How Do You Plan to Use 4th Edition?

[Raellus]

Olefin, I think you may be falling prey to the Fallacy of Small Samples, or the Auditor's Fallacy.

13 "ignore it completely" responses out of 42 poll responses is significant, but it's only a third of the responders here. You could also look at this as 2/3 of the responders here do plan to make some use of v4. The Discord is an echo chamber, so it's not representative of the wider T2k fanbase. Using the Discord subset to prove v4 will be a flop is like using the Free League forum membership to prove it will be a smash.

Regardless, as Rainbow Six pointed out, 13 out of over 8,000 KS backers is insignificant, statistically, so I don't know how accurate your predictive "analysis" is going to be.

-

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Olefin, I think you may be falling prey to the Fallacy of Small Samples, or the Auditor's Fallacy.

13 "ignore it completely" responses out of 42 poll responses is significant, but it's only a third of the responders here. You could also look at this as 2/3 of the responders here do plan to make some use of v4. The Discord is an echo chamber, so it's not representative of the wider T2k fanbase. Using the Discord subset to prove v4 will be a flop is like using the Free League forum membership to prove it will be a smash.

Regardless, as Rainbow Six pointed out, 13 out of over 8,000 KS backers is insignificant, statistically, so I don't know how accurate your predictive "analysis" is going to be.

-

Its actually 45 responses you have here so far and that polling data would be based on the actual number of members here who regularly sign on and post/answer polls. Thus the numbers is a statistically accurate sample of those people here. As you said you attempted to gather data. We have what, 120 or so people who post or comment here on a regular basis? Thus you have a good sample.

And of those 45 the overall positive answers for the V4 as a whole to where they intend to play an actual V4 game with the rules and the setting is very low. Thus this does not bode well for a reboot that states that the V1 and V2.2 are not the future of the game - instead the V4 is that future.

And I would love to see more data gathered elsewhere and intend to do so on my FB group and suggest that on the other one. That will give a larger sample and thus more data to make a better projection for the V4 as a whole. I also plan to contact Tomas and suggest he do a poll as well which may show the difference between the FL market and the existing T2K market as to acceptance and "liking" of the game.

It may actually help them to focus more on what areas people want to see more of - similar to questions that have been asked here of things people are interested in seeing in the fanzine.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

According to the Kickstarter website Free League got 8,073 backers.

Not bad for what is basically a non-OSR appeal to nostalgia.

According to GDW's own production figures:

1e boxed set: 97,518 copies
2e core rulebook: 32,180 copies
2e boxed set: 5,240 copies
2.2 core rulebook: 7,757 copies

Don't quote me on this, but I want to say the print run for 2013 was 2,500 copies. PDF sales at the time 93GS closed up shop were Gold on DriveThruRPG, which put them between 501 and 1,000 copies; in the subsequent years, they've gone to Platinum, which I think is between 1,001 and 2,000 copies.

Bear in mind that those 8,073 backers are effectively pre-sales, a concept which didn't exist in the 1e/2e days - that's exclusive of the print run destined for the retail channel. We also don't know how many of those backers bought multiple copies as group purchases, gifts, or retail sales starters.

Originally Posted by Raellus

13 "ignore it completely" responses out of 42 poll responses is significant, but it's only a third of the responders here. You could also look at this as 2/3 of the responders here do plan to make some use of v4. The Discord is an echo chamber, so it's not representative of the wider T2k fanbase. Using the Discord subset to prove v4 will be a flop is like using the Free League forum membership to prove it will be a smash.

Regardless, as Rainbow Six pointed out, 13 out of over 8,000 KS backers is insignificant, statistically, so I don't know how accurate your predictive "analysis" is going to be.

Combining a statistically-insignificant sample with sampling bias is not a research method that would be defensible in my workplace. YMMV.

Some years ago, I rendered some advice to your correspondent. It seems an appropriate time to reiterate part of it:

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

It is an unfortunate geek tendency for individual fans or small local (or online) groups to project their own personal enthusiasm for a property onto the overall global population of potential customers, then make sweeping (and erroneous) generalizations about the commercial viability of their personal visions for said property. In some cases, this failed understanding goes so far as to drive catastrophically bad business decisions.

Intensity does not necessarily correlate to scale. In other words, being louder doesn't make anyone righter.

- C.

[unipus]

You'd have to be a pretty bad data scientist to think you could draw any truly useful conclusion from one poll on one fairly insignificant message board. It would be easy to make catastrophically bad missteps from doing so, though!

@Tegyrius - over what period of time are those sales figures? Some of them are pretty damn interesting.


(I'd also say that FL games in general, this one included, do have a strong if slightly obscured OSR essence to them, but that's another topic.)

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by unipus

@Tegyrius - over what period of time are those sales figures? Some of them are pretty damn interesting.

I believe they're for the lifetime of the company.

(I'd also say that FL games in general, this one included, do have a strong if slightly obscured OSR essence to them, but that's another topic.)

Fair point. I can see it with some, particularly Symbaroum and Forbidden Lands.

- C.

[unipus]

They definitely leaned all the way into it with Forbidden Lands, which is a beautiful, beautiful book.

Lifetime numbers make more sense. I wonder what % of the 1st edition sales were in year one, versus up until the release of v2, or maybe even after!

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by unipus

You'd have to be a pretty bad data scientist to think you could draw any truly useful conclusion from one poll on one fairly insignificant message board. It would be easy to make catastrophically bad missteps from doing so, though!

@Tegyrius - over what period of time are those sales figures? Some of them are pretty damn interesting.


(I'd also say that FL games in general, this one included, do have a strong if slightly obscured OSR essence to them, but that's another topic.)

Dont agree with you about insignificant message board - that is not what the forum juhlin is. And you can use the poll as a data starting point - FYI keep in mind that polling company's project political trends for the entire country based on samples of a few thousand people. As I said there needs to be more polling done.

Also the kickstarter numbers only show interest in the new version of the game when it was initially pitched to raise money. The question that needs to be determined now - especially before it gets codified into book form - is did the kickstarter population get what they paid for?

If the numbers here are indicative the answer is no.

That is why they need to do polling or have others do it on sites that have T2K players and fans who have seen the V4 and do it before they go to publication of the books.

PDF's are easy to change - I have done it, Raellus did it, etc. - that happens all the time on drivethrurpg.com releases - but its much harder to do it once you have printed books out there.

I know that for a fact - saw the fun one of my professors went thru in college having to send out corrections on a physics book he wrote that had three pages that had major errors on them that he had missed and another ten pages worth of minor corrections that were significant enough that they had to be fixed.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Olefin

Dont agree with you about insignificant message board - that is not what the forum juhlin is. And you can use the poll as a data starting point - FYI keep in mind that polling company's project political trends for the entire country based on samples of a few thousand people.

And they often get it wrong (e.g. 2016 US presidential election projections, both before and even on election day).

Originally Posted by Olefin

As I said there needs to be more polling done.

Absolutely. I commend you on your efforts to collect more data.

Originally Posted by Olefin

Also the kickstarter numbers only show interest in the new version of the game when it was initially pitched to raise money. The question that needs to be determined now - especially before it gets codified into book form - is did the kickstarter population get what they paid for?

Raw sales figures, and the poll here, aren't going to answer that question. To do so, you would have to specifically ask the KS backers, "did you get what you paid for?"

Originally Posted by Olefin

If the numbers here are indicative the answer is no.

Not necessarily. There are a few reasons why someone might have supported the v4 KS. Some supporters clearly wanted a game they could play right out of the box. Others may have always intended just to mine it for bits to use with earlier versions. Others may be completists, who backed v4 because the want to add it to their T2k collection, regardless of whether they intend to play it or not. Some backers may have just been curious. Additionally, some backers might not have had any expectations, vis-a-vis earlier versions (i.e. they just liked what they saw). This is purely anecdotal, but I've heard each of the first three afore-mentioned reasons cited by different forum members (or former members) who backed the v4 KS.

So, to sum up, more, better (i.e. more specific) data is definitely needed if you want answers to the questions you've posed, Olefin. In all sincerity, I wish you luck in collecting it. Please let us know what you learn (preferably by sharing the raw data).

Let's moot this. The OP is about how members here plan to use v4 (or not). The thread is starting to drift OT.

-

[unipus]

God help the company that bases anything they do on a poll of 50 people (who strongly exhibit a particular bias), that's the last I'll say on that.

To answer the question: I found out about FL's T2K acquisition around the same time I happened to be dusting off my old T2K books I found on the shelf anyway. It was the perfect timing. I was playing and enjoying another FL game at the time, but was considering running a T2K game with some of my military-minded friends.

The setting of the new edition lacks a bit of the detail and specificity of the old one, so far as some military aspects go. It's also a far cleaner system (as you might expect, with three decades of advancement to its advantage). I own all of the GDW editions (sorry, Tegyrius!) and, well, I don't find any of them particularly elegant or easy to run.

So as for what I plan to do/have been doing for months now: run a T2K game using a new, fairly elegant and easy to run system that also draws on all the resources and knowledge I have from 1st and 2nd editions. It's pretty ideal, really. The details I've thought they got wrong, I've changed or fixed. The systems I've felt aren't detailed enough, I've added on to a bit. It's ten times easier to add complexity to an elegant system than it is to find elegance in a complex one.

But I also can't remember a time I ran any game exactly RAW or in its 100% official setting. I call on external resources wherever I can find them. I use the 2.2 encounter generator. I use perchance tables. I use oracles inspired by Ironsworn (and hey, look what they did -- signed its creator to create similar material). I use 1st edition's motivation generator (and hey, look what they did -- implemented it in 4th edition). I'm currently finding the default day-by-day system of time and resource management tiresome, when you have to use it all the time, so I'm writing a system derived from Band of Blades that will generate missions at a higher level.

This is all stuff I assumed most if not all GMs did. Maybe I only talk to the ones who are also designers.

[Raellus]

Thanks to whoever resurrected this poll thread. Now that 4e's been out for a few years, it's worth revisiting our initial plans.

Originally, I'd plan to just mine 4e for various bits to incorporate into the v2.2 rule set that I'd been using for a decade or so but I decided to give the 4e system a try and I'm really glad that I did. It's a lot less unwieldy to use than v2.2 and, for the most part, it doesn't lose any verisimilitude.

I now run my T2k using the 1e world history and the 4e rules.

-