Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Fig is not a developer, though. It is a crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter, it just operates on a different model. You still need a company who'd like to make a game out of the materials. The number of traditional RPG devs who'd make (for instance) a good dungeon-crawler game is fairly minuscule these days.

My understanding of Fig is that it is a sort of crowd-sourced venture capital....uh...thing.

It's weird (but perhaps fitting considering the history of all things the Gygax Estate has been involved in to date) that they're announcing the means by which funds will be raised for eventual projects prior to such projects actually existing. They seem to be saying "we're accepting pitches from video game developers to make games based on Gary Gygax's unpublished IP and if we like your pitch we'll try to raise funds for you to create it via Fig," which seems totally ass-backwards. How are people supposed to make pitches to develop games based around an IP nobody has seen? Is the idea that these would-be developers will convince Alex Gygax of their bona fides and then he will let them peruse the Gygax IP to see what in it they want to develop?

EDIT: Is the Gary Gygax name of such value (especially in the computer gaming space) that some freelance developer with a hot idea for a game is going to sign a license with Gygax Games that's almost certainly very favorable to them, and presumably sign a very restrictive NDA before even having a chance to peruse the IP archive to see if there's anything in it they can and want to work with, rather than developing it on their own or with some other partner? Is access to the Fig fundraising platform so much of a game-changer to make this arrangement actually seem attractive? Or is this just more Gygax Estate nonsense?

I have to admit: I just don't care about unseen Gygax stuff anymore. He wrote almost everything I find worth a damn in A/D&D; but there comes a point where, whatever I haven't seen - it didn't happen for a reason.

And bluntly, his survivors that would profit off any legacy seem like skeevy pieces of shit.

Gary's legacy isn't what he did that I haven't seen; it's what I do at the table with other people. Fuck Gail Gygax and her greedy incompetence. At this point I sincerely hope all of those people keep holding out for the big score, but wait so long they get nothing at all.

I caught wind of this today and have a few thoughts:

1.) Fig is a platform that helps startup software companies find investors so that they can create games. In general, the startup has come to an agreement on IP licensing (when appropriate) with the IP holder, and then are making their pitch via Fig. I find it extremely curious that the articles that have been posted claim that Fig is helping Gygax Games find a developer. I can't imagine what kind of IP that Gygax Games holds that is so attractive that the crowdfunding platform would try to broker a deal between GG and a dev shop. I might be way out of the know here, but isn't it just maps of Castle Greyhawk plus some Lejendary Adventures stuff? Maybe a card game? To be fair, maybe they do this kind of brokering all the time, but it doesn't show up as an advertised service on their site.

2.) I spent some time checking out previous investment ops on Fig and this one stood out to me: https://www.fig.co/campaigns/jay-and-si ... lunt-punch This is a game with what seems like a pretty good pitch for what it is, a developer on board, a well known pop culture IP with a cult following, and it only attracted 450k in funding? Curiously enough, it seems that 75% of that was from investors/speculators rather than fans. At any rate, it's not "walking off into the sunset" kind of money.

3.) To echo EOTB's post: People who create for a living are generally pretty opportunistic in my experience. If there were mind-blowing never-before-seen creations sitting in an archive somewhere, somebody would have found a way to make a ton of money off of it by now. I'm going to guess, and I'm totally open to the idea that I'm way off on this, that the only money makers that GG is sitting on are historical in nature... coffee table book material, personal letters, etc.

JCBoney wrote:I read this earlier today and started to post it, but why bother... it's truly the same old story.

Here's the link, in case someone gives a shit:


polygon.com/2018/4/17/17246766/dnd-dungeons-dragons-gary-gygax-games-unpublished-work-fig

From the article:

"Pen and paper is a dying art. Computer games, video games, they’re the next generation, the next wave of games and I’ve always wanted to see them on that new medium and I’ve always wanted to be working with someone who’s excited as I am about it.”

That sounds short-sighted to me. I think Gygaxian A/D&D will always be played, and at some future date it will be considerably more widely-played than today. Long before this century is over, I think computer games will be replaced by little computer thingies the size of rice grains, implanted into the head and that directly stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain, making the "middleman" of games superfluous. (This of course doesn't address who will volunteer to feed and to change the diapers of those with the implants. My guess is "no one".) Dune, I think, has some predictive value.

Full disclosure of my biases on this score: I do not like computer games at all. I would rather browse a phone book than play a computer game.

Based on pure guesswork, I'd say the IP most likely to receive computer game treatment (if it happens) is:

1. Probably Lejendary Adventure as the basis of the system (one of Gary's design goals was easy translation into computer gaming)
2. Probably Hall of Many Panes dungeon/scenario material
3. Maybe the Castle Greyhawk dungeons, translated to the computer game system that is chosen (obviously can't use "Greyhawk" name, though)
4. Probably Lejendary Earth as a "main setting"
5. Maybe other LA-related material like the Asterouge stuff, but I doubt that would be front-and-center, initially

If any of that happens, I'll check it out, of course, but I can't say I'm chomping at the bit or holding my breath. I'm much more interested in the possibility of previously unreleased pen-and-paper (or PDF) D&D material from Gary's scanned notes. Again, not holding my breath, but if Paul is involved I'm more hopeful than I would be, otherwise.