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Wow. Just when I was briefly considering actually shelling out money for ACTA Star Fleet (oh god I need my fix just one more game), this happens. gently caress you, Mongoose. quote:It is sad that we live in a time when artists are persecuted not only for their (humorous) artistic expressions, but even for (humorous) private expressions they make on their spare time. I come from the Soviet Union and I feel even the censors there were more liberal and these white knights who are rapidly taking over the hobby. We're literally more fascist than Soviet Russia! Yaaaay!
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Jun 20, 2012 03:11
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Okay seriously I wimped out on my Slayer's Guide to Female Gamers review in FATAL and Friends but what the gently caress who could ever say that it was good?
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Jun 20, 2012 03:19
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Darwinism posted:Okay seriously I wimped out on my Slayer's Guide to Female Gamers review in FATAL and Friends but what the gently caress who could ever say that it was good? Uri Grey.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:20
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Darwinism posted:They're making the argument that a petition to stop publishing a dude's horrible lovely misogynistic is the exact same as forcing him to never ever ever write or talk again. Free speech is making rape threats to defend 'humorous' products. 
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Jun 20, 2012 03:25
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Mikan posted:but no money To be fair everybody that offers to do it will be dudes whose credentials will consist of having watched over two an a half episodes of Vietnam Battlefields on the military channel.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:26
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Evil Mastermind posted:Something tells me I'm going to need to avoid this thread, most forums, and G+ for the next few days. Man, my G+ feed is calm and often boring, I'm not sure which one of us is doing it wrong.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:29
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I have 700 people in my Gaming circle. Most of them don't post, but this thing is going to loving explode tomorrow. I've already got a few people who I'm considering uncircling over this whole thing and it's barely started.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:34
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quote:James is a great writer and I personally love his work, both with Mongoose and with other companies. The Slayer's Guide to Female Gamers and The Munchkin's Guide to Power Gaming are my favorite meta-RPG books and many of my fellow players of both sexes agree.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:41
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jadarx posted:Free speech is making rape threats to defend 'humorous' products. This is literally a thing they're doing now. http://www.change.org/petitions/change-org-stop-letting-malyn-cooper-make-petitions They are signing this in order to spam rape threat emails at her. Today I was a little angry. Tonight, I swear loving blood vengeance.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:46
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Rulebook Heavily posted:This is literally a thing they're doing now. What? I just... gently caress this goddamn hobby.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:47
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Rulebook Heavily posted:This is literally a thing they're doing now. Yeah. I saw that on the RPGnet thread. Which is surprisingly good. Is it possible that they've permabanned all of those people?
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Jun 20, 2012 03:49
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Rulebook Heavily posted:This is literally a thing they're doing now. Where's the part where they are spamming rape threat emails? I don't doubt it exists, I just don't see it spelled out explicitly anywhere...
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Jun 20, 2012 03:51
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jadarx posted:Yeah. I saw that on the RPGnet thread. Which is surprisingly good. Is it possible that they've permabanned all of those people?
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Jun 20, 2012 03:54
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Tollymain posted:Where's the part where they are spamming rape threat emails? I don't doubt it exists, I just don't see it spelled out explicitly anywhere... The creator of the original petition has said as much on RPGnet. FMguru posted:There is much about RPGnet that is terrible, but their "no group attacks" policy works to keep expressions of misogyny and racism to a minimum - unlike ENworld or RPGsite, which is mostly occupied by people who were run out of RPGnet for being racist/misogynist/homophobic/etc. Yeah. But I think it was earlier this year when the whole feminist rpg thing erupted and that was full of misogynists. vvvv Yeah, I just realized all the bad 'menz' threads are in TTO or D20.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:56
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jadarx posted:Yeah. I saw that on the RPGnet thread. Which is surprisingly good. Is it possible that they've permabanned all of those people? Ettin put the thread in Tangency Open, which is the the site's general discussion subforum; it tends to attract more people who lose their drat minds over politics or pop culture than over gaming. If he wanted peak grog, he should have put it in Roleplaying Open. Also, RPG.net's pretty zero tolerance when it comes to outright naked misogyny or homophobia.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:58
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Tollymain posted:Where's the part where they are spamming rape threat emails? I don't doubt it exists, I just don't see it spelled out explicitly anywhere... You can choose whether or not your signature is made public, but the system sends an email every single time someone signs it with the signature included. This hobby, man.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:59
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Yeah, I think... ...I think I need to take a break. For a while.
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Jun 20, 2012 04:05
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Gau posted:Wow. Just when I was briefly considering actually shelling out money for ACTA Star Fleet (oh god I need my fix just one more game), this happens. I wonder if people will ever understand that censorship is something inflicted from above. This is censure, harsh disapproval by consumers telling others not to buy a product. It is, in fact, part of how the market is meant to operate ideally! It is capitalism, not communism! When people are offended and disgusted by your product, they have, in fact, every right to tell others not to buy it and to inform others of the content you are producing and why it is bad. It is free speech that they should do so, just as it is your right to go on saying horrible things and thus getting them to be offended and disgusted.
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Jun 20, 2012 04:14
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Evil Mastermind posted:Yeah, I think... Yeah it's really loving depressing to see people jumping up their own asses to defend some dude's creepgames by attacking a woman for criticizing misogyny. They refuse to engage in the insignificant amount of reflection necessary to see exactly what they're doing. loving gamers 
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Jun 20, 2012 04:17
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Ettin put the thread in Tangency Open, which is the the site's general discussion subforum; it tends to attract more people who lose their drat minds over politics or pop culture than over gaming. If he wanted peak grog, he should have put it in Roleplaying Open. I asked a moderator where to put it and the response I got was that if I was going to mess around on RPGnet with a Desborough thread, Tangency would be more on-topic. This, uh. This has kind of snowballed. 
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Jun 20, 2012 04:17
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Mors Rattus posted:I wonder if people will ever understand that censorship is something inflicted from above. This is censure, harsh disapproval by consumers telling others not to buy a product. It is, in fact, part of how the market is meant to operate ideally! It is capitalism, not communism! Thing is, "stop disapproving of us" doesn't have quite the same rallying power at "Stop censoring us".
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Jun 20, 2012 04:17
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I don't think I'm going to boycott Mongoose for making a bad decision but I really hope they stop selling that book/employing that dude.
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Jun 20, 2012 05:12
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Swagger Dagger posted:I don't think I'm going to boycott Mongoose for making a bad decision but I really hope they stop selling that book/employing that dude. You really should, if they don't see some sort of consequences for flippantly dismissing complaints and being unprofessional in email, and naming a vietnam war game "Love you long time" they will never learn.
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Jun 20, 2012 05:16
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A.M. started the petition | about 5 hours ago Change.org: Stop letting Malyn Cooper make petitions A.M. signed the petition | 3 months ago Senators Patty Murray, Al Franken, and Kristen Gillibrand: Personhood for Women! 
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Jun 20, 2012 05:21
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And now for something completely different... I did a little fun thing over on Google + today, Jeff Rients won, so he gets his d12 chart. 12 ways to creep up some random moldy old module. i.e. roll on this chart to make any adventure more Raggian. 1. Put a Deck of Many Things in the first encounter area. 2. Randomly select an encounter area. Simply replace it with another randomly selected encounter area from a randomly selected other adventure in your collection. 3. Reverse the hit point totals of everything in the adventure (12hp becomes 21, 40hp becomes 4, etc). 4. Randomly select a page in the adventure and begin reading. The next mention of any sort of liquid in the adventure, change it to "semen." 5. Select one monster in the adventure randomly and multiply its hit points by 10. You're not supposed to be able to defeat everything, you know. 6. Replace all of the magic items in the adventure with cursed counterparts. 7. Put so many goddamn warning signs and spooky buildup to the dungeon that the players actually get freaked out and consider just quitting instead of playing the drat game. "Gorfar the Barbarian will settle for a farming life after all if adventuring means going in places like *that*." 8. Insert an old crotchety and harmless NPC into some room (maybe as a prisoner if it's a dungeon adventure) who has no purpose other than telling the PCs how much they suck at adventuring. 9. Go to Metal-Archives.com. Hit "Random Band." The first song title of the first item of the discography is the new name of the most important enemy/monster/NPC in the adventure. 10. The next halfling the PCs encounter in the adventure should be replaced with Elijah Wood's Kevin from Sin City. 11. Turn on the TV right now. The first person you see on the screen? That person is the first NPC you present to the PCs. 12. Everything that's supposed to be hostile in the adventure runs away from the party. When they get to the end of the dungeon, they find it's just been solved/looted by their higher-level future selves who have time traveled back to solve this adventure. They tell the PCs "Sorry about this, I remember when this happened and it really sucked, but nothing to be done about it. Cheerio!" and they disappear. All those enemies that ran away have returned to their posts, and this time they won't run.
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Jun 20, 2012 06:52
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Shitheads are flinging poo poo and it's sticking elsewhere and soon it's likely to land here and here's my statement on the matter. The presentation of something in a fictional space, no matter how it is presented, is not an endorsement of that thing in real life. Enjoying something in fiction (or enjoying fiction that contains something) does not mean that a person would enjoy that same thing in real life. Everything and anything is on the table when it comes to fictional works. The point is to be creative and explore (or not, as the creator wishes). There are no subjects so sacred that people should feel pressure not to explore them in fiction. No restrictions. Just about nobody is going to be as good as, say, Alan Moore (From Hell, Neonomicon, Lost Girls) or Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita), but everyone that wishes to try is entitled to do so, and failing (or succeeding, for that matter) is not a a reason for harassment. poo poo, neither is aspiring to be the next Hideki Takayama (Chôjin densetsu Urotsukidôji). It's even OK to be silly about horrible things in the world of make-believe. It loses the entire point of imagination for it to be bound by the mores, restrictions, and taboos of reality. How many people reading this have also read Chick Tracts? That guy means it, man, and yet here we are still living our same lives with our same morality and religious identity as before we read that stuff. It is bullshit to pretend you're somehow so much better and more aware and intelligent than the public at large who can't be trusted being exposed to certain things. You know, before I got exposed to certain internet moral crusaders, I used to get pissed and crusadery concerning bands like Burzum and Graveland or attend a Nokturnal Mortem concert and lose my poo poo at the idea that people listened to them without caring about the bands' ideology. Now, while I still am not going to buy the albums or go to the concerts, I have chilled the gently caress out about other people who listen to it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't affect the things I like at all. (You'll also notice I edition war less in recent years... same reason. "Oh you're not allowed to like this thing that I don't like" is bullshit and it's wrong no matter what "this" is. I still slip now and again because I'm excited about things. oops.) That a bad thing exists does not stain other things made in the same genre or using the same medium. Iron Maiden's music or sales or concert attendance isn't affected at all because they sometimes play the same festivals as Cannibal Corpse or Rotting Christ. The fact that Cannibal Holocaust and A Serbian Film and I Spit on Your Grave exist and have been screened maybe even in a cinema you've been in didn't stop anyone from seeing The Avengers - and neither did the fact that a ton of lovely superhero movies have been previously released. I remember that soon after I announced my collaboration with Zak for Vornheim and Geoffrey for Carcosa and Isle, certain people raised their eyebrows. Both had been involved in OSR controversies because they've done stuff some people don't like and some people don't like standing in the same room with those they disagree with. I received one email that I wish I still had and I hope I'm not misremembering its wording (the wife says I am getting the gist right), but it basically was asking me quite strongly to not associate with Zak or Geoffrey or I'd be in danger of being associated with those kinds of things. oops. Look, people... the box set's cover has nudity on it as a protest and an "Up yours!" to American decency standards. Other art is in there to basically settle the question of good taste. I didn't hire Christina Casperson to do Grindhouse artwork because I wanted mass appeal. I didn't hire Vince Locke to do a piece to make people feel good about looking at his art. Just the opposite, in fact. Because that's the kind of guy I am. I even approached Six Entertainment about licensing The Human Centipede for an adventure last year. Turns out I'm still too small a publisher to afford such licenses, but I really, really would have liked to have that in your hands by now. That's the kind of guy I am. I just discovered something called "bizarro fiction" today. I know, way way way fuckin' late to the party. But after reading a bunch of reviews and interviews, I put some money down because there's a good chance it'll fit me like a glove. I ordered Carlton Mellick III's The Haunted Vagina from my local bookstore, even though it was a bit cheaper on Amazon, just so when it arrives I get to go down to the store and tell the cashier "I'm here to pick up my Haunted Vagina." That's the kind of guy I am. (I did order Ryan Harding's Genital Grinder, Robert Devereaux's Baby's First Book of Seriously hosed Up poo poo, Edward Lee's Trolley No. 1852 and Brain Cheese Buffet and The Haunter of the Threshold and The Innswich Horror, Cameron Pierce's rear end-Goblins of Auschwitz, Garrett Cook's Jimmy Plush: Teddy Bear Detective, and Mellick's The Kobold Wizard's Dildo of Enlightenment +2 from Amazon as well today. Because that's the kind of guy I am too.) So enough of this bullshit. If you think "action" needs to be taken over someone's make-believe, then I am your enemy.
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Jun 20, 2012 06:57
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I want to make a game out of a lovely movie. I draw terrible titties on my covers. I ordered a comic book that involved a vagina. That's right. I'm a bad rear end. Don't gently caress with me.
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Jun 20, 2012 07:07
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Jun 20, 2012 07:08
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chrisoya posted:poo poo, neither is aspiring to be the next Hideki Takayama (Chôjin densetsu Urotsukidôji). I know the bolded part should be what makes me angry (seriously what the gently caress) but it's actually the incredibly, pretentiously out of fashion romanization of Japanese that is raising my blood pressure. e: is this from the reddit thread?
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Jun 20, 2012 07:10
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I think nobody should be able to boycott me when I depict my graphic rape fantasies and misogyny in commercial works. Because thats the kind of guy I am.
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Jun 20, 2012 07:29
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chrisoya posted:Shitheads are flinging poo poo and it's sticking elsewhere and soon it's likely to land here and here's my statement on the matter. "Guys! I want to be part of this drama too, guys. Guys, look at me."
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Jun 20, 2012 07:32
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Ettin posted:"Guys! I want to be part of this drama too, guys. Guys, look at me." Oh no I fell for it and posted his poo poo in grognards.txt 
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Jun 20, 2012 07:54
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So this book, Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering exists. Moreover, Robin Laws, its author, exists. And designs games. There is a lot of good in Robin's Laws and much that is worthy of respect. It's presumably based on the kind of playing-different-games-over-and-over-and-over-with-lots-of-different-people kind of experience that few folks outside industry veterans really have. It has many excellent tidbits of wisdom for a volume of its relative slimness. But, naturally, I'm going to talk about the stuff I don't like. Mostly because the stuff I don't like is the kind of thing that shows up in GM advice a lot. And if it was worth Robin Laws writing this book (which enough people thought it was that it won an Origins award), it is worth talking about the grain of salt it should be swallowed with. There are two basic things I don't like and one is more practical than the other but I think they are (unfortunately) related. The less practical one and more annoying one first. It is so familiar and such a cliche you hear it about RPGs from people outside the gaming world all the time: The vast majority of successful roleplaying games are power fantasies. They give players the chance to play characters vastly more competent than themselves -- or, for that matter, anyone else in the world as we know it. In power fantasy, PCs always have a good chance of vanquisihing foes; in some games, players can even assume that their enemies will be conveniently distributed by threat level. The power fantasy lies at the very heart of the adventure genre, in books and movies as well as games. It offers a generally optimistic view of life,. There's no shame in enjoying this fantasy, and GMs who embrace and understand it tend to keep players longer than those who don't. This is sloppy thinking and kinda condescending. I, for just one, would way rather be me than a lot of people I've played in an RPG (you could make a decent case that, other than climbing walls and picking locks, I am better at pretty much everything than Blixa the thief) and I know I enjoy my game in a way that is in no sense unique. Now: maybe many... maybe most... maybe the vast majority... maybe the commercially most important segment... ...of adventure genre fans are in it for the power fantasy, but this analysis fails to account for so many of the essential details of so much of what goes on in a good adventure story that it's harmful to base a philosophy of gaming (or adventure stories in general) on it. If I was gonna put Robin on the shrink couch the way he has just put all gamers on the shrink couch I'd say he's just internalized the embarrassment people have wanted him to feel all his life about being into nerdy things and so is having trouble seeing them as performing pretty much the same function all creative things do and seeing that as an essentially good and worthwhile thing. Also, like peeps in or near any creative field, Laws--like so many gamers--has taken the perfectly reasonable and accurate observation that most things in the medium were not designed for people like him and turned that into the understandable (and pretty universal) emotion I kinda don't like a huge segment of this hobby and what they want and then turned that into the unreasonable proposition there must be something fundamentally reptile-brain about the activity itself and I don't feel entirely good about feeling good about it. Some of the smartest and most creative gamers I know feel this way. They are afraid if they start to admit gaming isn't basically just escapism then they might get a swelled head and start putting on airs, which terrifies them because then they'll be the segment of the gaming population (theoretically) responsible for everything they hate in the hobby. Better to maintain a certain reserve, like Wallace Stevens did about his poems--continuing to sell insurance even after he won the nobel prize, or like some fantastic horror movie director who moans about never having made a "serious" film. A lot of this may simply be because, being properly reverent of their favorite movies and writers, they haven't realized that art isn't actually serious. Long story short: No, gaming isn't fundamentally any less ambitious and real than anything else you do for fun, it's just like in any creative endeavor--most stuff is going to suck if we assume the standard is the taste of an individual observer. The term "fantasy" has (I'm sure I've said this before) two parts: "wish fulfillment" and "inventions". "Wish fulfillment" makes you feel better about yourself (and then, afterwards, possibly much worse--as in coming down from a dream), "inventions" make you think about stuff. Tales of invention very often are centered around adventure for a great structural reason: Because adventure allows you to see way more of an invented world and how it is put together than psychological drama or a comedy of manners or any other literary genre. This is true for adventure fiction even in worlds that are not invented: crime movies are about all the internal bits of how cities work that you get to explore if you try to subvert the normal day-to-day life it's there to support (this is how banks verify peoples' identities, this is how international shipping works, this is where heroin comes from...), Indiana Jones and James Bond see the world and interact with cultures and animals and machines in it because they land face first in it and then have to run, even Godzilla movies are partially about architecture and how Tokyo is interconnected and about the audience getting to see all of that in action in an intensified way (and notice how much worse Godzilla movies are when they stop being about that, Matthew Broderick). (And notice that the kind of adult who would happily watch a Godzilla movie is often the same adult who would happily watch a documentary about how Tokyo works.) Adventure is always as much about the world and its contrivances and the complex joinery that holds it together as it is about violence. The same way history and technology and all the other nonfiction things people who are into adventure fiction also typically dig are. Maybe it's because I paint all day for a living and so exist in a field (unlike game design) that has centuries of people explaining why it's totally worthwhile behind it, but it's pretty obvious to me that a picture I like is no more there to stroke my ego than a meatball is. If you play basketball, and like it, a big part of that is some chemicals in your brain that genetically know that what you are doing is exercising your muscles and that is good for the organism's survival and so the organism sends you chemicals like "Hey, this is fun, keep doing this! It's exercising me." Good stories do the same thing: you are exercising your mind. (Tell it like it is, Pollux.) Unfamiliar, exotic propositions and ways of looking at things are pinging around in your brain and that feeling of anticipation is the unconscious feeling of all your neurons firing off trying to figure out where it's all going and make a pattern out of it and try to use what's going on to dream up a way to kill leopards or find fruit or score. Now it may result in insights no more useful to you than the calories in your breakfast, but if you aren't bored, it's because you're exercising the system in a significant way. Art that is genuinely involving makes you smarter. Now, yes, there are ways to set up aesthetic situations so that they appeal to peoples' egos (like the fancy wine trick where you tell stupid people that wine is expensive and it literally, in their brain, tastes better) but that is, at most, half the story. Your PC is an alternate you, yes, but it is also a tool to explore and help create an adventure--it is your eyes and ears as you watch a story unfold, and a tool to invent with using that framework. This is not just escapism--this is doing what all creative things do, and saying "The power fantasy lies at the very heart of the adventure genre"--unless the author is only referring to crappy airport novels--is selling Jack Vance and HP Lovecraft seriously motherfucking short along with all the games derived from the kinds of things they wrote. And most schlock fiction is schlock because it takes for granted innovations made by genuinely good fiction: that is, there is something of artistic merit at the bottom of any genre. What lies at the very heart of adventure fiction is invention. Invented things, invented situations, and inventions of language that give those things intellectual and emotional impact. Now, yeah, crappy airport novels based only on letting people pretend they are someone and somewhere other than who and where they are sell well, and I'm sure many gamers just play paladins so they don't have to think about how they are air conditioner repairmen, but getting to the awesome part of this hobby (like getting to the awesome parts of adventure literature) means understanding and having respect for the part of it that is not that at all. ___________ Now the second thing, which is more practical as a GM and that I think is kinda based on the first thing: Laws, like many people in the history of GMing advice, treats players--structurally--as problems. Like: there are these different kinds of gamers and you need to entertain different ones in different ways and they may become bored if this or that and they need to be fed these things and these ones need systems like this, etc. Now this is understandable for two reasons: 1. Robin's book is a book of GMing advice and advice usually is about solving problems, and 2. As a con-game-running RPG pro, Laws may be kinda forced, more than those of us for whom "friendly" play is the norm, to think of players in an assembly-line sense and as people he works for. However, this point of view has practical effects on his gaming advice (and on gaming advice in general) which makes it less useful than it could be. The big idea of the book is familiar to probably everybody reading this: there are categories of gamers. For Laws, in keeping with the "you are here to deliver the power fantasy" philosophy, gamers each have different emotions they need to experience, these are: The Powergamer, who wants an ever-more tricked out PC. The Butt-Kicker, who wants to vicariously kill poo poo. The Tactician, who wants to feel smart. The Specialist, who wants to feel like a certain kind of character (a ninja, a catgirl, etc). The Method Actor, who wants to have a chance to act. The Storyteller, (three guesses), and The Casual Gamer, who just wants to roll with pals. Now Laws readily admits most player defy easy categorization and that overlap is possible, but the problem for me is that, even as elementary particles, these categories are at worst caricatures, and at best descriptions of some actual extant people who nevertheless suck and are a drag on your game and the first law of good game mastering should be: Do not play with anyone who matches the descriptions here. He doesn't show what's going on in the players' heads here as creative or inventive or expressive, just as wells of emotional need. In the most literal sense: negative (there to take stuff) and not positive (there to give stuff and make stuff). Every player's heart goes pitpat when they hear about a shiny new ability they can have--but if you have a player doing that just because it will make the person in their imagined fantasy life have more superpowers and therefore that will make them feel more awesome than they are and there is no (conscious or otherwise) element of "Wow, if I can do flying ninja kicks for triple damage, that means we're going to be expected to have a crazy new kind of Big Trouble In Little China adventure where flying triple damage ninja kicks are necessary to survive!" then that person needs to get away from your table, go away from all other game tables, and go where they belong: onto a forum on the internet where they can sit down and complain about their fictional impotence full time. I think a good book of GM advice needs to remember that players are not just an audience (though they are that) but also a resource: I don't have a Power Gamer who just wants to trick out his or her PC, I have a Power Gamer who sees tricking out the PC as the key to getting to play the game a whole new way with whole new tools every few levels and that's neat, I don't have a Butt Kicker who just wants to kill poo poo, I have a Butt Kicker with charismatic, expressionistic, totally metal bloodthirst and heedless doorkicking that you wouldn't trade for 100 Klaus Kinskis because of the energy she adds to the game, I don't have a Tactician who wants to feel smart, I have a tactician who actually is tactically creative like any chess player and enjoys exercising that ability and getting better at it because it's a useful way to be able to think, I don't have a Specialist who wants to feel like a special snowflake, I have a Specialist who extends her imagination to the world described and can appreciate it because she responds to it like she's really in it and thereby notices stuff nobody else would, I don't have a Method Actor who wants to hog the spotlight in the scene, I have a Method Actor who can create a scene out of some half-assed random encounter by deciding it's important and engaging it and so make it engaging for everybody else, I don't have a Storyteller who wants to warp the game to fit some story arc, I have a Storyteller who is able to show everybody else playing where the story is in what looks like a chaotic mess, and I don't have a Casual Gamer whose detachment makes her just sit there bored with what everybody else is doing, I have a Casual Gamer whose detachment makes her really loving funny. And that's the half of designing an adventure and running it that's neglected all too often in GM advice, from Robin's Laws (feed the animals on time!) to GNS theory (keep the animals separate!) to DMGs (remember you're the boss of the animals!): the players and you and the game have been assembled to have a kind of fun that is more than the sum of its parts. And the GM and the game product are not the only positive coefficients. While convention GMing all day may have turned some RPG pros into machines capable of receiving, reading and rewarding a player in minutes flat unaided, what most of us need is a way to use what the players bring to the table to help each other have fun. Design your adventure so the Power Gamer tells the Butt Kicker why they want the thingy and the Butt Kicker gets the Tactician to make a plan to get the thingy so she'll have something to hit and the Tactician asks the Specialist to reconnoiter the thingy and the Specialist gets in there and notices the owner and tells the Method Actor to distract the owner of the thingy with weird drama and the Storyteller volunteers to run right past while they're talking and the Butt-Kicker is fighting because dying would still be pretty cool if it was in the name of getting the thingy and the Casual Gamer is like Seriously you guys are freaking the gently caress out about this thingy and it's funny, have a beer and let's loving do this thing. And you can't help them do that if you are condescending to the whole business. You are not just escaping and helping them escape, you are making. Making what? Making fun--which is the best thing there is to make. It is human existence's most important activity and you just do all the things you are "escaping" from in order to support it. As well you should.
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Jun 20, 2012 08:04
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There's about thirty things really wrong in that huge wall of text but I'd like to make just one point. How can someone write so much yet say so loving little?
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Jun 20, 2012 08:53
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Ahahaha holy poo poo, so Uri has decided to weigh in with his usual "accuse everyone of being Kynn the rapist!" tactic:quote:Will Ashmore 12:47 So I mentioned this to MalaDicta (the RPGnet poster getting the rape threats) and: quote:OMG, I actually got rape threats from that guy the last time I had an online kerfuffle! He brought Kynn into then, and I was like, "WTF who is this person?" I didn't know that was his real name. He said he was going to rape with me a chair leg, IIRC. Of course he would. 
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Jun 20, 2012 08:55
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quote:I don't remember the exact wording, sorry. It got really... creepy though. Like, "all you're worth, blah blah teach you your place" creepy. I remember it for the Kynn reference and the weird Gorean overtones.
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Jun 20, 2012 09:03
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James Desborough @GRIMACHU Apparently the person who started the petition is getting rape threats. Not on. However I'm sure she knows they're not genuine threats.
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Jun 20, 2012 09:07
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Ettin posted:James Desborough @GRIMACHU "My products and my writing has nothing to do with hurting women. It's just that all of it's defenders go out and make rape threats against women that they don't like. And I'm TOTALLY OK with that!"
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Jun 20, 2012 09:15
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James Desborough @GRIMACHU Unlike her threats and claims against me, which she seems to believe. It's just trolls trolling and she handily flagged her buttons.
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Jun 20, 2012 09:21
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 09:56 |
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Desboeruff is schilling this in an attempt to be ironicquote:It’s been said that “simple is best.” This is a fairly universal axiom that can apply to almost anything, including games. Of course, it can also be fairly ironic in that it’s also easy to take too far, in which case the simplicity is no longer what’s best. It’s in this vein that Postmortem Studios has released their game – I’m not sure if I should call it a role-playing game or not – The Little Grey Book.
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Jun 20, 2012 09:39
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