Games I can think of that fit the "operatives in shadowy war against evil" trope:
Delta Green - disqualified for being too horrory. We're trying to avoid Cthulhu. Night's Black Agents - a possibility, but our designated GM has never run a GUMSHOE game before. Feng Shui - too wuxia for us.
@Sandwich I think it's German. Some of the phrasing in the question and the user's comments suggests that they are not a native English speaker, my guess is that was a holdover.
We all lean towards low-crunch systems, preferably allowing freeform for most of the narrative and some interesting but not too crunchy rules for combat and such.
I like Fate, and I have another FAE game going with another party. I think I'll go over various FATE based games and settings to see if I can find one that fits the themes.
Although I know at least one player much prefers the actor stance when playing, not the authorial or directorial voice.
Not really, no. I started a game of SotC a while back that didn't go anywhere, and felt it was a bit too aspect-heavy comaprd to Fate Core or FAE. Definitely felt like FAte Core refined the system.
@lisardggY It depends on how you use it. The book is designed as a toolkit with a number of 'dials' including horror, scifi and conspiracy, and you choose which bits you do and don't use depending on what it is you want to run
It's very, very easy to reskin it into all sorts of things
This is about my this question which was initiated by @Ruut user and is now closed as "too broad".
On my opinion, I gave so many details, that a closing vote as "too broad" was simply nonsense.
From @Ruut user I've experienced earlier a generally negative attitude, too. He could have ask for cl...
There are a lot of things you could reasonably do with a fully armed and operational battle station. And a lot more you can do unreasonably and hilariously.
This is about my this question which was initiated by @Ruut user and is now closed as "too broad".
On my opinion, I gave so many details, that a closing vote as "too broad" was simply nonsense.
From @Ruut user I've experienced earlier a generally negative attitude, too. He could have ask for cl...
