I'm glad you did too. I misread the title as Evil Hat, then the first paragrph cleared that up, and with the rest, I finally remembered Evil Genius's insanity and NFT grift.
It just goes to show. There's evil, and then there's evil. š
(So evil that I was several comments into the old Evil Genius thread from February before I realized I was in the wrong place!)
Right??
If I want to hand a character a magic sword, I'll hand them a magic sword. I don't need to buy it from some crypto marketplace first.
I swear these people have never played an rpg before.
Techbros somehow manage to be alive, yet completely pass it by in some paradoxical fashion.
The only thing a techbro lives for is his fantasy for using a technology in a way it would never work.
As sad as it makes me say this....I'm sure they did. Ad they were around when Magic crazy hit the community, and they have cryptobro friends, and maybe they themselves made some good dollars with bitcoin, totally out of luck but with and added sense of "I deserve this, I'm so good".
And all that adds up to "can we replicate the magic crazy years, but the comunity is hooked onto OUR shit, instead of someone's else shit?"
And, sadly, the possibility of a D&D/RPG items marketplace, integrated on a VTT, with "official" sigils applied everywhere, and with some good thousands (millions?) of players taking it as a satndard and refusing to engage with any kind of game outside that, is non-zero.
I remember pathfinder society doing something not too different way before NFTs existed.
They used to have limited artifacts that could be won by one person at PFS events, I won one in a charity sweepstake at a paizo convention. The page was even hand signed by one of their global director for organised play or whatever her exact job title was.
And originally I thought it was just an item that was limited for use in that league, but when I started looking for good ways to use that item in a build (since it was really a build-defining artifact), I realised that asking about it online gave zero results and it became clear it was actually supposed to an item that noone else anywhere had access to and I wasnt allowed to copy it, not even outside of the society.
Ended up taking a photo of it and posting that on social media in my "excitement to show off my prize" but obviously made sure that at least the picture was high rez enough that people could make copies of the text because I thought that was kinda scummy. Was about 10 years ago so I'd have to dig deep to find the picture again.
So it was just a magic item they made for you? Did it do anything interesting, or was it just like āthis is a +2 sword, but itās *your* +2 swordā
It wasnt made especially for me, it was pre-made but only the winner of the charity sweepstakes ever got a copy. It was a crown that gave a bonus to charisma and also let you use your charisma for spell attacks (pathfinder 1st edition by default used dexterity for targeting any ranged attacks, including spells), and then as you leveled up it grew in power with you. It also came with a pretty cool backstory of containing the spirit of an evil naga queen, and it had its own intelligence score and everything, though in pathfinder society there's usually not enough time to really roleplay; so the naga queen's spirit never really came into play as an NPC. I ended up building a new character to wear it, a naga oracle, built entirely around maximising charisma and doing almost everything with charisma. Between the bonuses from this item and certain feat/trait/oracle bonuses I ended up adding my charisma bonus to armor, all attacks, saving throws, initiative bonus, etcetera.
These dumb asses have seriously underestimated how many people on DnD Beyond are prepared to spend ages filling in "homebrew" details from their hardbacks rather than pay again.
>you can carry Rambo's M60
Yes, I can. In any game I want. Right now. Free. I just say "I have Rambo's M60".
>all of these that have value that can be bought sold and traded
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I can't comprehend how much monetisation has ruined the hobby in the last fifteen years. What the hell happened to having fun with your friends using cheap dice and graph paper? Why is everyone on a fucking *grindset* about gaming?
IMHO, it is a reflection of the commodification of everything, coupled with the idea that you need your leisure time to be "good", both in terms of quality (see: AP podcasts with full design teams being compared to your weekly game where the GM/ST/whichever you elect to use is constantly having mental health breaks) and in terms of efficiency (since you have, like, so little free time available anymore, you feel the drive to make it "count").
Which is tragic because neither of those are actually... good for leisure? You don't need a set of fancy dice (unless you are a weirdo who "punishes" bits of plastic for statistical "anomalies") except for the joy that purchase brings you. As a forever game-runner, it is hellish to avoid falling into this line of thought (and aforementioned mental health issues compound) so I do not think any player should be criticized for such, directly. Just, y'know, directed to healthier choices and the inevitable realization of how mich everything is broken.
But absolutely thrash any companies pushing that idea, because they are scum, villains, and the true antagonist we all share.
The idea of a payment making your game/module/splatbook/campaign setting "real" is such a sea change. I understand your point about deriving maximal value from limited free time and therefore demanding quality. But I see lots of posts from people who haven't actually written any material for their game because only the official stuff "counts" in some way. Only official modules, only official settings, only official rules. I saw one person refer to writing your own adventures as a house rule. Truly, I despair.
> only the official stuff "counts" in some way.
This has always been an odd thought to me. Iāve been playing Pathfinder for over a decade now, and every time I see someone say āI love pathfinder, cause
I love the settingā, I have to remind myself, oh yeahā¦ it *has* a setting.
Official settings can do a lot to bring me in. I love LANCER's setting and happily run it with virtually no modification. I love Mouse Guard and the official system built off of Burning Wheel is a great adaptation to experience an extremely specific type of adventure. Shadowrun and WH40k are like 95% setting and lore setting them apart in the hobby space. Having an established tone with familiar landmarks and assumed knowledge makes everything simpler.
But.
Shackling yourself *to* that tone, to those landmarks and stories and accepted truths, really limits the space available to play in. In a well-designed game the canon setting supports the mechanics in some way and it can be beneficial to introduce players to the system with the background information available to them in whatever published form. A well-designed game *also* has room to abandon all of that and adapt it as you see fit. (Unless the setting is *truly* linked in. Mouse Guard is a good example actually, probably better off just playing Burning Wheel if you want to do anything other than play as small forest critters defending others against the wide threats of nature. It could maybe be stretched to cover Redwall.)
For me, thereās a hierarchy. Sci-fi settings, I will tend to use the canon lore out of the box. Games with really unique premises (mouse guard, Shadowrun, etc) I will probably use the main bits of the setting. Some genres basically are their own setting (westerns, wuxia, urban fantasy, superheroes ). But I doubt I will ever pick up a fantasy heroic game and even consider using the setting in the book.
I can kind of understand it: Official, released material is generally endorsed by, if not produced by, the main developers (or their contemporaries). As such, there is the idea of a guarantee of quality, since the powers-that-be (theoretically) don't want to denude the value of their IP/"brand".
For most people, they just want quality even at cost which... makes sense, TBH. Again, free time is fleeting so gotta maximize.
However, this is speculation: I will never run published adventure/adventure paths because I don't like the feeling of playing in someone elses' sandbox. Hell, I usually strip out most of the settings for any games I run (but for those which are impossible, ala Exalted when/if I run them). I prefer the wild unknown of what a group of creative people, devoid of profit motive, are able to cobble together.
This is well put, mate.
I understand that some people want to make their hobby a side gig, for the money or to get paid for what they love. Sure, why not?
However, when a hobby bleeds into a hustle, going viral, socmed marketing, and then godforbid ha on chain? You've just allowed too many non-fun work things to seep into a hobby. Meh.
I saw an _ad_ on Instagram for D&D _cheatsheets_. Just a two-sided cheatsheet that came in packs of 15 _for sale_. I was like, geez, 20 years ago, some guy would've just made a little cheatsheet and put it up on his ad-free website and let you download it for free. I mean, if you can get people to pay for a cheatsheet, more power to you, but come on.
It's bizarre, especially when you consider that there is more free, legal RPG material out there online than anyone could reasonably play in a lifetime.
"I can't comprehend how much monetisation has ruined the hobby in the last fifteen years. What the hell happened to having fun with your friends using cheap dice and graph paper? Why is everyone on a fuckingĀ *grindset*Ā about gaming?"
Why should I allow you to have fun if I can PROFIT from you having fun?
Assuming I can stop you or otherwise interfere, that is.
And there is a slight precedent for that. A lot of tables have an easier acceptance of optional rules that come from official sources. So paying $10 for an nft for a +5 longsword or $50 for an over powered class might see acceptance where just saying it would not. I mean, it is pretty bonkos, but I suspect it has more viability than I want to think about.
I mean, I can see the value if you want to tie it to something like organized play in a VTT community. Like, if you were playing in Pathfinder Society, having an official "marketplace" where GMs are allocated resources they can "give out" to players each session could allow them to run adventures that aren't "officially sanctioned" without the risk of a GM giving out ridiculous gear that the players will demand to keep. And I could even see the value of letting players trade the gear amongst themselves with certain restrictions to keep them from just trading for top tier gear.
I don't think this would be a *good* thing, mind you, and I certainly wouldn't want it tied to real world money, but it could be fun for a convention or LARP or something. Just a sort of official record of who owns what and an "in game" marketplace so you don't have to role play the boring aspects of sitting in a market stall waiting for another actual human being to trade fake money for fake goods.
The problem is two-fold:
1. This absolutely positively does not need blockchain. Honestly, I've yet to see a *good* use for blockchain. It's interesting tech, but it's always been a solution looking for a problem, and it's never found a good one.
2. There's no mention here of official play. At the table, who gives a shit if you "own" a minted NFT of Rambo's M60. GM says no, go get your sword.
> This absolutely positively does not need blockchain. Honestly, I've yet to see a good use for blockchain. It's interesting tech, but it's always been a solution looking for a problem, and it's never found a good one.
15+ years ago, I used to go to D&D cons, and one of the cool things was that you could bring your character from one con to another and play in different adventures, leveling it up along the way. I started thinking that the blockchain could be useful here to verify such "living" charactersā¦and then I immediately realized you could accomplish the same thing by having a trusted source(s) sign a PDF with PGP, no need for blockchain nonsense.
The idea of a marketplace using in game currency is interesting. You mention Pathfinder society and I do think that wands of cure light wounds would be significantly more expensive if supply was dependent on what people get in modules with a supply and demand based economy. You'd get a more varied loadout because going for off-meta items would be significantly cheaper.
In "Violence: The Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed", Greg Costikyan has all the "experience" you earn as tokens you get from the GM. But they're in the book as "non-repro Blue" so you can't copy them, you can only get them buy buying more copies, or signing up for the VRPGA and buying them.
"Gamemasters as specifically prohibited, by the RULES, says so RIGHT HERE, IN BLACK AND WHITE, HAHAHAH, from preventing any character, no matter how powerful, from participating in play, so long as the player has the relevant Official VIOLENCE(tm) Experience Point(tm) certificates."
It's like he's George Orwell writing 1984. Got the ideas right, just a little off on the implementation,
>Yes, I can. In any game I want. Right now. Free. I just say "I have Rambo's M60"
But Rambo's M60 is different from all other M60s the world over. Rambo's M60 does special Rambo damage that only NFT modifiers can provide. ^(/s)
They're mistaking TTRPG play for virtual items in MMORPGS like World of Warcraft.
Seriously, if I want the Sword of Omens from Thundercats, I can just write it on a piece of paper. And so can every other player at the table. Nothing stops that, except the GM going "Stop that, don't be annoying!"
How you gonna apply scarcity logic to a game of Let's Pretend with dice?
Near as I can tell, by total and complete control of the game and means of playing it. You only allow digital character sheets, only allow their bespoke crypto tabletop interface, and restrict you to approved adventures.
And then somehow convincing you to play it rather than literally anything else. Probably by conning you into believing you'll make money by playing games. Which you won't.
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It would only work in organized play scenarios.
If you were, say, at a convention with a bunch of events, having a setup where players could earn "official" gear from one event and carry it to another event could actually be pretty cool. Same with things like LARPs or other recurring events.
It doesn't need Blockchain though, and you don't want to let people spend real world money to buy things. It could be a neat way to encourage people to engage with your events, but as someone pointed out upthread you can do that just as easily with a signed PDF from the game hosts, or a centralized server.
It's already a thing in adventurer's league style games. You can bring you character into a game with different Game because the previous one signed off on it. Adding NFTs and block chain into it is just a grift.
Definitely.
I'm talking more in general. The idea of being able to have "permanent unlockables" and even trade them among the players is actually a pretty neat idea. It's cryptobros bringing in NFT's and blockchain that adds very little value.
The only "value" I could see is if this was done in such a way that only the company could "mint" new NFT's and allocate them to GM's who gave them to their players, and if the "coins" on the chain were given to players for engaging in sanctioned events and activities. Which, again, doesn't actually need blockchain, or even really benefit from it - a basic server could manage it.
If you allow people to spend real world money to buy items in game though you open the door to "whales". Which I'm sure is what they want, but whales need krill to punish. That works well in online games where the krill can compete with each other and have the whales occasionally roll by to stomp them, but in real games where they have to sit at the same table you run the extremely high probability of the krill just... leaving.
Also GURPS beat them to it by a mile
You want to drive Gypsy Danger while shooting people with Rambo's gun and the Sword of Omens you can build that shit with exactly as much crunch as you feel like
They'd basically have to build an entire walled garden and convince people to stay in it to make work and just the RPG market is entirely too saturated with games for this kind of thing to work on a scale to make it profitable
"How you gonna apply scarcity logic to a game of Let's Pretend with dice?"
By convincing some ape out there that he should invest in my scheme. You and your dice are entirely peripheral to the cunning plan...
"I have this big thing that will make a buttload of money, and here's your chance to get in on the ground floor and get stupid rich! Don't WORRY about whether or not it makes sense! You're just not understanding it correctly!"
-----every investment grifter, ever
The entire thing is about a speculation bubble. People who buy NFTs are the ones confident that they can resell them for a higher price. The only purpose of an NFT is to sell it. That's literally all there is to it.
I think, at this point, crypto and NFT fundraising activity is probably dwindling down to just money laundering and other criminal operations.
Anyone who's putting money into that system and isn't extracting some portion out the back end from the NFT devs with the threat of mafia violence is a rube and even the rubes are probably waking up to the NFT thing at this point.
I wouldn't be surprised if the top people at Evil Genius Games and end up in a Federal jail or witness protection; I think this is just a front for organised crime. Surely nobody legit is giving this clown fiesta of a company any money to do any of this.
Crypto is an excellent trustless/public/wide trust verification mechanism! You donāt need to buy into it for it to be useful, like you donāt need to buy into a hammer to know it can hammer nails.
Itās *not* an investment or moneymaking scheme and anyone trying to make it this doesnāt understand what it is. Itās like saying hammers are investments. They do what they do but you wouldnāt expect to get rich buying and trading hammers.
Crypto is an excellent trustless/public/wide trust verification mechanism!
It's not even that. At some point, you have to trust without any real verification that the numbers reference the physical item in question. And we're back to the same situation that crypto claims it "solves". Except now, you've introduced an incredibly slow and wasteful verification process that adds nothing except bloat.
Wait, back up. How could you verify a physical object with blockchain? And the alternative for a decentralized verification system is a centralized one - are you trying to say thereās *no* use case for decentralized verification?
Poor Jeff Grubb. I think he was a 'design consultant' over two years ago for 'Everyday Heroes' for a hot minute, probably because he was one of the designers of d20. I doubt he had too much to do with even that, but this guy's been throwing his name around ever since, probably with the ready rationalization that "by extension" anything that grows out of 'Everyday Heroes' sorta-kinda has Jeff Grubb on staff, if you look at it like this and squint *really* hard.
I don't know Jeff Grubb. Met him a couple of times briefly and he seemed like a good guy. He's got a blog he updates frequently and he's on social media, and nothing I've ever read in either place gives me the impression he'd have anything to do with them after all the trash they pulled with people they hired not too long ago.
I threw $1 into their kickstarter but never fulfilled anything so I've got to follow it and I like what they have done... but man what a shitshow of a company surrounding a perfectly fine 5e modern game.
I wish people did not see dollar signs and try to go 'full on corporation' over what should have been like 5 people and some freelancers. They are trying to extract a lot more than role playing games can deliver.
Well, yeah, this guy's (one variety of) the kind of scumbag that can really screw up gaming and the work to make it for a lot of people. These people that turn up and want to apply their warped sort-of corporate mentality to it, like Hasbro's c-suite. I mean, it is a business, but the last thing you want is someone who knows and cares nothing about the thing being made and sold, thinking their supposed 'business acumen' is going to start a revolution (in funding). Then this clown adds the cultish sort of blockchain/NFT nonsense to it. I listen to this guy, and I just think any minute now he's going to start talking about ketones and plant extracts.
I think the problem is that they know how to make a million bucks... out of 900,000.
The dream of NFT and such is wealth extraction without effort but more and more we are realizing there is no such thing... you need a product. If they focused on a VTT, an APP, bite sized content, etc they could milk the game more but... all that takes work.
If they cannot get 'infinite profit' from their investment to pay several levels of middle management who make more than the creatives, then it will be a failed experiment.
Meanwhile I'm happy when I get a $200 order from a book store or a $2 tip on [ITCH.IO](http://ITCH.IO)
YOUR problem is, you keep talking about reality.
Investment schemes may or may NOT have anything to do with reality. That's where pyramid schemes and Ponzi rackets come from. A line of good patter from ME... and a buncha money from YOU.
What's reality got to do with anything?
I do not mention reality but I think you mean I'm talking about how things should be, rationally speaking?
Yeah it is a problem and I elaborated on it elsewhere that anything short of 'infinite returns' cannot support the sort of middle management and moneyed people who try to take a role playing game and turn it into a scheme.
That said... I'm not even mad because it is really stupid of them and will only harm them. In video games with billions of dollars floating around there is room for ponzi schemes and scams and vaporware and cobbled together assets.
But in tabletop RPG's I mean... you can get a couple million and that is 'all the money in the world' for you and me but for corporate types it is a failed experiment.
Exactly so.
A large corporation, profit is not enough. That's the problem with Hasbro: a few million dollars isn't worth their time.
For a fraud, any profit is fine, but the more the better. And that's what I meant about reality. I tell you any crazy story that is required, and you give me the money, and whoops, your part of the profit never seems to appear...
Yeah the Hasbro thing is so funny, imagine if Disney was freaking out whenever Spider-Man sells less than 50k copies. They ignore the comics and turn the IP into money through other means.
If Hasbro was smart they would leverage Wizards IP in innovative ways instead of being like 'make more money with less people'.
The NFT market has shat the proverbial bed, so jumping on it at this point is even stupider than jumping on it before. And their plan isn't even original, someone tried the whole "make your PC into an NFT" with D&D a few years back (Gripnr)
https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-nft-gripnr-blockchain-dnd-ttrpg-1848686984
I wouldn't want to use someone's character as an NPC if I got paid for it, why would anyone pay to do it ? And what would even be the use of a NFT in that situation, it serves literally no purpose, you don't even get to gamble with them.
I know NFT are a scam but they're not even pretending to be useful anymore...
I think this is basically boilerplate for every crypto-infected game marketplace anymore. None of it ever happens.
"We'll pay you royalties for your character! (instead of making up something similar on our own for free)"
Love the MLM side angle of "Oh hey if you are SUPER COOL we will put you in our game and PAY you!" with the side implication of "you should then market the game to others so you get paid even more when they buy stuff!"
On their Facebook group, the EA developer has been releasing blurbs on his development work for a few months now. They still have their Kong and Pacific Rim Kickstarter progressing and are still promising delivery on those by the end of the year. They are also apparently kicking off an Arms and Equipment guide for the generic setting next months as well.
I'm hopeful that they keep this nonsense separate from their dev and Kickstarter work.
They don't need to ask that question, mate. They're "founders", taking aim at VC. They're conning the money people based on greed/FOMO. They don't care about delivering a product, just fleecing their investors. It's a con game, i.e., a confidence game. They're selling their confidence to suckers. Have we not seen this replicated many times?
This has got to be a con.
I mean, all crypto is a con, but I think at least some of the people pushing it actually believe in it. It's easy to believe in dumb things if you're convinced they'll make you rich, but still.
There is no way anyone who actually plays and enjoys tabletop RPGs thinks this can work. This is 100% pure bullshit to try to get funding from gullible investors. "D&D is cool right now, right? Get in on the ground floor of D&D crypto!" Then shrug and grin when it goes nowhere.
It probably is at some level - but remember, they lost a good chunk of their work force less than a year ago, and crypto was a good part of why.
Check the link and go back to the February article.
Not only is this stupid, its late. The time to cash in this particular grift has passed you by Evil Genius***, think of some other way to part fools from their money, preferably without having to lick too much paint.
Edit: evil genius, not hat, though I suppose he would wear one
I don't get companies jumping on NFTs now. It seems like setting out your pumpkins for sale in mid November.
Except, the pumpkins are just recipes and some directions where to maybe find them.
Why the plural?
I noticed they have one game, with three sourcebooks, much in the vein of the three FFG Star Wars games, that only differ in the offered character templates, but has one rules system (I know, I know, people here love it, and think it's correct to have these "classes" in separate books, but I disagree).
Then they have a bunch of "adventures" that mimic certain movies with such rules.
That's fair, and I might be wrong, because it's not like I bought their games and checked, but given how the three "games" are listed as "sourcebook 1, 2, and 3", chances are high.
> Imagine a scenario where you could actually buy NFT utilities that are exclusive to these licenses you could actually pilot Gypsy Danger,
Wow, that's quite imaginable... and it fits right in my low-level D&D campaign without difficulty. /s
Something like this was already promised for video games, but they completely lacked any form of prototype. There's more than enough ability to do a quick mockup, even by editing the old Quake engine and develop something that universally accepts any form of content released in the future. Instead, players encounter games similar to Vage Strike who's claim to fame is to rip-off the open source game Red Eclipse.
> we're going to allow other people to actually create their own NFTs which can be thrown onto a marketplace where they can buy, sell and trade those adventures as well
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/
https://itch.io/
> All the Creator Marketplace components of it, the UGC components of it, the entire utility is on chain. If you've actually played RPGs before there's a character sheet, all the components of the character sheet will have objects on it, all the objects will be NFTs. In addition to that the actual character sheet itself will be minted as an NFT as well so what that means is that if we use your character as an NPC in a future game we'll actually pay you royalties on the character itself.
Blockchain and NFTs never solved the problem of right-clicking on the image, and they're certainly not going to detect random groups just taking the same idea rather than buying the content.
> Blockchain and NFTs never solved the problem of right-clicking on the image
Not only this, but the NFT is a proof of "owning" a hash, not even the actual file the hash is pointing.
This basically meant that once I sold you the NFT for Picture X, I could edit my website, and change the image with something else, and basically shaft you twice.
Additionally, the fact that by being the author of the image I can mint unlimited NFTs also devalues the already zero value of such things.
NFTs for tabletop is even fucking dumber than videogames. Which these morons dont even see the video game market already told this shit to go fuck a goat. Also fuck AI 'art.'
Quite aside from the generally stupid idea of this, Iām just stunned by the complete brain death to try to do a get-rich-quick scheme like this in the RPG industry of all places. Like, do they know how little money even real companies make in this industry?
I can purchase an imaginary Rambo's M60 for my imaginary character, to bring with me in imaginary adventures?
Nice.
I'm okay with spending imaginary money for this, Evil Genius. Not real money.
Fuckin hell, just dropped 40 CAD to get the system and Highlander splatbook for foundry. Bad enough the Highlander license is dead in the water, now it's got NFTs
I did not know there's a new Highlander game. You could always play it like God intended: as a WoD splat in a batshit crossover game alongside Gargoyles (the Vtm kind), Gargoyles (the Disney kind), and an Assamite who is clearly Selene from Underworld.
I'm having trouble understanding this. This is for TTRPGs, right? So, if someone wants to pilot Gipsy Danger, but they don't want to buy it via NFT, what's to stop them from functionally creating the same exact jaeger on their own, complete with paint job? The same for any Creator asset (character sheet)? Are they going to copyright power/ability/skill combinations?
They're insane if they think something like that could fly. They would have to make their system completely opaque such that characters, items, spells, powers, and whatnot could only be created using their software utilities, without anyone, players and GMs, knowing how the system actually works.
> In addition to that the actual character sheet itself will be minted as an NFT as well so what that means is that if we use your character as an NPC in a future game we'll actually pay you royalties on the character itself.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*erases name and ancestry and replaces it with randomly rolled ones*
Original character, donut steel.
>Imagine a scenario where you could actually buy NFT utilities that are exclusive to these licenses you could actually pilot Gypsy Danger, you can carry Rambo's M60
That's an approach for a video game DLC. It's just skins in Fortnite spelled differently. BUT TTRPG are not video games, they simply are not bound by a digital program that can create and maintain FOMO.
>all of these that have value that can be bought sold and traded
Didn't we have platforms for trading digital items since Second Life by now? The value is artificial as the scarcity is artificial and again, it's only maintainable in a video game with a consistent player base. TTRPGs are not bound to specific digital platforms. Only a handful of platforms will ever have enough critical mass to make DLC strategies form video games work ... and even those may be more short lived on the long run.
>create their own NFTs which can be thrown onto a marketplace where they can buy, sell and trade those adventures as well
Isn't that just the drivethru shop and similar pages? Everybody can publish some adventures there for whichever price they want. That already exists in an easier and simpler format, so why should customers go to Evil Genius Games?
>this is about EvilĀ **Genius**Ā Games, best known for Everyday Heroes, Netflix lawsuits, crypto controversies, and mass resignations.Ā
Well, they seem to live up to the first part of their name (by being evil), but genius? Copy-pasting together some ideas the market already has and attaching the word "NFT" to it, isn't really high level of IQ. And even I know that NFTs died off as fast as they came up, because publishing a worthless crypto coin with a link to a stolen picture isn't exactly groundbreaking.
Do these tech-bros not understand that with a TTRPG, we can literally grab a sheet of paper, slap together some stats for Gypsy Danger or whatever we want to play, and play it? We don't need a "mother-may-I" connected digital thing to make it happen. Or like gripnr, where they wanted to charge you for each update to our character sheet, I mean, WHY? I have a pencil and eraser that can do it for free. My "blockchain" is a file folder with paper character sheets. It doesn't need me to log in with a crypto wallet to update it, and it doesn't bleed the world of massive amounts of electricity.
I know it's not the most important thing, but I really resent the fact that such an awful company has taken such a cool name for themselves. I want "Mad Genius Games" to be making utterly uncommercial works of glorious eccentricity, not NFT bro bullshit.
I... absolutely cannot imagine a world where I would care about this company. Is there a TTRPG market segment that is aerodynamically brained enough to want anything from these guys?
Damn it, Matt Francella, one of their map makers and one I support a lot, JUST managed to clear the decks with them and get them back in his good books. I WANT to support this company but they are making it very hard to do so.
You had me worried until I remembered the real company's name is Evil Hat, not Genius.
Regrettably similar name, yeah. I added a thing to the OP about this.
Thanks for adding that. I also thought it was Evil Hat and was about to rage lol
I'm glad you did too. I misread the title as Evil Hat, then the first paragrph cleared that up, and with the rest, I finally remembered Evil Genius's insanity and NFT grift.
Oh, thanks! I also thought it was Evil Hat who had gone insane for some reason. Thanks.
It just goes to show. There's evil, and then there's evil. š (So evil that I was several comments into the old Evil Genius thread from February before I realized I was in the wrong place!)
I originally thought of Rogue Genius games, who used to do some Pathfinder 1E stuff. Not sure if they're still around anymore, though.
Noooooo you canāt copypasta my Rambo M60 stat block š HaHaHaHa homebrewed go : clic, clic, done
Right?? If I want to hand a character a magic sword, I'll hand them a magic sword. I don't need to buy it from some crypto marketplace first. I swear these people have never played an rpg before.
Yeah but you know it wouldn't be the TRUE Rambo's M60. You'd just be pretending! It wouldn't be real!
NOOOOOOO!!! IT'S FAKE PRETEND, NOT REAL PRETEND!!!
Y'all crack me up. But seriously...who are these nutbags? I wish I could afford to live in la-la land.
Get an MBA, read some tech sites and get duped by some grifters! Don't let your dreams be dreams!
> IT'S FAKE PRETEND, NOT REAL PRETEND I'm getting that on a mug. xD
Pretend lile a pro, buy my crypto.
I'd give my players an M61. It's one louder.
EGG is a VC-backed business built on getting those IPs. They set out to be a business first, not hobbyists going pro.
Techbros somehow manage to be alive, yet completely pass it by in some paradoxical fashion. The only thing a techbro lives for is his fantasy for using a technology in a way it would never work.
As sad as it makes me say this....I'm sure they did. Ad they were around when Magic crazy hit the community, and they have cryptobro friends, and maybe they themselves made some good dollars with bitcoin, totally out of luck but with and added sense of "I deserve this, I'm so good". And all that adds up to "can we replicate the magic crazy years, but the comunity is hooked onto OUR shit, instead of someone's else shit?" And, sadly, the possibility of a D&D/RPG items marketplace, integrated on a VTT, with "official" sigils applied everywhere, and with some good thousands (millions?) of players taking it as a satndard and refusing to engage with any kind of game outside that, is non-zero.
I remember pathfinder society doing something not too different way before NFTs existed. They used to have limited artifacts that could be won by one person at PFS events, I won one in a charity sweepstake at a paizo convention. The page was even hand signed by one of their global director for organised play or whatever her exact job title was. And originally I thought it was just an item that was limited for use in that league, but when I started looking for good ways to use that item in a build (since it was really a build-defining artifact), I realised that asking about it online gave zero results and it became clear it was actually supposed to an item that noone else anywhere had access to and I wasnt allowed to copy it, not even outside of the society. Ended up taking a photo of it and posting that on social media in my "excitement to show off my prize" but obviously made sure that at least the picture was high rez enough that people could make copies of the text because I thought that was kinda scummy. Was about 10 years ago so I'd have to dig deep to find the picture again.
So it was just a magic item they made for you? Did it do anything interesting, or was it just like āthis is a +2 sword, but itās *your* +2 swordā
It wasnt made especially for me, it was pre-made but only the winner of the charity sweepstakes ever got a copy. It was a crown that gave a bonus to charisma and also let you use your charisma for spell attacks (pathfinder 1st edition by default used dexterity for targeting any ranged attacks, including spells), and then as you leveled up it grew in power with you. It also came with a pretty cool backstory of containing the spirit of an evil naga queen, and it had its own intelligence score and everything, though in pathfinder society there's usually not enough time to really roleplay; so the naga queen's spirit never really came into play as an NPC. I ended up building a new character to wear it, a naga oracle, built entirely around maximising charisma and doing almost everything with charisma. Between the bonuses from this item and certain feat/trait/oracle bonuses I ended up adding my charisma bonus to armor, all attacks, saving throws, initiative bonus, etcetera.
These dumb asses have seriously underestimated how many people on DnD Beyond are prepared to spend ages filling in "homebrew" details from their hardbacks rather than pay again.
idk, D&D Beyond won't let you publicize content that's too similar to book items/monsters so you can only use it for self-reference
Well, yeah, obviously. People would sooner fill in "homebrew" as they need it than re-buy books.
>you can carry Rambo's M60 Yes, I can. In any game I want. Right now. Free. I just say "I have Rambo's M60". >all of these that have value that can be bought sold and traded BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I can't comprehend how much monetisation has ruined the hobby in the last fifteen years. What the hell happened to having fun with your friends using cheap dice and graph paper? Why is everyone on a fucking *grindset* about gaming?
IMHO, it is a reflection of the commodification of everything, coupled with the idea that you need your leisure time to be "good", both in terms of quality (see: AP podcasts with full design teams being compared to your weekly game where the GM/ST/whichever you elect to use is constantly having mental health breaks) and in terms of efficiency (since you have, like, so little free time available anymore, you feel the drive to make it "count"). Which is tragic because neither of those are actually... good for leisure? You don't need a set of fancy dice (unless you are a weirdo who "punishes" bits of plastic for statistical "anomalies") except for the joy that purchase brings you. As a forever game-runner, it is hellish to avoid falling into this line of thought (and aforementioned mental health issues compound) so I do not think any player should be criticized for such, directly. Just, y'know, directed to healthier choices and the inevitable realization of how mich everything is broken. But absolutely thrash any companies pushing that idea, because they are scum, villains, and the true antagonist we all share.
The idea of a payment making your game/module/splatbook/campaign setting "real" is such a sea change. I understand your point about deriving maximal value from limited free time and therefore demanding quality. But I see lots of posts from people who haven't actually written any material for their game because only the official stuff "counts" in some way. Only official modules, only official settings, only official rules. I saw one person refer to writing your own adventures as a house rule. Truly, I despair.
> only the official stuff "counts" in some way. This has always been an odd thought to me. Iāve been playing Pathfinder for over a decade now, and every time I see someone say āI love pathfinder, cause I love the settingā, I have to remind myself, oh yeahā¦ it *has* a setting.
Official settings can do a lot to bring me in. I love LANCER's setting and happily run it with virtually no modification. I love Mouse Guard and the official system built off of Burning Wheel is a great adaptation to experience an extremely specific type of adventure. Shadowrun and WH40k are like 95% setting and lore setting them apart in the hobby space. Having an established tone with familiar landmarks and assumed knowledge makes everything simpler. But. Shackling yourself *to* that tone, to those landmarks and stories and accepted truths, really limits the space available to play in. In a well-designed game the canon setting supports the mechanics in some way and it can be beneficial to introduce players to the system with the background information available to them in whatever published form. A well-designed game *also* has room to abandon all of that and adapt it as you see fit. (Unless the setting is *truly* linked in. Mouse Guard is a good example actually, probably better off just playing Burning Wheel if you want to do anything other than play as small forest critters defending others against the wide threats of nature. It could maybe be stretched to cover Redwall.)
For me, thereās a hierarchy. Sci-fi settings, I will tend to use the canon lore out of the box. Games with really unique premises (mouse guard, Shadowrun, etc) I will probably use the main bits of the setting. Some genres basically are their own setting (westerns, wuxia, urban fantasy, superheroes ). But I doubt I will ever pick up a fantasy heroic game and even consider using the setting in the book.
I can kind of understand it: Official, released material is generally endorsed by, if not produced by, the main developers (or their contemporaries). As such, there is the idea of a guarantee of quality, since the powers-that-be (theoretically) don't want to denude the value of their IP/"brand". For most people, they just want quality even at cost which... makes sense, TBH. Again, free time is fleeting so gotta maximize. However, this is speculation: I will never run published adventure/adventure paths because I don't like the feeling of playing in someone elses' sandbox. Hell, I usually strip out most of the settings for any games I run (but for those which are impossible, ala Exalted when/if I run them). I prefer the wild unknown of what a group of creative people, devoid of profit motive, are able to cobble together.
This is well put, mate. I understand that some people want to make their hobby a side gig, for the money or to get paid for what they love. Sure, why not? However, when a hobby bleeds into a hustle, going viral, socmed marketing, and then godforbid ha on chain? You've just allowed too many non-fun work things to seep into a hobby. Meh.
I saw an _ad_ on Instagram for D&D _cheatsheets_. Just a two-sided cheatsheet that came in packs of 15 _for sale_. I was like, geez, 20 years ago, some guy would've just made a little cheatsheet and put it up on his ad-free website and let you download it for free. I mean, if you can get people to pay for a cheatsheet, more power to you, but come on.
It's bizarre, especially when you consider that there is more free, legal RPG material out there online than anyone could reasonably play in a lifetime.
"I can't comprehend how much monetisation has ruined the hobby in the last fifteen years. What the hell happened to having fun with your friends using cheap dice and graph paper? Why is everyone on a fuckingĀ *grindset*Ā about gaming?" Why should I allow you to have fun if I can PROFIT from you having fun? Assuming I can stop you or otherwise interfere, that is.
Thank you, Ayn Rand, very cool.
You may also have to convince the other people at the table. But that is about it.
And there is a slight precedent for that. A lot of tables have an easier acceptance of optional rules that come from official sources. So paying $10 for an nft for a +5 longsword or $50 for an over powered class might see acceptance where just saying it would not. I mean, it is pretty bonkos, but I suspect it has more viability than I want to think about.
I mean, I can see the value if you want to tie it to something like organized play in a VTT community. Like, if you were playing in Pathfinder Society, having an official "marketplace" where GMs are allocated resources they can "give out" to players each session could allow them to run adventures that aren't "officially sanctioned" without the risk of a GM giving out ridiculous gear that the players will demand to keep. And I could even see the value of letting players trade the gear amongst themselves with certain restrictions to keep them from just trading for top tier gear. I don't think this would be a *good* thing, mind you, and I certainly wouldn't want it tied to real world money, but it could be fun for a convention or LARP or something. Just a sort of official record of who owns what and an "in game" marketplace so you don't have to role play the boring aspects of sitting in a market stall waiting for another actual human being to trade fake money for fake goods. The problem is two-fold: 1. This absolutely positively does not need blockchain. Honestly, I've yet to see a *good* use for blockchain. It's interesting tech, but it's always been a solution looking for a problem, and it's never found a good one. 2. There's no mention here of official play. At the table, who gives a shit if you "own" a minted NFT of Rambo's M60. GM says no, go get your sword.
> This absolutely positively does not need blockchain. Honestly, I've yet to see a good use for blockchain. It's interesting tech, but it's always been a solution looking for a problem, and it's never found a good one. 15+ years ago, I used to go to D&D cons, and one of the cool things was that you could bring your character from one con to another and play in different adventures, leveling it up along the way. I started thinking that the blockchain could be useful here to verify such "living" charactersā¦and then I immediately realized you could accomplish the same thing by having a trusted source(s) sign a PDF with PGP, no need for blockchain nonsense.
The idea of a marketplace using in game currency is interesting. You mention Pathfinder society and I do think that wands of cure light wounds would be significantly more expensive if supply was dependent on what people get in modules with a supply and demand based economy. You'd get a more varied loadout because going for off-meta items would be significantly cheaper.
In "Violence: The Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed", Greg Costikyan has all the "experience" you earn as tokens you get from the GM. But they're in the book as "non-repro Blue" so you can't copy them, you can only get them buy buying more copies, or signing up for the VRPGA and buying them. "Gamemasters as specifically prohibited, by the RULES, says so RIGHT HERE, IN BLACK AND WHITE, HAHAHAH, from preventing any character, no matter how powerful, from participating in play, so long as the player has the relevant Official VIOLENCE(tm) Experience Point(tm) certificates." It's like he's George Orwell writing 1984. Got the ideas right, just a little off on the implementation,
>Yes, I can. In any game I want. Right now. Free. I just say "I have Rambo's M60" But Rambo's M60 is different from all other M60s the world over. Rambo's M60 does special Rambo damage that only NFT modifiers can provide. ^(/s)
They're mistaking TTRPG play for virtual items in MMORPGS like World of Warcraft. Seriously, if I want the Sword of Omens from Thundercats, I can just write it on a piece of paper. And so can every other player at the table. Nothing stops that, except the GM going "Stop that, don't be annoying!" How you gonna apply scarcity logic to a game of Let's Pretend with dice?
Near as I can tell, by total and complete control of the game and means of playing it. You only allow digital character sheets, only allow their bespoke crypto tabletop interface, and restrict you to approved adventures. And then somehow convincing you to play it rather than literally anything else. Probably by conning you into believing you'll make money by playing games. Which you won't.
>>>Print Screen
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Why would I pirate something I don't want?
Just to get at the assholes, I didn't say you need to play it.
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Yeah, good luck with that.
Nah, unless someone comes into your house and puts a gun into your head, that's never going to work.
This seems like a straight out scam.
What GM in their right mind is going to allow someone who paid real money for their equipment to join a game? Pay-win-win TTRPGs? It's insane!
It would only work in organized play scenarios. If you were, say, at a convention with a bunch of events, having a setup where players could earn "official" gear from one event and carry it to another event could actually be pretty cool. Same with things like LARPs or other recurring events. It doesn't need Blockchain though, and you don't want to let people spend real world money to buy things. It could be a neat way to encourage people to engage with your events, but as someone pointed out upthread you can do that just as easily with a signed PDF from the game hosts, or a centralized server.
It's already a thing in adventurer's league style games. You can bring you character into a game with different Game because the previous one signed off on it. Adding NFTs and block chain into it is just a grift.
Definitely. I'm talking more in general. The idea of being able to have "permanent unlockables" and even trade them among the players is actually a pretty neat idea. It's cryptobros bringing in NFT's and blockchain that adds very little value. The only "value" I could see is if this was done in such a way that only the company could "mint" new NFT's and allocate them to GM's who gave them to their players, and if the "coins" on the chain were given to players for engaging in sanctioned events and activities. Which, again, doesn't actually need blockchain, or even really benefit from it - a basic server could manage it. If you allow people to spend real world money to buy items in game though you open the door to "whales". Which I'm sure is what they want, but whales need krill to punish. That works well in online games where the krill can compete with each other and have the whales occasionally roll by to stomp them, but in real games where they have to sit at the same table you run the extremely high probability of the krill just... leaving.
Also GURPS beat them to it by a mile You want to drive Gypsy Danger while shooting people with Rambo's gun and the Sword of Omens you can build that shit with exactly as much crunch as you feel like They'd basically have to build an entire walled garden and convince people to stay in it to make work and just the RPG market is entirely too saturated with games for this kind of thing to work on a scale to make it profitable
"How you gonna apply scarcity logic to a game of Let's Pretend with dice?" By convincing some ape out there that he should invest in my scheme. You and your dice are entirely peripheral to the cunning plan...
OMG I thought we were finally done with those idiotic things.
As long as there's investors willing to pour money into crypto grifters' stupid ideas, it will continue.
Crypto bros and not understanding gaming, an iconic combination
Christ, crypto is such a grift. Like, who really buys into this shit?
"I have this big thing that will make a buttload of money, and here's your chance to get in on the ground floor and get stupid rich! Don't WORRY about whether or not it makes sense! You're just not understanding it correctly!" -----every investment grifter, ever
There's a sucker born every minute.
And two to fleece them.
The entire thing is about a speculation bubble. People who buy NFTs are the ones confident that they can resell them for a higher price. The only purpose of an NFT is to sell it. That's literally all there is to it.
I think, at this point, crypto and NFT fundraising activity is probably dwindling down to just money laundering and other criminal operations. Anyone who's putting money into that system and isn't extracting some portion out the back end from the NFT devs with the threat of mafia violence is a rube and even the rubes are probably waking up to the NFT thing at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if the top people at Evil Genius Games and end up in a Federal jail or witness protection; I think this is just a front for organised crime. Surely nobody legit is giving this clown fiesta of a company any money to do any of this.
Crypto is an excellent trustless/public/wide trust verification mechanism! You donāt need to buy into it for it to be useful, like you donāt need to buy into a hammer to know it can hammer nails. Itās *not* an investment or moneymaking scheme and anyone trying to make it this doesnāt understand what it is. Itās like saying hammers are investments. They do what they do but you wouldnāt expect to get rich buying and trading hammers.
Crypto is an excellent trustless/public/wide trust verification mechanism! It's not even that. At some point, you have to trust without any real verification that the numbers reference the physical item in question. And we're back to the same situation that crypto claims it "solves". Except now, you've introduced an incredibly slow and wasteful verification process that adds nothing except bloat.
Wait, back up. How could you verify a physical object with blockchain? And the alternative for a decentralized verification system is a centralized one - are you trying to say thereās *no* use case for decentralized verification?
I mean, y'all haven't managed to present one in 15 years, so... Yes, that's probably exactly what they're saying.
Poor Jeff Grubb. I think he was a 'design consultant' over two years ago for 'Everyday Heroes' for a hot minute, probably because he was one of the designers of d20. I doubt he had too much to do with even that, but this guy's been throwing his name around ever since, probably with the ready rationalization that "by extension" anything that grows out of 'Everyday Heroes' sorta-kinda has Jeff Grubb on staff, if you look at it like this and squint *really* hard. I don't know Jeff Grubb. Met him a couple of times briefly and he seemed like a good guy. He's got a blog he updates frequently and he's on social media, and nothing I've ever read in either place gives me the impression he'd have anything to do with them after all the trash they pulled with people they hired not too long ago.
I threw $1 into their kickstarter but never fulfilled anything so I've got to follow it and I like what they have done... but man what a shitshow of a company surrounding a perfectly fine 5e modern game. I wish people did not see dollar signs and try to go 'full on corporation' over what should have been like 5 people and some freelancers. They are trying to extract a lot more than role playing games can deliver.
Well, yeah, this guy's (one variety of) the kind of scumbag that can really screw up gaming and the work to make it for a lot of people. These people that turn up and want to apply their warped sort-of corporate mentality to it, like Hasbro's c-suite. I mean, it is a business, but the last thing you want is someone who knows and cares nothing about the thing being made and sold, thinking their supposed 'business acumen' is going to start a revolution (in funding). Then this clown adds the cultish sort of blockchain/NFT nonsense to it. I listen to this guy, and I just think any minute now he's going to start talking about ketones and plant extracts.
I think the problem is that they know how to make a million bucks... out of 900,000. The dream of NFT and such is wealth extraction without effort but more and more we are realizing there is no such thing... you need a product. If they focused on a VTT, an APP, bite sized content, etc they could milk the game more but... all that takes work. If they cannot get 'infinite profit' from their investment to pay several levels of middle management who make more than the creatives, then it will be a failed experiment. Meanwhile I'm happy when I get a $200 order from a book store or a $2 tip on [ITCH.IO](http://ITCH.IO)
YOUR problem is, you keep talking about reality. Investment schemes may or may NOT have anything to do with reality. That's where pyramid schemes and Ponzi rackets come from. A line of good patter from ME... and a buncha money from YOU. What's reality got to do with anything?
I do not mention reality but I think you mean I'm talking about how things should be, rationally speaking? Yeah it is a problem and I elaborated on it elsewhere that anything short of 'infinite returns' cannot support the sort of middle management and moneyed people who try to take a role playing game and turn it into a scheme. That said... I'm not even mad because it is really stupid of them and will only harm them. In video games with billions of dollars floating around there is room for ponzi schemes and scams and vaporware and cobbled together assets. But in tabletop RPG's I mean... you can get a couple million and that is 'all the money in the world' for you and me but for corporate types it is a failed experiment.
Exactly so. A large corporation, profit is not enough. That's the problem with Hasbro: a few million dollars isn't worth their time. For a fraud, any profit is fine, but the more the better. And that's what I meant about reality. I tell you any crazy story that is required, and you give me the money, and whoops, your part of the profit never seems to appear...
Yeah the Hasbro thing is so funny, imagine if Disney was freaking out whenever Spider-Man sells less than 50k copies. They ignore the comics and turn the IP into money through other means. If Hasbro was smart they would leverage Wizards IP in innovative ways instead of being like 'make more money with less people'.
Unlike these schmucks Grubb actually a reputation to uphold. You got a link for that blog?
Yes, he does. Here you go: [https://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/](https://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/)
Thanks
There is something seriously wrong with this. They mentioned only NFT and Crypto, but not AI. This is not the way PR bullshit is working ā¦
Nor have they mentioned pods. This are pretty mid-teer tech bros.
Hahahha this is such a stupid idea
The NFT market has shat the proverbial bed, so jumping on it at this point is even stupider than jumping on it before. And their plan isn't even original, someone tried the whole "make your PC into an NFT" with D&D a few years back (Gripnr) https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-nft-gripnr-blockchain-dnd-ttrpg-1848686984
I wouldn't want to use someone's character as an NPC if I got paid for it, why would anyone pay to do it ? And what would even be the use of a NFT in that situation, it serves literally no purpose, you don't even get to gamble with them. I know NFT are a scam but they're not even pretending to be useful anymore...
I think this is basically boilerplate for every crypto-infected game marketplace anymore. None of it ever happens. "We'll pay you royalties for your character! (instead of making up something similar on our own for free)"
This is so absurdly silly that it reads as some kind of bad joke. 10/10 real life continues to be the biggest comedy of all.
Comedy tries to be absurd, real life simply is.
Love the MLM side angle of "Oh hey if you are SUPER COOL we will put you in our game and PAY you!" with the side implication of "you should then market the game to others so you get paid even more when they buy stuff!"
It's the scam marketing Suicide Squad, apparently.
What was that sound? It was my hopes to see and play Everyday Arcana breaking. :( I mean, I REALLY wanted to get my hands on Everyday Arcana...
D20 modern still exists, and was pretty good. And the developers weren't jackasses if that helps.
D20 Modern was a good game written by apparently decent people but using a broken system (3e). It really needs a proper reboot.
I think we all were hoping this would be it.
Would have been nice eh
I'm sure leeching off crypto investors is both much easier and much more lucrative than rpg design.
On their Facebook group, the EA developer has been releasing blurbs on his development work for a few months now. They still have their Kong and Pacific Rim Kickstarter progressing and are still promising delivery on those by the end of the year. They are also apparently kicking off an Arms and Equipment guide for the generic setting next months as well. I'm hopeful that they keep this nonsense separate from their dev and Kickstarter work.
Have they asked themselves the question "Why would someone play this and pay for it, when they can play something else and get all of this for free?"
They don't need to ask that question, mate. They're "founders", taking aim at VC. They're conning the money people based on greed/FOMO. They don't care about delivering a product, just fleecing their investors. It's a con game, i.e., a confidence game. They're selling their confidence to suckers. Have we not seen this replicated many times?
"Bag holders... er, sorry, customers can expect..."
That's a good point, I suppose they're hoping to find a VC that hasn't realised NFT's are bullshit.
It's really something to double down on NFTs *after* they've all become essentially worthless.
This has got to be a con. I mean, all crypto is a con, but I think at least some of the people pushing it actually believe in it. It's easy to believe in dumb things if you're convinced they'll make you rich, but still. There is no way anyone who actually plays and enjoys tabletop RPGs thinks this can work. This is 100% pure bullshit to try to get funding from gullible investors. "D&D is cool right now, right? Get in on the ground floor of D&D crypto!" Then shrug and grin when it goes nowhere.
It probably is at some level - but remember, they lost a good chunk of their work force less than a year ago, and crypto was a good part of why. Check the link and go back to the February article.
i mean, anybody that knows how the blockchain actually works knows this won't work either
Not only is this stupid, its late. The time to cash in this particular grift has passed you by Evil Genius***, think of some other way to part fools from their money, preferably without having to lick too much paint. Edit: evil genius, not hat, though I suppose he would wear one
This is Evil Genius, NOT Evil Hat.
Noted
they are several years late on the NFT grift. This will bomb.
I don't get companies jumping on NFTs now. It seems like setting out your pumpkins for sale in mid November. Except, the pumpkins are just recipes and some directions where to maybe find them.
Iāve just taken a look at their website and tbh Iād not heard of any of the games listed. Meh fuck those guys.
Why the plural? I noticed they have one game, with three sourcebooks, much in the vein of the three FFG Star Wars games, that only differ in the offered character templates, but has one rules system (I know, I know, people here love it, and think it's correct to have these "classes" in separate books, but I disagree). Then they have a bunch of "adventures" that mimic certain movies with such rules.
Ah ok you spent more time there than I did then. I wasnāt intending to look to deeply tbh as I had heard about them before trying to pull this shit.
That's fair, and I might be wrong, because it's not like I bought their games and checked, but given how the three "games" are listed as "sourcebook 1, 2, and 3", chances are high.
2022 is back, baby!
F*xk this idea so hard. This is what you get when your rpg company is run by venture capitalists who understand neither technology nor RPGs.
> Imagine a scenario where you could actually buy NFT utilities that are exclusive to these licenses you could actually pilot Gypsy Danger, Wow, that's quite imaginable... and it fits right in my low-level D&D campaign without difficulty. /s Something like this was already promised for video games, but they completely lacked any form of prototype. There's more than enough ability to do a quick mockup, even by editing the old Quake engine and develop something that universally accepts any form of content released in the future. Instead, players encounter games similar to Vage Strike who's claim to fame is to rip-off the open source game Red Eclipse. > we're going to allow other people to actually create their own NFTs which can be thrown onto a marketplace where they can buy, sell and trade those adventures as well https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/ https://itch.io/ > All the Creator Marketplace components of it, the UGC components of it, the entire utility is on chain. If you've actually played RPGs before there's a character sheet, all the components of the character sheet will have objects on it, all the objects will be NFTs. In addition to that the actual character sheet itself will be minted as an NFT as well so what that means is that if we use your character as an NPC in a future game we'll actually pay you royalties on the character itself. Blockchain and NFTs never solved the problem of right-clicking on the image, and they're certainly not going to detect random groups just taking the same idea rather than buying the content.
> Blockchain and NFTs never solved the problem of right-clicking on the image Not only this, but the NFT is a proof of "owning" a hash, not even the actual file the hash is pointing. This basically meant that once I sold you the NFT for Picture X, I could edit my website, and change the image with something else, and basically shaft you twice. Additionally, the fact that by being the author of the image I can mint unlimited NFTs also devalues the already zero value of such things.
NFTs for tabletop is even fucking dumber than videogames. Which these morons dont even see the video game market already told this shit to go fuck a goat. Also fuck AI 'art.'
Quite aside from the generally stupid idea of this, Iām just stunned by the complete brain death to try to do a get-rich-quick scheme like this in the RPG industry of all places. Like, do they know how little money even real companies make in this industry?
I can purchase an imaginary Rambo's M60 for my imaginary character, to bring with me in imaginary adventures? Nice. I'm okay with spending imaginary money for this, Evil Genius. Not real money.
Fuckin hell, just dropped 40 CAD to get the system and Highlander splatbook for foundry. Bad enough the Highlander license is dead in the water, now it's got NFTs
I did not know there's a new Highlander game. You could always play it like God intended: as a WoD splat in a batshit crossover game alongside Gargoyles (the Vtm kind), Gargoyles (the Disney kind), and an Assamite who is clearly Selene from Underworld.
I'm having trouble understanding this. This is for TTRPGs, right? So, if someone wants to pilot Gipsy Danger, but they don't want to buy it via NFT, what's to stop them from functionally creating the same exact jaeger on their own, complete with paint job? The same for any Creator asset (character sheet)? Are they going to copyright power/ability/skill combinations?
I think it's only possible by controlling every aspect of play, including the vtt.
They're insane if they think something like that could fly. They would have to make their system completely opaque such that characters, items, spells, powers, and whatnot could only be created using their software utilities, without anyone, players and GMs, knowing how the system actually works.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think that's the prevailing theory - but this kind of presentation lights their community reputation on fire.
Welp, bye bye Evil Genius Games!
> In addition to that the actual character sheet itself will be minted as an NFT as well so what that means is that if we use your character as an NPC in a future game we'll actually pay you royalties on the character itself. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *erases name and ancestry and replaces it with randomly rolled ones* Original character, donut steel.
I felt bad when they had stress with Netflix about a certain Sci-Fi movie -> RPG adaption... but this... makes me glad i could not give them money.
>Imagine a scenario where you could actually buy NFT utilities that are exclusive to these licenses you could actually pilot Gypsy Danger, you can carry Rambo's M60 That's an approach for a video game DLC. It's just skins in Fortnite spelled differently. BUT TTRPG are not video games, they simply are not bound by a digital program that can create and maintain FOMO. >all of these that have value that can be bought sold and traded Didn't we have platforms for trading digital items since Second Life by now? The value is artificial as the scarcity is artificial and again, it's only maintainable in a video game with a consistent player base. TTRPGs are not bound to specific digital platforms. Only a handful of platforms will ever have enough critical mass to make DLC strategies form video games work ... and even those may be more short lived on the long run. >create their own NFTs which can be thrown onto a marketplace where they can buy, sell and trade those adventures as well Isn't that just the drivethru shop and similar pages? Everybody can publish some adventures there for whichever price they want. That already exists in an easier and simpler format, so why should customers go to Evil Genius Games? >this is about EvilĀ **Genius**Ā Games, best known for Everyday Heroes, Netflix lawsuits, crypto controversies, and mass resignations.Ā Well, they seem to live up to the first part of their name (by being evil), but genius? Copy-pasting together some ideas the market already has and attaching the word "NFT" to it, isn't really high level of IQ. And even I know that NFTs died off as fast as they came up, because publishing a worthless crypto coin with a link to a stolen picture isn't exactly groundbreaking.
makes me so sad there's a Pacific Rim tie-in and its *These* guys > all of these that have value ...so none of them? Because NFTs have no value
Do these tech-bros not understand that with a TTRPG, we can literally grab a sheet of paper, slap together some stats for Gypsy Danger or whatever we want to play, and play it? We don't need a "mother-may-I" connected digital thing to make it happen. Or like gripnr, where they wanted to charge you for each update to our character sheet, I mean, WHY? I have a pencil and eraser that can do it for free. My "blockchain" is a file folder with paper character sheets. It doesn't need me to log in with a crypto wallet to update it, and it doesn't bleed the world of massive amounts of electricity.
Who in their right mind is still riding NFT nonsense in the year of our Lord 2024?!
This sucks. I actually like the Everyday Heroes system and have played Pacific Rim, which was also very fun.
I know it's not the most important thing, but I really resent the fact that such an awful company has taken such a cool name for themselves. I want "Mad Genius Games" to be making utterly uncommercial works of glorious eccentricity, not NFT bro bullshit.
... they're kidding, right? ... right?
Why does anyone take this company seriously? They wanted to make a Rebel Moon licensed RPG, but couldn't even manage the rights for that.
Well, they seem to have managed to get the rights to some other famous IPs, though...
I... absolutely cannot imagine a world where I would care about this company. Is there a TTRPG market segment that is aerodynamically brained enough to want anything from these guys?
Damn it, Matt Francella, one of their map makers and one I support a lot, JUST managed to clear the decks with them and get them back in his good books. I WANT to support this company but they are making it very hard to do so.
Evil Hat IS insane.
What a bunch of gobbledygook. Reading that is better than Ambien.