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D&D and AD&D 1e Rankings at RPG Geek
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wavemotion
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 12:55 pm

mbassoc2003 wrote:Any Necromancer Games products in that top 200?
Any placement for TLG's Castle Zagyg?

Not enough love for Necromancer Games - so many of them don't have enough ratings to qualify for a site-wide rank yet. Hopefully soon. In terms of the best rated products in that line they fall in this order (highest rated first):

Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia
G2: What Evil Lurks
Dead Man's Chest
G9: A Lamentation of Thieves
D1: The Tomb of Abysthor
Elemental Moon
The Lost City of Barakus
L1: Demons and Devils
W1: The Crucible of Freya
The Tome of Horrors

Of those above, only The Tome of Horrors has enough individual ratings to have a site-wide ranking of #1821. The volumes above it will do better once they meet the minimum criteria of votes.

Castle Zagyg fares better with it's top pick at #331:

#331 CZ2: Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works
#640 Castle Zagyg, Volume 1 Yggsburgh
(n/a) CZ9: Castle Zagyg - Gazetteer of the East Mark
#1550 CZA1: Castle Zagyg - Dark Chateau
(n/a) CZ10: Castle Zagyg - The Free Town of Yggsburgh: Town Halls District

the (n/a) means it had several ratings and would likely fall into that relative ranking but does not yet meet the minimum 5 individual ratings for a site-wide rank.

-Dave

wavemotion
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 12:59 pm

serleran wrote:Ack, whoever put Shadowrun 3rd edition at #51, well above 1st and even the 2nd edition needs to have their soy slopped and churned, chummer. But, if its a poll of "playing greatness" as opposed to "originality" than I can see that... I guess. If you like boring stupid mechanics.

It's a poll of what games the patrons of RPG Geek enjoy. Nothing more - it's just a popularity contest of a very small subset of RPGers. Most of them are players... many have only played a few RPG lines and very little else. Some of us have played hundreds of different games in different genres and so we tend to rate a wider variety of stuff. It's not the definitive list of anything other than a self-fulfilling list of what games we like as a group. My intent was to showcase the interest in classic D&D from a site which is, by all accounts here, quite different and to to spark some discussion (well, at least that part was fulfilled!).

Hope everyone's weekend is going swimmingly!

-Dave

ashmire13
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 1:04 pm

mbassoc2003 wrote:Any Necromancer Games products in that top 200?
Any placement for TLG's Castle Zagyg?

Perhaps those voting don't own a copy, haven't read it so cannot comment and vote for it?

The question may be though, is Castle Zagyg good because it is high qualiry or 'good' because it is rare as rocking horse shit?

RAR is considered to be an excellent adventure and is also rare enough to hardly see a copy come up (on ebay at least)

Rolls a '3'

"Did I hit.....?"

wavemotion
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 1:08 pm

puterdragon wrote:
I had to save for disbelief vs. hallucinatory terrain over numbers like that! Conclusion similar.
<wink>

I'll admit the numbers are somewhat staggering. In our first year of RPG Geek we'll likely have 250,000 unique visitors (well, unique IPs which means someone visiting the site from home and work would count as two).

BGG (our big brother - of whom we are simply a squeaky voice in the shadows) gets 80,000 unique visitors per day (and Monday is always our heaviest traffic day... tsk tsk) and 1.1 million unique visitors per month. With a BGG registered user base at close to a third of a million people, RPG Geek still remains very much the red-headed stepchild. In some ways, I'm happy for that as it allows us a bit more of a close knit feeling within the building community.

-Dave

wavemotion
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 2:18 pm

Doug Williams wrote:Are you talking full MSRP retail? I never pay full retail for new stuff. Amazon FTW.

Ptolus at Amazon was a bit more than $100 for the single book new. It's not alone. Very popular mass produced books are cheaper... Wizards stuff is the cheapest but great games from Fantasy Flight Games (like Animia) get closer to $40 on average. Sadly, the most interesting new RPG products are never listed at Amazon - I just picked up the new Dresden Files RPG for $80 (MSRP was well over $100) and Hero Sixth Edition earlier this year for $70 (MSRP was well over $100). Amazon has the basic books for Hero but not the core set. If I've bought 100 new RPGs this year (probably closer to 120), no more than about 20 were even available at Amazon.

-Dave

Doug Williams
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 3:38 pm

wavemotion wrote:Ptolus at Amazon was a bit more than $100 for the single book new. It's not alone. Very popular mass produced books are cheaper... Wizards stuff is the cheapest but great games from Fantasy Flight Games (like Animia) get closer to $40 on average. Sadly, the most interesting new RPG products are never listed at Amazon - I just picked up the new Dresden Files RPG for $80 (MSRP was well over $100) and Hero Sixth Edition earlier this year for $70 (MSRP was well over $100). Amazon has the basic books for Hero but not the core set. If I've bought 100 new RPGs this year (probably closer to 120), no more than about 20 were even available at Amazon.

-Dave

Sad for the hobby then. I don't know too many Wal-Mart or Pizza Hut employees who could afford those prices.

wavemotion
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 4:08 pm

Doug Williams wrote:Sad for the hobby then. I don't know too many Wal-Mart or Pizza Hut employees who could afford those prices.

As my mentor would say... "they put some things on the high shelf so not everyone can reach them."

Fortuantely it's not all sad. There are a huge number of really innovative RPGs that are given away freely. Among the less innovative: amazing retro-clones like Labyrinth Lord (based on the Moldvay-Cook edition of D&D) or Swords and Wizardry (based on the White Box D&D) or Old School Reference and Index Compilation (OSRIC) (based on 1e AD&D) or GORE (based on Basic Roleplaying; the system used by RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu among others). And about 300 other freebies (both traditional and more Indie-style games) we track at RPG Geek. Many of the big free games are so well written you would have trouble telling them from a commercial release - and many have a line of adventures to go with it. Many of us write RPGs to give away (my Strike Force 9th Edition has been free for 25 years). Unlike most other hobbies, you never have to spend a penny to enjoy dozens of quality RPGs for a lifetime... well, I suspect you would still have to buy a Ticonderoga pencil from time to time (though at least one RPG I know of only uses the hundredths digit of a stopwatch for the randomizer and a few stones for tracking inventory... useful for RP-ing when hiking).

-Dave

Doug Williams
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 4:33 pm

wavemotion wrote:As my mentor would say... "they put some things on the high shelf so not everyone can reach them."

Fortuantely it's not all sad. There are a huge number of really innovative RPGs that are given away freely. Among the less innovative: amazing retro-clones like Labyrinth Lord (based on the Moldvay-Cook edition of D&D) or Swords and Wizardry (based on the White Box D&D) or Old School Reference and Index Compilation (OSRIC) (based on 1e AD&D) or GORE (based on Basic Roleplaying; the system used by RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu among others). And about 300 other freebies (both traditional and more Indie-style games) we track at RPG Geek. Many of the big free games are so well written you would have trouble telling them from a commercial release - and many have a line of adventures to go with it. Many of us write RPGs to give away (my Strike Force 9th Edition has been free for 25 years). Unlike most other hobbies, you never have to spend a penny to enjoy dozens of quality RPGs for a lifetime... well, I suspect you would still have to buy a Ticonderoga pencil from time to time (though at least one RPG I know of only uses the hundredths digit of a stopwatch for the randomizer and a few stones for tracking inventory... useful for RP-ing when hiking).

-Dave

Good answer. :thumright:

Glad to hear the hobby will not die from lack of $$. Now, if only I had more time.....

nyjastul69
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 9:24 pm

How does one go about voting on these products?

wavemotion
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 9:38 pm

nyjastul69 wrote:How does one go about voting on these products?

We allow any RPG Geek member to vote. Membership is, obviously, free. Once a member, you can rank one of two ways.

At the bottom of every RPG Item entry is a "User Information" module. You use this module to track a copy of an item in your collection, rate an item, etc. You do not need to mark an item as owned (you can rate products you don't own... games you have played, etc).

And/Or: You can use the Browse->RPG Item menu to show all RPG items by rank... when that list is showing you can hover your mouse of the column that says "Your Rating" and if you click, you can select a rating.

Your rating shows almost immediately (about 10 minute cache) but it will not contribute to the overall ranking until the next morning (the system re-calculates ranks once/day... then it must sleep and prepare spells again).

You can change your rating at will or remove your rating(s) at any time - it's a live (well... 1 day delay) system.

I recommend tracking your collection as part of the ratings... if only because you can customize a view of your collection and make it look kinda cool:

-Dave

nyjastul69
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 11:52 pm

Meh. It's free. I'm game. What's considered poor form when voting?

The reason I asked about voting was because I joined, but the sites a bit busy visually and I'm not a very internet saavy person. Thanks.

Edit: The site doesn't like me. I'm going with your second option. I really don't want to create a collection. I've spent 27 years doing that already.

I log in. System says you're logged in. I click browse, dropdown database displays, I click RPG items (17878), I get a list of items but the user/password fields are blank. It's seems like it's logging me out when I do that. I hover over the items but I don't see a rating option. It's prolly my interneptitude.

wavemotion
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Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 7:38 am

nyjastul69 wrote:Meh. It's free. I'm game. What's considered poor form when voting?

Our User Guide gives our rating guidelines:

http://rpg.geekdo.com/wiki/page/User_Guide#toc13

I wrote the Users Guide so yell at me via PM as needed

I log in. System says you're logged in. I click browse, dropdown database displays, I click RPG items (17878), I get a list of items but the user/password fields are blank.

I've never seen the system actively log someone out. In fact, the system should keep you logged in until you manually log out (I go months between having to log in... much the same way as the Acaeum handles it). I'll peek at your account settings to see if it's something obvious.

-Dave

puterdragon
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Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:45 am

wavemotion wrote:I'll admit the numbers are somewhat staggering. In our first year of RPG Geek we'll likely have 250,000 unique visitors (well, unique IPs which means someone visiting the site from home and work would count as two).

BGG (our big brother - of whom we are simply a squeaky voice in the shadows) gets 80,000 unique visitors per day (and Monday is always our heaviest traffic day... tsk tsk) and 1.1 million unique visitors per month. With a BGG registered user base at close to a third of a million people, RPG Geek still remains very much the red-headed stepchild. In some ways, I'm happy for that as it allows us a bit more of a close knit feeling within the building community.

-Dave

Impressive registration/visitation numbers. I want to register with a site so I can indulge in discussing rules, themes, preferences, etc. with gamers. I'll make an adventure of it and visit soon.
Keep up the fine work. You're focus on development/building works well for me.

ashmire13
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Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 10:24 am

puterdragon wrote:
Impressive registration/visitation numbers. I want to register with a site so I can indulge in discussing rules, themes, preferences, etc. with gamers. I'll make an adventure of it and visit soon.
Keep up the fine work. You're focus on development/building works well for me.

Yep, I have to say whilst I don't really get the Geekgold thing yet, the community there are very helpful and (in the BGG area at least) very knowledgeable and helpful in getting missing components.

I've just managed to pick up two games that I have been after for years, but didn't want to pay the big ebay prices. I'm learning the 'there's always another' principle still! :lol:

But thats two more GW games for me that I needed/wanted for a fraction of their ebay prices! One was just the price of postage

Rolls a '3'

"Did I hit.....?"

wavemotion
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Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 10:59 am

ashmire13 wrote:
Yep, I have to say whilst I don't really get the Geekgold thing yet, the community there are very helpful and (in the BGG area at least) very knowledgeable and helpful in getting missing components.

Geekgold is probably the most misunderstood component of the 'Geek. It tends to be one of the thigns that really irritates other sites who don't frequent the 'Geek. Uninformed people call it a false economy. Uniformed people call it a promoter of junk entries (take a look at our strict submission guidelines on RPG Geek and try your best to get a shit picture uploaded).

The truth is that it's an experience system. No more or no less than the one devised by Gygax/Areneson. Actually, it was developed before them, but, hey... we're in the Acaeum! We actively try to give the stuff away - when people contribute to most sites the best you get is a credit in some backwater page and maybe a "post count" (i.e. Active Collector, Prolific Collector, etc). We've expanded upon that and provide a means for people who are actively contributing and making for a better community for all the other people who visit the site. When you write a review you get some small system geekgold - but what really happens it that other patrons read your comments, they may or may not buy the product and if they discover the next greatest thing since sliced bread for their RPG group, they tip the poster. I've seen geekgold tips (each person who contributes gets a 'tip jar') that are often in the 10gg to 20gg range. A couple of reviews, a couple of good posts to the site and you've got enough for an avatar. A bit more and you can get some microbadges to showcase your support for one cause, show, hobby or activity. I bought a little retrogamer joystick microbadge to show my support for the Atari 2600... when I click on it I can see the other 300 'Geeks who also have a love for old classic games. It's a community within a community and allows us to find like-minded people. My current microbadges include all sorts of old-school D&D stuff - so the people I want to find me can find me

In any event, geek gold is something we actively seek to give away to people who contribute. Whenever I discover a new Acaeum member joining the site and rate some games, I always give 30 geekgold so they can get their avatar and always assign the Acaeum microbadge so they can display it proudly.

But thats two more GW games for me that I needed/wanted for a fraction of their ebay prices! One was just the price of postage

It's one of the reasons I cataloged my boardgame and RPG collection on the 'Geek and enjoy watching the community grow (I'm member #30 out of .3 million and can say that very few sites build community as well as the 'Geek... I highly recommend the free O'Reilly publishing The Art of Community to anyone who wants to understand what we do over there). I can trade (the math trades are my favorite... where people get something they for something they don't and don't have to trade directly... for example, I can trade X to you, you trade Y to Jason and Jason trades Z to me... though the algorithm can work a 6-way trade with ease). Not to mention sales are a fraction of the ebay prices (we link to ebay and Amazon so you can see the going prices on RPG books...)

-Dave

puterdragon
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Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 12:08 pm

You know, it's a funny thing how most of my friends--gamers and non-gamers alike--think that building up a d&d collection now for future gaming in our later years is a great thing--even cool and all right. But isn't it interesting how easily we tend to regard our-(gamer)-selves as a subculture on the outside of the mainstream? Mainstream or not, my friends are sure-well coming along anyway, and it is, and will be, a blast--regardless of what society, culture, so-called elites, in-groups/out-groups thik.
The fact is that the developers/builders of the world are all geeks, thinking outside the status quo; in other words, imagination and creation as an alternative to inertia and consumption.
Gary

Xaxaxe
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Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 12:23 pm

Uninformed people call it a false economy.

It pretty much is a false economy.

Uniformed people call it a promoter of junk entries ...

It pretty much does promote this exact thing.

(take a look at our strict submission guidelines on RPG Geek and try your best to get a shit picture uploaded).

Bwah! Not sure who you think you're fooling here. BGG is filled with shit photos. Overflowing. They are everywhere. Give me half an hour, and I could find at least 100.

That's what happens when your "moderators" don't do any moderating and the entire system is turned over to the users. Too many braves; not enough chiefs.

The truth is that it's an experience system.

No the truth is that your buddies Aldie and AssholeDerk have set up a pretty impressive scam and gotten the sheep to buy into it.

You make your users â€” you know, the people who provide 100 percent of your content â€” buy avatars, buy badges, buy microbadges, and pretty much buy everything else than every other site in the world gives away for free. Your GeekGold is the crack-cocaine that fuels all of this bullshit.

We've expanded upon that and provide a means for people who are actively contributing and making for a better community for all the other people who visit the site.

Yawn. Straight out of the employee's handbook.

Whenever I discover a new Acaeum member joining the site and rate some games, I always give 30 geekgold so they can get their avatar and always assign the Acaeum microbadge so they can display it proudly.

Well, this is the first thing you've said that makes me not want to type the word "bullshit." That's a nice gesture. But it raises such a blatantly obvious question: why not skip the GeekGold song-and-dance in the first place and just give all users avatars right from the beginning? You know, like every other site in the world?

+++++

I've used BGG since 2003, just to provide some background â€” you know, back when the site was good. When GeekLists were cool lists of games instead of "Tribute to My Cat" or "Omaha Game Club Games Played On July 1" or "That Oil Spill Is So Mean."

But I barely visit any longer, and I've certainly stopped contributing to Aldie and AssholeDerk's retirement funds. You've actually managed to create three systems over there that have turned otherwise well-adjusted people into five-dollar hookers:

* GeekGold, which has created a false economy and the ability to "purchase" status and validation;
* The horrible thumbs-up system, which creates much of the same, but more specifically is geared toward a sense of worth within the community (and has also led to the burying of useful content behind 80 metric tons of crap that a select group of about 100 power-users controls by simply thumbing everything from each other).
* The ill-conceived allowance for passive-aggressive behavior, which has turned a lot of basically normal gamers into raging assholes. Not to mention turned what should be a one-page thread of two guys disagreeing with each other into a 15-page opus because both parties can't just simply say, "You suck"; they have to carefully word their way around it while looking over their shoulders for Octavian's Ban Stick.

+++++

I do recommend that Acaeum users check out RPG Geek, if only because I'm a lifelong believer in the "judge for yourself" system.

But I recommend in the highest possible way that you literally ignore the GeekGold and thumbs-up systems. Just pretend they don't exist. Absolutely no good has come out of them or will ever come out of them.

MetaSigma
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Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 1:22 pm

I've checked it out and found it somewhat helpful but generally uninteresting. However, my major problem with the site is that... I'm not a geek (or at least I don't consider myself one), I'm not much interested in proudly declaring myself a geek, I'm not a member of any sort of "geek culture", and I mildly resent being labeled as one just because I occasionally play RPGs and collect them. I have the same problem with Best Buy's "Geek Squad". As a former Systems Manager, I find the term insulting.

Ithaca Dragon
-==(UDIC)==-

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