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NameHurtBrain posted:
No, they just gently caress all the time so they don't understand it. Wise Man's Fear posted:“We teach,” she said. “We give names…We plant. We make babies.” She shrugged. “Many things.”
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Nov 23, 2016 19:32
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Super open sexual society that doesn't know where babies come from? Is it some sort of Amazon thing where it's all women? 
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Mors Rattus posted:This is actually an explicit power in Demon: the Descent. You can learn an Exploit (read: big obvious magic power) called Play on Words that lets you alter reality based on the unintended (or intended) puns people make around you. One of the Unknown Armies supplements has a school of magic which can transform things into their anagrams.
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Nov 23, 2016 22:25
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hyphz posted:One of the Unknown Armies supplements has a school of magic which can transform things into their anagrams. A Grammarian Gate (Anagram Gematria) Edit: Careful to not get busted by the FBI for Islamic extremism (A Garage Imam Rant) Dr. Arbitrary fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Nov 23, 2016 |
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Nov 23, 2016 22:41
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NameHurtBrain posted:
Fun fact: Australian aborigines never figured out where babies came from, either. They just kind of figured babies showed up whenever, and that sex could kind of 'open the door' to the baby spirits, but wasn't necessary at all. (note: the above is a heavy simplification)
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Nov 23, 2016 23:24
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Taciturn Tactician posted:You know what else would accomplish nothing? Posting about how you're not going to post about something. Well obviously mimes are bound by their code of honour as mimes so if you cover your ears their silent performance can't be heard.
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Nov 24, 2016 01:06
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John Lee posted:Fun fact: Australian aborigines never figured out where babies came from, either. They just kind of figured babies showed up whenever, and that sex could kind of 'open the door' to the baby spirits, but wasn't necessary at all. I was about to post that yeah, some early societies legit just never make that connection, but it's a super weird and off-model part of an already off-model chunk of the narrative -- Kvothe's One True Waifu, who was originally presented as smart and competent and about 4 times as interesting as Kvothe himself, but later acquired the bad flaw of turning into a severe wilting idiot whenever Kvothe is around, is in some kind of urgent trouble, so of course Kvothe goes off to visit karateboning dojos for months. Never mind that his ostensible main motivation is researching the Super Evils who destroyed his not-a-racist-caricature-of-Romani family/troupe, which he has done for, at an overestimate, 25 pages out of the 800 or so at this point in the narrative.
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Nov 24, 2016 01:13
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My dream career is a late 90s D&D author because you could apparently get away with loving ANYTHING Edit Wow that's some bad phrasing
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Nov 24, 2016 01:16
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Well that too, bastards & bloodlines exists for a reason  .
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Nov 24, 2016 01:20
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The one common factor between the different cultures that didn't know sex=babies is that they didn't have agriculture. As soon as a culture starts raising cattle, sheep, or chickens, the connection is invariably made. It's been a long time since I read Wise Man's Fear, but I don't recall the Adem being hunter-gatherers.
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Nov 24, 2016 01:31
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Xiahou Dun posted:This is the second time you've done this in the last two pages so I'm calling you out on this : Yes, because that's what you do when talking about literary devices. You use examples from works people might be more familiar with to construct a comparison if necessary. Would you prefer if I talked about the epistolary novel instead? quote:Also I forgot that you whined about "people on the 3e optimization boards" not playing the game correctly for reading the rules and using 6th grade math. If you're thinking that people who spent more time reading books on the toilet and getting into Internet arguments are "more correct" than the people who actually played the game, then you need to sort yourself out dude. NGDBSS posted:Dragon 359 was the last for 3E, actually, also by Ed Greenwood and still a bit self-indulgent. The basic idea there is that the title characters get invited to Ed Greenwood's house and learn about the existence of Dragon Magazine, but it certainly could have done better with its use of metafiction. (I own only two issues of Dragon, and 359 is one of them given that it was the last physical issue before 4E's switch to a digital format.) My bad. The last printed issue came to mind first, but I googled and turned up the 30th Anniversary issue and made a bad mistake. My apologies.
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Nov 24, 2016 01:35
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JackMann posted:The one common factor between the different cultures that didn't know sex=babies is that they didn't have agriculture. As soon as a culture starts raising cattle, sheep, or chickens, the connection is invariably made. Unsurprisingly for bad genre fiction, the economics of the Adem are super handwavy and badly done -- their main export is Weeaboo Anime Fightan in the form of bodyguards and mercenaries, and it's implied they generate cash from this and just plain buy all they need, which seems...sketchy, because what did they do before they took advantage of an external-to-their-culture market in rear end-stomping?
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Nov 24, 2016 01:35
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palecur posted:Unsurprisingly for bad genre fiction, the economics of the Adem are super handwavy and badly done -- their main export is Weeaboo Anime Fightan in the form of bodyguards and mercenaries, and it's implied they generate cash from this and just plain buy all they need, which seems...sketchy, because what did they do before they took advantage of an external-to-their-culture market in rear end-stomping? Presumably did what the orcish hordes did and just rear end-stomped everyone else to take what they needed, until they found a better way.
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Nov 24, 2016 01:41
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palecur posted:Unsurprisingly for bad genre fiction, the economics of the Adem are super handwavy and badly done -- their main export is Weeaboo Anime Fightan in the form of bodyguards and mercenaries, and it's implied they generate cash from this and just plain buy all they need, which seems...sketchy, because what did they do before they took advantage of an external-to-their-culture market in rear end-stomping? Mercenary cultures can work, as they have existed historically, but even then they used it as a buffer or for luxury goods. You can't rely entirely on other communities for your food production, even today, as your very survival becomes dangerously dependent on market fluctuations.
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Nov 24, 2016 01:44
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Arivia posted:If you're thinking that people who spent more time reading books on the toilet and getting into Internet arguments are "more correct" than the people who actually played the game, then you need to sort yourself out dude. "I don't agree with your opinions about D&D, therefore you just read the books while making GBS threads and get into internet arguments and never even play". Really?
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Nov 24, 2016 02:07
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Dude just really loves his ed greenwood fanfic, don't judge
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Nov 24, 2016 02:14
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Arivia continues to be the single greatest honeypot for people who don't know how to use the ignore list.
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Nov 24, 2016 02:17
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Arivia posted:
"The idea of someone looking at a rules system and being able to do basic math is mystifying to me, obviously no one could compare numbers or think while also role playing. Thus they are some nebulous class of optimizers for interacting with the rules as presented." Like, half of the game breaking stuff you can just stumble into.
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Nov 24, 2016 02:56
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palecur posted:Unsurprisingly for bad genre fiction, the economics of the Adem are super handwavy and badly done -- their main export is Weeaboo Anime Fightan in the form of bodyguards and mercenaries, and it's implied they generate cash from this and just plain buy all they need, which seems...sketchy, because what did they do before they took advantage of an external-to-their-culture market in rear end-stomping? Were pretty poor and had a lot smaller population, presumably.
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Nov 24, 2016 04:13
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John Lee posted:Were pretty poor and had a lot smaller population, presumably. It's basically just the story of the Mongols, but for some reason they felt like being mercenaries more than conquers. The Mongols were famously dirt poor as poo poo up until they started taking over everything around them. In a book full of total poo poo, that much is at least a little believable. Also Arivia, everyone in my former group were consistent posters on char ops for the better part of three or four years whilst also playing multiple times per night. I have no idea where you get three retarded idea that people so well versed in the rules that they could make some of the more esoteric connections somehow also just never played the game they clearly obsessed over. It's like ranting and raving that the competitive Pokemon community are all theory crafters who never play the game despite the thousands of hours they put into their hobby.
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Nov 24, 2016 04:35
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AlphaDog posted:"I don't agree with your opinions about D&D, therefore you just read the books while making GBS threads and get into internet arguments and never even play". You may have forgotten what the 3e player base was like, but there were tons of people just buying the books to read and make cool characters who never even played the game. It was a huge problem.
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Nov 24, 2016 04:56
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How is "people bought books but never used them in game" a problem?
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Nov 24, 2016 04:58
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Kurieg posted:How is "people bought books but never used them in game" a problem? It wasn't a problem for WotC's bottom line. It was a problem when those people (such as on the Wizards character optimization forums) started insisting they knew better than the actual people playing the game at the table, instead of treating it as a theoretical exercise.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:00
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Arivia posted:It wasn't a problem for WotC's bottom line. It was a problem when those people (such as on the Wizards character optimization forums) started insisting they knew better than the actual people playing the game at the table, instead of treating it as a theoretical exercise. How are they a problem? What problem did they create?
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Nov 24, 2016 05:04
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By reading the rules. Of the game. That are right there. I grew up playing 2E and was actually a dick about it but come on. These are the printed words that are the base of the game. Edit : I don't mean the funny stuff like drowning being immortality. I mean just realizing that fireball is garbage vs save or die spam turning everything into one round rocket tag. Xiahou Dun fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Nov 24, 2016 |
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Nov 24, 2016 05:05
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Skwirl posted:How are they a problem? What problem did they create? The problem of exposing the underlying flaws that people were desperately trying to pretend didn't exist.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:06
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Xiahou Dun posted:By reading the rules. The printed words of the game didn't lead to the degeneracy a lot of people got into. Not at all. Not Frank Trollman's poo poo, not people never paying attention to "ask your DM" tagged stuff, etc etc etc. There was a huge upswing of player entitlement and straight out insanity in 3e and that community just went terrible places because of it.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:07
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Do you actually have a point or are you just using grog buzzwords. "Player entitlement" gently caress.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:09
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And again. Those printed words did lead to that. Because they are the rules in a rules document.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:10
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Xiahou Dun posted:Do you actually have a point or are you just using grog buzzwords. Dude, you're the one who keeps bringing this up in relation to a conversation I'm guessing we had in this thread ages ago. Players expecting to use new books immediately at the table without any attention paid to whether they have a place in the current game. Player expectations and feeling entitled to using expansion content without limit in many 3e games. And then people thinking that 3e actually ran on bullshit like the "wish economy" or whatever the gently caress else. 3e got to the point where most players expected owning new books (if they bothered to do so instead of pirating them) was the minimum requirement for using anything in a game. No restrictions, no communication with other players about the game, just using new stuff without limit. It's not just 3e D&D's problem - VtM suffered from the same, with endless stories of True Brujah and all that, but it was a thing. The player culture warped the entire game. It wasn't about an experience, about collaborative storytelling - it was about theoretical arguments, posturing for internet discussions, and completing "builds" at the cost of a lot of what makes D&D shine.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:15
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In my anecdotal experience, the people who were the most likely to buy books for bathroom reading and not play the game were such poisonous assholes that they couldn't find any table that would put up with their poo poo. In large part they were less interested in charop as they were blatant cheating (I rolled 4 18s, I swear! And my last GM gave me that artifact fair and square!). They were also more likely than the average gamer to be hugely into the lore and fiction of their chosen setting, usually Forgotten Realms, and were quick to jump on any insult to its honor as the Best Fantasy Anything Ever(TM). Not, y'know, accusing. Just what I have experienced.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:15
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While I acknowledge the existence of a "how to introduce this to your on-going game" chapter to each new big mechanics sourcebook, such as Psionics or ToB or Incarnum, I have to admit I find it a bit difficult to conceive of how it would be a problem. Obviously if Joe walks into your session next week, slaps down his new book and tells everyone he's now a Psychic Warrior sight unseen, that's an issue, so you should talk to everyone about if you're going to allow the new material to be used at all, but does it have to be more complicated than "Joe thinks this new PrC is cool, and I've read it, and it seems fine to me, so I'm going to give him the opportunity to rejigger his character so he can aim for it later on"?
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Nov 24, 2016 05:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:While I acknowledge the existence of a "how to introduce this to your on-going game" chapter to each new big mechanics sourcebook, such as Psionics or ToB or Incarnum, I have to admit I find it a bit difficult to conceive of how it would be a problem. Nah, the problem was that it was far more of the first and also tons of complaints that DMs weren't allowed to say no at all in the second case. Like it was printed in a book, and it was obviously okay no matter what without restriction. And players, especially the charop people who cared more about the rules than what they called "fluff", didn't really look at the context or narrative material in supplements and repeatedly argued that things should be included no matter their basis. There were endless forum wars of people arguing that books should have less narrative material and more player-focused rules in order to give them more character creation pieces at the cost of the rest of the game. It was BAD. And sure, this stuff happens a lot of the time in various RPGs and communities. But in 3e it affected the entire product line and how Wizards was designing and releasing products.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:46
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Ha! You fell for one of the classic blunders! The most well known of which is never start a flamewar in 4chan, but only slightly less well-known is this! Never go up against Arivia when threads are on the line!
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Nov 24, 2016 05:54
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Arivia posted:Nah, the problem was that it was far more of the first and also tons of complaints that DMs weren't allowed to say no at all in the second case. Like it was printed in a book, and it was obviously okay no matter what without restriction. And players, especially the charop people who cared more about the rules than what they called "fluff", didn't really look at the context or narrative material in supplements and repeatedly argued that things should be included no matter their basis. There were endless forum wars of people arguing that books should have less narrative material and more player-focused rules in order to give them more character creation pieces at the cost of the rest of the game. It was BAD. This may come as a shock but most groups play to a greater or lesser extent in homebrew campaign settings. Crunch is more useful to more gamers than setting information that probably doesn't apply to most tables.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:56
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Lemniscate Blue posted:This may come as a shock but most groups play to a greater or lesser extent in homebrew campaign settings. Crunch is more useful to more gamers than setting information that probably doesn't apply to most tables. Yes, but arguing for that in Forgotten Realms books at the time was counterproductive. And it wasn't just setting specific stuff - I remember people getting upset over the better fleshed out long prestige class format in later 3.5, for example.
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Nov 24, 2016 06:00
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*Drops a bag of rats, uses whirlwind attack and repeatedly cleaves the derail*
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Nov 24, 2016 06:32
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The fact that the only thing standing between a class as written turning into a horribly degenerate black hole and a fictional character is the DM's willingness to put up with bull poo poo doesn't absolve those classes from being poorly written. If someone legit tried to play pun-pun in a FR game then yes I'd expect them to be laughed off the table, because they should be laughed away from every table. Most char op is thought experiment by design because only the most toxic of individuals would bring that to a table. That doesn't mean char oppers are bad, you can know that codzilla ur priest is god but still want to try out a janky frenzied berserker for funsies. Besides you can break the game almost as hard with a vanilla archivist as you can with pun pun and I can find much less compelling reasons to deny that. And if you're stopping your players from doing things they've explicitly stated they want to do because of the canon of the lore then maybe it's time to go off script. The enjoyment of your players and your group as a whole should be more important than making sure Drizzt gets to the church on time barring your adventure path involving the do'urden wedding party and Drizzt's massive hangover.
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Nov 24, 2016 06:44
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Arivia posted:Yes, but arguing for that in Forgotten Realms books at the time was counterproductive. And it wasn't just setting specific stuff - I remember people getting upset over the better fleshed out long prestige class format in later 3.5, for example. Well, 3.5 FR had the whole thing where as I understand it corporate pushed hard for more mechanical content because it sold. Compare the march of crunch in Silver Marches with Underdark, for example, where it goes from five PrCs in the back of the book to a laundry list of front-chapter races, classes, spells, items... And it probably did help sales, but probably didn't help creatively. I don't know how rushed the mechanical material was, but you do get some pretty memorable charop-beloved material from the line (Nar Demonbinder, Mineral Warrior, Incanatrix, Initiate of Mystra, Spelldancer, all of which could probably support a Murphy's post apiece), particularly for spellcasters. It no doubt wasn't intended but at the same time it feels like a collision of several different pressures on the line. Also Sean K Reynolds was involved with writing some of the above. Not saying it was his fault, but... 
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Nov 24, 2016 07:18
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First off, a minor one. I've always had a bit a of a feeling that D&D basic costs are a bit out of whack. In D&D 5e, Alchemist's Fire is a 1 pound flask with a market price of 50 gp. A pound of gold is equal in value to 50 gp. Thus, alchemist's fire is literally worth its weight in gold, yet only has the piddling effect of 1d4 fire damage so long as someone fails a piss-easy DC10 dexterity save. And that's before sales markup! The next one is honestly pretty thematic, but I still wanted to run the numbers. In WH40k Only War, your guardsman cannot hit anything even if they're handed the opportunity. Any roll in Only War is a percentile roll-under vs. your character's ability. At character generation the best possible Ballistics Skill is 51 or so. That's a Weapon Specialist guardsman who rolled maximum Ballistics Skill and has all of the regiment bonuses they I can find. Generally, for any other class and a sane regiment, on a good day you'll end up with around 40. If you shoot a target at Point Blank (<2 meters) range, you can add +30 to the difficulty (that is, your Ballistics Skill +30, roll under). Other situational benefits, like the target being unaware, do not stack. Thus, a fresh elite-shooter character attempts to hit a prone, unaware, stunned enemy with their lasgun nearly pressed against the guy's back... ...And fails to hit about 20% of the time. Good job on all that training. That only gets you one hit, by the way, out of a semiauto burst of three or so. You can an additional hit, up to the weapon's burst number, for each 10 you roll under he goal number. Thus, you actually miss more like 75% of the time. If you wanted to pump that number up to 100%, you'll need a lot of help. You could take a half-action-aim (+10) standard shot (also +10)- that is, a single shot instead of a burst. That, or aim for a full round- that is, holding your gun against this guy's back for five seconds for a +20 bonus. Once you level up, making that horrifyingly difficult shot on the fly will only cost 1600 XP to get +20 to your ballistics skill, assuming your character has the two Aptitudes that allow easier training. Otherwise, the cost is either 2500 with one Aptitude or 4750 XP with neither. For reference, it costs 400 XP (again, at best) to get the highest-tier Talents like "Blademaster- reroll missed attack one per round" or "Target Selection- may shoot into melee without penalty." Maybe underwhelming in a vacuum, but in a system like this, a full reroll is huge. Shooting into melee usually gives you a -20 penalty, enough to change an easy double-kill shot into a glancing strike, and maybe hitting an ally. In any case, those are meant to be really good benefits, but they cost four times less than being able to guarantee an elite marksman's execution-style shot. Zomborgon fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Nov 24, 2016 |
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Nov 24, 2016 07:20
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Arivia, what do you mean by char op/theory crafting? Pun Pun-style God builds, weird bag of rats style rules exploits, prestige class cherry picking for chaining bonusses etc, Wizards who only prepare SoD spells?
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Nov 24, 2016 07:23
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