|
ProfessorCirno posted:Still, there is a distinction between a one-time prep and the regular recurring game. But I would say that many games other than D&D rely on that one-time event. If you're playing Civilization, it matters which civilization you choose. If you're playing Madden, it matters how you choose and construct your team. They're not all equal. If you're playing Magic, you have to create a good deck before the game starts. If you're into miniatures wargames, you have to create an army. In any of those examples, actual gameplay is dependent on effective preparation, and a wide range of power levels can be created. So clearly this paradigm can create a satisfying game experience. I'd just like to comment that all the games he used as examples are competitive games. While Dungeons and Dragons is a cooperative game. quote:New official LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing rule:
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2013 17:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 15:49 |
|
|
Some choice bits from the Vampire: Undeath book that emphasize its stellar writing:plagarism posted:
Quotes are themselves stolen from the RPG.net review of the game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2013 17:55
|
|
|
I think I'm going to try anonymizing people that sign their posts. Most of them are easily distinguishable by voice anyhow. Anyways, today's theme is anatidaephobia. quote:Glorantha is a fantasy world that was created to do gaming in during the early seventies. It is thus roughly contemporaneous with D&D. But it didn't specifically get a role playing game made for it until a few years after D&D was a thing. It has a consistent set of metaphysics and legends, a world with stuff in it and a rich history and all that is praiseworthy. quote:Yeah. And just one of the many, many things I would find interesting that got shitted up in Glorantha. Seriously. The elves are sapient trees that look like they all have bad fros. The dwarves are all mineral in nature, and basically drones. The goat people are poo poo covered rape monsters. The were-people are 'bone through nose primitive" skin walkers that have to invest a lot of build resources just to be vaguely were-creature-ish. Jack-o-bears (that's grizzlies with jack o lanterns for heads) are chaos creatures, which gets you kill on sight. Vampires are chaos creatures or suck. Liches sever all ties to life, and thus all reason to thwart death. quote:I'm not sure whether TGD's newfound love of bipedal duckmen is rooted in hipster irony or blinkered faux-awesome, but it makes me ill either way. quote:Vampire was the first widely successful pretentious art-house role-playing game. It was created by a bunch of guys who not only wanted to create a game that revolved around something other than running into a dungeon, murdering everything in sight, grabbing the loot, and running out -- which is a fine goal in the abstract -- but who felt that doing so made them better than you, and wanted to be sure that you and everybody else knew it. Ducks! *spit*
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2013 18:29
|
|
|
You can say whatever you want but you don't gently caress with glorantha. That's unforgivable. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2013 00:48
|
|
|
Druids fall when they teaches the Druidic language to a nondruid loses all spells and druid abilities (including her animal companion, but not including weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She cannot thereafter gain levels as a druid until she atones (see the atonement spell description). What if I were to Brain Drain a Druid and used it's Lingistic check to learn Druidic. Or seek thoughts or any other the other ways to get information out of a person's mind to learn Druidic. What if I gave a Druid a message in Druidic and asked him to translate it for me. When he did I used the translated message as a base to learn Druidic. There are many was to learn a language form someone without them meaning to. Some of them could even be done in combat. Does that make a Druid. If it does then Druids are easier to make fall then paladin. I wonder why more people don't try it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2013 09:25
|
|
|
Luckily there are many games that have decided to go ROGUE. Every game like Swords & Wizardry, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Basic Fantasy RP or OSRIC is an outright protest to the dumbing down/ commoner marketing of what we once considered to be sacred.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2013 16:46
|
|
|
Mike Mearls Strangles Realism In D&D Like It’s An Unruly Hooker I hate to keep saying “I told you so” about Fourth Edition D&D, but there’s a thread on TheRPGSite that talks about the new Rust Monster in the MMII. I really can’t believe what I’m reading. As most of you know, in D&D the Rust Monster is a weird-looking mostly harmless critter feared by adventurers because of its diet. It touches metal with its feathery antennae and cause it to rust into bits, then it eats the rust. Well, apparently the thought of anyone losing a magic item is no longer tolerable to the Wizards designers. Check it out: Attack Mode: Dissolve Metal (standard action; per encounter) • Targets a creature wearing or wielding a rusting magic item of 10th level or lower or any non-magic rusting item; +9 vs. Reflex; the rusting item is destroyed. Residuum Recovery • A rust monster consumes any item it destroys. The residuum from any magic items the monster has destroyed can be retrieved from its stomach. The residuum is worth the market value of the item (not one-fifth the value). “Residuum” is the magic dust that you can disenchant 4e magic items into. Normally, as part of their ridiculous and sad economic rules, it’s only worth 20% of the item’s cost. However, the Rust Monster now kindly keeps it at full price for you in its gullet. There’s an explicit rationale for this in the “A Guide to Using Rust Monsters” section in the MM2 which boils down to “don’t make any nine year olds cry”… Eventually, though, the PCs should have an opportunity to regain their lost equipment by using the residuum found in the monster. Although a PC might lose an item, it is intended that the loss be only temporary, which is why the residuum recovered from a rust monster is equal to the full value of the destroyed item. How the PCs deal with the loss is what makes the rust monster fun. Be wary of PCs who try to abuse a rust monster’s powers to their advantage by using rust monsters to consume items the PCs would otherwise sell for one-fifth value. In such cases, you should reduce the resulting residuum to one-fifth value, effectively making the rust monster a free Disenchant Magic Item ritual. What, they didn’t bother rule-izing that last part by giving it a “Detect Intent” power that would formally change the residuum value based on its reading of the character’s mind? Seriously, come the gently caress on. Realism and consequences are not “fun”, according to Mearls and the other 4e writers. All those people who have enjoyed playing any other edition of D&D must be confused. Why not just take that small additional step and have characters respawn close to the dungeon with all their gear? God forbid a dead party member gets left behind or some other factor causes them to lose their stuff. Or have un-fun trips to get raised or otherwise be out of the action for more than five minutes. Some of the 4e community is dismissive of “these tired comparisons of 4e to MMORPGs” but – the truth’s the truth. This is a pure computer game move. Heck, put spawn points in the dungeon. I was amused recently when I got Unreal Tournament 3 on the XBox 360 and in the cutscenes they actually refer to the respawn points as real, in-world things. Most games have the courtesy to pretend they don’t really exist (I know, it actually makes some sense in the UT universe… But this isn’t XCrawl, it’s D&D.). Time for D&D to do the same thing! Dying, gear loss, etc. should all be only moments of delay from getting back in the melee! I mean, I’m honestly not averse to that in some fringe take-off of the genre like XCrawl. But in D&D? In a core world that supposedly might make some sense, like the fantasy worlds from those things called books people used to read? Really?
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2013 17:09
|
|
|
I’d explain that in a fantasy setting realism still exists and is called “versimilitude” but I’m sure that either a) you already know or b) using big words won’t help. -- All this really proves is Mearls is whore and WOTC is his pimp. A good whore knows not to get out of line to a pimp. A good whore will always support her pimp, no matter what the pimp does to the whore. -- That is simple: People were playing a perfectly viable and good game. Suddenly, they find out the game they were playing is no longer supported and considered ‘bad’ by the company that used to make it. That is a very good reason to be disgruntled. Is it a wonder that 4e fans can blow it off as nothing because well… they have their supported game? -- Sir Digby . . . I think the idea is that you use a previous edition as your basis (possibly with additional house rules added on) because it’s closer to what you want, and fewer house rules are needed. I also think you know this, and you’re just playing dumb because you find it easier to make a fallacious argument than to admit that someone might have valid reasons to prefer an edition other than 4E, but I’m just guessing. Maybe you really aren’t able to figure out these absurdly simple ideas on your own, after all. -- Ergh. This is a good illustration of why I detest 4E. The game’s design philosophy makes it impossible to represent a classic monster like the rust monster in a satisfactory manner, and instead of admitting that it can’t be done, they keep on pretending that it’s still D&D while sacrificing verisimilitude and rules consistency to the almighty game balance, and in this case do it in a frightfully inelegant fashion. -- Honestly, I don’t think this is a huge problem. I know and accept that 4E is essentially not even D&D anymore, so I am used to the rules coddling PCs in ways that defy believability. In flipping through the new Monster Manual I was just thankful that the rust monster DID in fact rust and destroy items… I had expected it to just do something temporary like coat weapons in rust which could be cleaned off after the encounter or something! It’s easy enough to houserule that it doesn’t give full value for the residuum, too. I do think 4E has some pretty lame problems regarding verisimilitude, but this one actually doesn’t seem so bad. -- The “new” rust monster is pretty typical of 4E – it’s an attempt to “balance” the game and make sure everyone (especially 12 year olds) has a good time. Hence, even though the rust monster ate your +5 flaming sword of awesomeness, you needn’t worry – it’s going to refund the full purchase price when you kill it and take its stuff. For some people (specifically people who like 4E), that’s a good thing. For someone who doesn’t like 4E, it’s like someone crapping in the bathtub. The “old” rust monster was cool – poo poo you ran when you saw one of those suckers. It was great to strike fear in to the hearts of high level characters simply by the appearance of an armadillo with antennae. OTOH, it also could be a pretty big kick in the balls when it ate your +5 Avenger. A lot of how the group reacted depended on the nature of the DM and the group. I’ve been in games where a rust monster was wielded like the hand of god to punish players who had angered the DM/god. So, it too had issues. I’m not sure either version is particularly good, although, for the record, I think the enforced balance of 4E makes it play way too much like a game for my tastes. -- Whatever the defenders of 4th ed may say, if the idea is that players are “entitled” to never face the consequences of their actions, then there’s more wrong in the culture of gaming than grumpy old men moaning about “old school”. -- That’s right. Because I do want to play D&D. I just don’t want to play what 4e has done to D&D. Thus I express my opinion on how D&D should change. “Don’t play it then” is an irrelevant response. I hope all these words are small enough to understand. To carry forward your example, the soup is inedible because the cook keeps putting too much salt in it. Is “Then don’t eat it!” the right way to address it, or is “Ease up on the salt!” the right way? -- I “prefer” you somehow be cured of your diarrhea of the mouth. The real answers to your questions are simple, you just like to pretend they don’t exist. I like D&D, as well as many other games. I would like D&D to be good enough for me to play. Previous editions have been, the current one is not. I will certainly play Pathfinder instead of 4e given the current state of things, but would like to see D&D improve, perhaps in 5e, to be an acceptable play choice again. The design philosophy behind 4e, as WotC is the dominant force in the market, will corrupt a large number of gamers towards the play style it dictates. This isn’t because it’s bringing in lots of new gamers who happen to be gamist – 4e has brought in some new people, but not really any more than any other new edition does from the marketing and novelty around it. It’s because the default playstyle will cause even people who prefer other styles to get dumbed down towards its norm. Sure, I can play an old version or a forked version of D&D. But I want to play D&D, and I want the current resources of WotC behind catering to me and my tastes, just like any consumer including yourself wants. So yes, I will argue against each new retarded thing WotC does, whether it’s awful new rules or harsh new policies or retarded business practices. I’m so sorry you can’t make peace with that, Random Internet Dude, but in the end, I don’t really care. -- I see it’s time for the cluestick: Donny, this was clearly (at least, it seemed clear to me) brought up because of the way it seems to illustrate the whole philosophy of game design at Wizards of the Coast right now. The fact that “the whole planet” is “wrong” is, in fact, sorta the point: it’s “wrong” for the same reason that this modified rust monster concept seems to fit in so friggin’ well. Consider the fact that this “suggestion” is basically a way to undo the damage done by the official design of the creature in 4E. The official design was predicated upon an attempt to create a particular play style for 4E that pervades the entire design of the game — and produces opportunities for abuse that just fits with the way the entire game seems to make a Mickey Mouse mockery of itself. As a “solution” to this abuse problem, it is suggested that the DM do something that has absolutely zero in-character verisimilitude, providing a pure metagame “solution” that feels like cheating and/or backpedaling. Despite this, even the “suggestion” seems to fit perfectly into the overall feel and design philosophy of the game. It’s a specific example of a widespread, chronic, endemic problem with 4E as a whole, as some people see it. Why is that so difficult to understand? Why do half the people who like 4E around here seem so dead-set on ignoring the implications of this kind of game design philosophy as embodied in this particular case of one wrong trying to correct another? Why is it that it seems you can’t see the forest for the trees? Are you just so invested in seeing 4E as the Second Coming of Gygax (or whatever gaming deity you worship) that you always ignore implications you don’t like in favor of taking any slight variations in quality as special case exceptions? If you want to argue that this isn’t actually representative of the overarching design philosophy of 4E, please do so. Please don’t just ignore the fact that the overarching design philosophy seems to be the really troubling point here, though. -- Indeed, each stupider than the other. So you spent nearly ten years playing a game you think is terrible? How does that work? Are you masochistic, or did it just take you that long to figure out you don’t like it? Seriously, I don’t think people are idiots because they like 4E. Many 4E fans do turn out to be idiots for entirely different reasons, though. Hint: taking criticism toward 4E personally is just one of them. And, well, I actually was a playtester for 4E and did have a say, however small, in the making of the game. One minor fix I suggested even made it in the finished product. This, however, did nothing to redeem the whole, as the entire design philosophy of the game is critically flawed. That is why its issues cannot be repaired with simple house rules – painting the house does little good when the foundation is rotten through. Finally, to address the question of spending one’s time productively… you’re the one who crawled back to a comments thread that’d been quiet for nearly a week to rekindle the flames. Do you really want to get into this? -- 4th Edition is the best D&D Board Game out there, I don’t know why people pan it so much? It’s not like they use cards yet….. wait a minute.. -- Bye bye 4th ed…shortest lived ed ever…POS won’t be missed..
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2013 17:21
|
|
|
Eugenics in D&D I'm not much a fan of the d20 system. Don't get me wrong, it's a vast improvement over earlier additions of Dungeons & Dragons. It just doesn't go far enough. You still end up with a bunch of guys around the table asking one another if they've found the second page of their character sheet or having discussions on whose dice collection is bigger. I don't see why you can't have a good time with three or four attributes and as many dice, but when one of my buddies asked if I was up for a game, I said what the hell. But the fun really started when he said he was putting together a completely new game world and we could make our own race. You'd think that when you're dealing with someone who has an account on childrenofmillennium.org, the idea of eugenics will show up in one form or another regardless of whether a genuine conversational opening appears, but he must not have been thinking very hard about it, because of course, I wanted my character to come from a race which had practiced selective breeding on its members for the past 500 years. And of course, he realized too late just what that would mean. Most D&D afficionados know of eugenics as either some creepy Nazi fantasy or else as an excuse to give Tyr Anasazi arm blades. It never occurred to them that the wide variety of Horses in the equipment list just might have resulted from wise breeding practices. And it definitely never occurred to them that you could use it to get a race with +5 to all six attributes, which is funny because munchkins will try any sleazy, underhanded trick to end up with an overpowered character. That's what the Game Master thought I was doing too, at first. But it wasn't. I agreed off the bat to start out two levels below the other Characters (who were starting at 3rd). There wasn't much he could say to that, so the next thing you know I've showed up to the first game session with my Superman. The interesting part was when the other players found out about my character's race. Ignorant, foolish, stupid claims were made that I'd done the impossible. But from a theoretical standpoint there was nothing even very unusual about it. I reasoned on the basis of modern studies that A) most of the attributes were about 50% heritable, and once you know a trait's heritable, the only things left to do are B) decide how you're going to boost it and C) figure out how far it improves. Point A took the most consideration. Although a character's attributes are meant to be enduring traits which don't change much over the course of his adventuring life, that by itself doesn't tell you how heritable each one is. So I'll check them out individually: STRENGTH: Because of its obvious relationship to height, which is highly heritable at over 90% by adulthood (check here), Strength would also have a very high heritability. Of course sheer height alone doesn't define muscle mass because a person can be strong or skinny for his frame. Weight is probably an even better measure, and it's got a heritability in the neighborhood of 70 to 86% (no I'm not making this up). Combining these two measures and taking a conservative average gives us a nice round estimate for the heritability of Strength at 80%. DEXTERITY: This is one of the toughest attributes to calculate heritability for. The 3rd Edition PHB calls it "hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, and balance" but you're going to have a tough time finding heritabilities for any of that stuff in real life. Well maybe not quite; we can infer that Agility is just a person's strength to weight ratio which can more or less be reduced to obesity (or its lack) which has a heritability of 40% (see this page). After a ton of digging, I figured out that they've actually done studies on reflexes under the name "reaction time" but that it's only about 15% heritable (check this study). But the heritability of hand-eye coordination is quite the opposite, if you believe this study: "The heritability in movement accuracy as assessed by the displacement from the target at 70% maximal velocity was 0.87" but another study using what I can only assume was a different methodology gave 41% for "hand motor skill" (check here). What about balance? Also heritable according to this study: "Heritability was 46% for the 'sensory balance tests' factor and 30% for the 'static and dynamic perturbations' factor." This collection of heritabilities is pretty different from one estimate to the next so taking a single average seems pretty funny. Still we can at least say that Dexterity is heritable, and the heritability looks to be somewhere near 40%. CONSTITUTION: A little common sense says that Constitution would be largely environmental since genes promoting ill health tend to die out with their hosts. But they never get removed completely or else there wouldn't be things like Parkinson's disease or Hemophilia around. The trouble is that these are all specific disorders and we're looking for a general sort of measure which will be tough to find. But there are still a couple of ways of getting at it. If you just ask people "how healthy are you" you find out that the heritability of their answers is more than one-third (yes, really). And if you prefer to see a more objective measure, just check out the heritability of longevity which is also exactly .33 (no kidding). That's heartening because it's extremely similar to the previous finding. We're probably on the right track here: Constitution seems to have a heritability of around 35%. INTELLIGENCE: This is the easiest attribute to get a heritability for. The American Psychological Association reports that adult IQ scores have a heritability of around 75% (just check Wikipedia). WISDOM: Another tricky one. There were a lot of arguments about this one which is what made me decide to go back and calculate heritabilities for all the others. The 3rd Edition PHB defines Wisdom as "willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition." Willpower is a lot the same as Conscientiousness, right? You've gotta figure that someone who is organized and can persevere at difficult tasks is wiser than someone who is lazy and scatterbrained (hey don't make fun of me). You could say that willpower is also the opposite of Neuroticism because an anxious, angry, panicky sort of person isn't going to behave in a very consistently wise fashion. Fortunately the heritability of both Conscientiousness and Neuroticism is around 40% so whether or not you think Neuroticism should be included, you get 40%. Unfortunately "common sense" is really just intelligence. Since wisdom is supposed to be unrelated to intelligence, we'll just ignore this one. Next is perception. Variation in the ability to see and hear things is obviously highly genetic. As far as eyesight goes, "The estimated heritability of refractive error was 61%" (according to this study) and as far as the ability to discriminate between pitch "Genetic model-fitting techniques supported an additive genetic model, with heritability estimated at 0.71 to 0.80" (look here). Last of all we have intuition. Dictionary.com defines it as "direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension" which I really don't believe in as such. (Some might say that it's just intelligence operating subconsciously but again wisdom isn't supposed to be related to intelligence.) We'll just assume this is something the gods whimsically bestow upon some people which affects their talent in using priestly abilities: heritability zero. Although these heritabilities are very different one to the next, it isn't because we've got different measures of the same thing so much as that we've got one attribute that's really made up of a bunch of unrelated parts. Average it all together and round down and you'll get the heritability for Wisdom at 40%. CHARISMA: Because it's basically just a combination of looks and leadership ability, is probably an amalgamation of attractiveness and Extraversion. The heritability is Extraversion is known to be from 40 to 60% (just ask Wikipedia!) and one study on physical attractiveness found the heritability was more than 60% (click me I am a big important link). So by conservative estimates the total heritability of Charisma is going to be around 50%. code:Although there are many ways of working out the details, I imagined that the society would have been founded by the followers of a naturist religion who staked out an area of wilderness to watch over. Although it occured to me that I could have involved deities or long-lived guides of some kind, I preferred that they were watched over by an enclave of druids who took it upon themselves to maintain the genetic quality of their people as well as their land. And while there aren't any spells in the PHB which specifically deal with evaluating attributes, even low-level Druids have access to abilities which are very similar in their effects like Detect Animals or Plants. So even a mid-level Druid would be more than enough to evaluate the genetic quality of the people, and would probably also have either supernatural abilities or else some herbalist knowledge that dealt with of ways of increasing fertility among the selected couples and decreasing fertility among the general populace which would allow the selected couples to have three or four times the birth-rate of the others. So we're left with point C. I'm no statistician, but I know that the upper 2% in a 3d6 bell curve is around 17. (There is one way to get an 18 and there are 3 ways to get 17 on 3d6 out of 6^3 = 216 possible combinations and thus 17 is the cutoff for upper 2%.) That means that a 17 in any attribute is at the +2 Standard Deviation mark. And if 17 is 6.5 points up from the average of 10.5 that means 1 SD is 3.25 (or around 3) points. How fast can a society boost a trait by 1 SD? Without even meaning to, American society is reducing its intelligence by around 1 IQ point (i.e. 1/15 of an SD) per generation (where a generation is about 25 years). Committed hardcore eugenicists could probably go at five times that speed, but I figured there was no point in making claims people would shoot down, so I figured on only 1/12 of an SD a generation. Of course, this is intelligence we're talking about, and some of the attributes are less heritable. Since traits change under selection pressure in proportion to their heritability, Dexterity, Charisma, and Wisdom would probably change at a little better than half that pace, with Constitution improving a little more slowly than half speed. This means that after 500 years have passed, we are looking at a race of people with +5 in their Strength and Intelligence, +3 to Dexterity, Wisdom, and Charisma, and +2 to their Consitution: beautiful, brilliant, strong, graceful, healthy, even wise people, given that the Druids would value this characteristic above all others and would press for its improvement along with the others. After I ran through the numbers, there was still some skepticism from the other players, who still seemed to think that there was something "too good" about a fighter with 20 intelligence. They questioned whether the attributes really were genetic at all, and said that there should be some "tradeoff." But even if you ignore the scientific studies it's common knowledge that things like strength or intelligence are at least partly genetic, and even wisdom is defined as "willpower, common sense, perception and intuition," and at least two of those things (willpower and perception) do have an obvious genetic component. As far as the idea that a eugenic race is too good because there was no tradeoff in my attributes, the whole point of eugenics is that the tradeoff happens when you start it. Current generations agree to modify their behavior somewhat to take into account the genetic health of future generations. If you come from a race of people whose forefathers planned and built rather than just wasting their lives, you start out with a leg up in the world, simple as that. It's really no different from a group of people saving up food in granaries or building aqueducts for future generations to use. And then when the other players finally realized that it was on the level, when they realized that yes, this would work, it started to dawn on them: "You know what? People could do this in the real world!" Of course, it's too bad that the real question never occurred to them: "Why haven't people already done this in the real world?" Because its a drat shame that they haven't yet. But don't worry. We're working on it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2013 23:48
|
|
|
3k words of pure strain Exalted pedantry.quote:I gather some posters have no idea how strong mortals can be. There are mortal builds out there that won't even notice 7x20L or a Crippling effect. quote:
quote:
quote:
quote:
quote:I simply observed posters seriously underestimating the mechanical limits of mortal power. I'd prefer people take my word that 2E allows for a lot of optimizing and unfortunately hacking and not lose time for silly matchups in a dying system. quote:You have it all backwards. It's me that has to go through gruelling chargen so that you can learn something; so either be respectful and post a build without any excuses/caveats and probably without presuming Temperance will be appropriate or don't participate. quote:
quote:I'm certainly not trolling nor I'll be upset of mortal losses. As I said, some posters underestimated the limits of mortal optimization and as long as they learn more about them it's all good for me. quote:Have patience! Optimization takes time and the last thing I expected to do today was arguing 2E mechanics. Plus, once I post the mortals the challenge is over so I want to give interested parties more time. quote:Onward to mortal optimization: quote:I already made a point that Hauberk of Bells probably isn't calculated exactly like this; what I did was to use it exactly as Friv Yeti did, as long as we both use it the same way I see no foul play. quote:
quote:Indeed. Allow me to expand on what you said: quote:Firstly, being a giant, or being a dwarf, doesn't make you less of a human. Humanity is in the soul. Awakening your essence makes you less of a human than being big or small. tl;dr—Exalted 2E has a lot of busted poo poo in it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2013 11:00
|
|
|
quote:I guess this is as good a place as any to post my feelings about 5E D&D.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2013 17:09
|
|
|
Evil Sagan posted:Eugenics in D&D Honestly this just reminds me of those Animal Planet shows where they talk about some pure breed of dog or cat, and near the end they say, "Now, this friendly pup is going to need sinus surgery at about four years of age so he can breathe, and has unusually high rates of doggy cancer. Also, late in life arthritis will set in. Although beautiful, your dog will need a special diet." (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2013 19:47
|
|
|
This had pictures and formatting. They did not help with clarity in any way, so I'm going to present this Jormungandr of blogposts with minimal clean-up. --- What's Wrong with 4th Edition, Part 1 Esper's Endorsement and My Response This is a topic that I've avoided for quite some time. It's a topic that gets really, really under my skin. I'm not surprised how many "greybeards" who started with old-school gaming, nor how many young kids who grew up with Diablo and World of Warcraft love 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons. I've watched a dozen youtube videos and read two dozen blogs both praising 4th edition and telling the viewer/reader to "convert" (as if it were some religion) or vilifying the new system and calling it "tabletop WoW," "WoW-lite," or any other permutation of a "WoW" reference. Now, I'm going to sit back and explain, calmly, rationally, why 4th Edition, despite how fun it may be for a player, game master, or whatever, is not a role-playing game. I'm not saying it's a bad one, what I'm saying is that Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition fails as a role-playing game on every level. Period. Lots of people disagree. They claim it's fun. Fine. I'll address that near the end. Suffice it to say that I have heard all of the arguments, read the books, talked to friends who've played and both enjoyed and hated it. I've watched it played on YouTube and in real life. I have no interest in playing it whatsoever. I cannot emphasize more how much I find it to be un-fun. I cannot even make a character without becoming frustrated by the game. If I cannot get excited about my character, then I cannot play the game. This is literally a game that I find impossible for me to play. That is why I've never personally playtested it myself. I cannot explain it any better than that. Part of the game is rolling up a character--it is literally a stage of play, when you roll one up you are already playing--and if I cannot even complete that stage without wanting to douse the book in gasoline and light it on fire because it is not only un-fun, unexciting, and uninteresting, it is downright frustrating in a way I have not experienced since that goddamn vulture in Ninja Gaiden. This is why I have to scratch my head and wonder if something is wrong with me or with all of the people that love 4th edition. Now, I've heard all of the arguments as to why 4th edition is not only good, it's the best incarnation of D&D yet. Esper actually does a very decent review of it on YouTube and makes a solid case for adopting it. However, his discussion is full of very, very prominent flaws. Go ahead, watch his review before continuing reading. First, Esper does NOT possess credentials. Having started with 3rd edition does not equate to having credentials by a longshot. He's been playing for 10 years, but I've played for nearly 20 and I know of people who have played since the 1970s and knew Gygax personally. Second, he does not explain how 1st and 2nd edition AD&D are archaic from a design point-of-view. He just says it, no qualifications, no explanations, just an axiomatic statement that those systems are "out of date." This is extremely telling in that it inadvertently reveals a very prominent bias, making it apparent that he is not approaching it from a purely analytical standpoint. Simply put, he didn't think the game's mechanics before 3rd edition were up-to-date. I could assume he means "not like video-games enough" but that would be assuming (although his statement that he's "been a gamer" since he "picked up an NES controller" indicates that he equates tabletop role-playing with video games on some level). His lament that he felt things in 3.5 were "outdated" again begs the drat question, "What do you mean by 'outdated'?" To truly understand why he converted to 4th edition we need reasons why he felt 3rd and 3.5 were so flawed and archaic. His complaint that "everybody uses the same stuff" in 3.5 is confusing when, basically, all of the classes in 4th edition are relatively all the same in their mechanics. His discussion of why demons and devils don't teleport out of combat makes sense, but there are spells to prevent that (I guess he forgot about dimensional anchor and similar spells). "NPCs, monsters, and character classes all use the same rules," is his lament. However, from a design standpoint, that is actually a strength because it simplifies things! Otherwise, you get things like White Wolf--where you basically need to throw open your Werewolf the Apocalypse book if you're running a coterie in Vampire the Masquerade and they get jumped by a garou (if you want to represent them accurately and not just use the stats in the back of the Vampire book). But this also ignores the point that we do have hordes of different rules, feats, spells, and more, despite the fact that he put all of the supplements that describe them on display as his favorite additions to the game! By now, I'm confused. Did he house-rule D&D 3.5 so heavily that he forgot what the actual rules were? Okay, that's a bit harsh. Regardless, I see where he's coming from when it comes to a single spell-list, but I've played games like Rifts and Palladium Fantasy, so I see a definite advantage from a design point-of-view to streamline spells as a result of my experiences. "My cred" if you will. Which stretches back to "Classic D&D" and the Rules Cyclopedia in the late 1980s/early 1990s. If you lived in the Philly area, you were listening to Color Me Badd's "I Wanna Sex You Up" on Q-102. Then, he talks about the PC's classes "filling the role in the game that they're supposed to fill." Again, I have an enormous problem with this. I've run VERY unconventional games in D&D. Entire campaigns were run in 2nd edition without clerics or fighters or thieves or mages. Seriously, my Dark Sun campaign sophomore year of college basically consisted of a bard, a gladiator, and a psionicist/defiler. That's it. No cleric. Although the gladiator was a bit of a tank, he wasn't as versatile. The bard was a poisoner, not a thief, so breaking and entering was limited. The defiler had to keep his arcane magic under wraps due to the fact that if anyone knew, they'd kill him, so he stuck mostly with psionics. Yeah. No fighter, thief, mage, cleric roles in that party at all. My current party has a warlock, a dread necromancer, a barbarian and a rogue. No cleric (yet). No standard arcane spellcaster with utility spells. And the party is doing fine. The idea that there are roles to fill is bunk. Hell, plenty of people have blogged about how you don't need a cleric. The idea that a character is supposed to fill a predetermined role is what frustrates me so much about 4th edition. I've played games without classes whatsoever, where you simply developed a concept and built it (like White Wolf or D20 Call of Cthulhu) and had a blast. It's myopic, narrow-minded, and unnecessary. Hell, lots of gamers absolutely hate the existence of classes and frankly quit D&D back in 1st or 2nd editions because they think classes are out-of-date! If that is the case, 4th edition is a step backwards, not forwards, because it shoehorns every character with no flexibility or customizability! 4th edition was outdated before it was even launched! Esper's lament about how he was unhappy with losing a level is also extremely telling. I know a lot of old schoolers who ran during the Gygax days of White Box and Red Box D&D would sneer at Esper. "Tough luck, pal. It's a consequence. You died." 4th edition is about not having to pay the piper. There are no lasting consequences for a lot of effects. And that is a problem. But I'll get to that later. Anyway, yeah, saying that the level was gone and he couldn't get it back is so skewed. "Your level is gone. You can get it back, though... through adventuring until you get enough XP to get it back." Levels are fluid, in a way. But anyway, I digress. The item creation costs are stupid. Yes. Spells that cost XP make a bit of sense (you're sacrificing a part of yourself). Small XP costs for item creation may make sense too. Not the exorbitant costs, though. I've had problems with item creation costing XP. I don't like it. It balances things out... a little. But I've allowed players to buy feats and powers with XP, powers and feats they wouldn't have gotten as quickly, or in as much abundance. But item creation? Yeah, you should GAIN XP for that--you did in 2nd edition! It simply shouldn't be so easy as blowing gp and XP, but should take time to gather components and rare objects that both enhance the flavor of the world and make the item itself more special. Esper's complaint about non-spellcasting classes being boring is also bunk. Fighters can be amazingly powerful and versatile, and are drat good if you use wandering monster tables and random encountes. Rogues can forge documents like passports and royal writs and warrants that can get the party into places without combat. They're incredible skillmonkeys. My favorite rogue of all was a halfling archeologist that I created. Archeologist! Not a thief, but something more akin to a pint-sized Indiana Jones. He was basically what Indy said Marcus Brody was when he lied to the Nazis, "He's got a two-day head-start on you, which is more than he needs. Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan. He speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom. He'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the Grail already." Yeah. Only Brody was a joke. My halfling, however, was exactly that. High charisma, high dexterity, high intelligence. Yeah, he was poo poo in combat. But he wasn't built for combat. (This is one of the reasons I hated 4th edition--I couldn't build my halfling archeologist.) With enough finagling, you could built a barbarian from Mongolia or Northern Africa who raged and rode horses. A finesse fighter with a rapier like a Musketeer was entirely possible and at high levels a fighter specializing in longsword could go about saying, "I'm the greatest swordsman that ever lived" like Mad Martigan. Creativity made these classes interesting. But wait a second, in Part Two of his review, Esper says, "Now, you build the class the way you want." Then he turns around and says each class has a role, and mocks those who think that's constraining. So, wait, you just contradicted yourself and attempted to dismiss that contradiction by logical fallacy--you make a funny voice and attempt to discredit anyone who disagrees by imitating them, and then say, "shut up." Sorry, man, that doesn't fly. And the roles he assigns to the classes? Who the hell did he ever play with? For me, the cleric was always the man BEHIND the leader (who was most often the fighter or paladin). He was the Archbishop Turpin to the paladin's Charlemagne, or to reference the amazing Flesh + Blood, the cleric is Ronald Lacey's "Cardinal" to Rutger Hauer's fighter, "Martin." (As an aside, Ronald Lacey's character is such a great example of how a cleric should be role-played in a party, I feel the movie should be required viewing by DMs and cleric players alike). By-the-way, the fact that the fighter fit on ONE PAGE is actually his strength and he's the most versatile and customizable class in the entire drat game (with the possible exception of the rogue). Seriously, Esper's laments that fighters were "boring and generic" in 3.5 just shows how little imagination he had. Yeah, if you wanted to optimize your fighter, they're all the same. If you didn't care about min/max-ing, you could make a truly unique fighter in a party of truly unique fighters and they'd all be pretty awesome, have different weapons, and fight in interesting ways. I hear more complaints about how the classes are generic in 4th edition (especially since min/max-ers can quite easily optimize their classes and it is just obviously stupid not to do so). Yeah, that statement about half-dragon-half-minotaur-barbarian-fighter-ranger was just... so telling. So very telling. The more we watch, the more of Esper's tastes in gaming are revealed. In fact, the further I got into watching his video on 4th edition, the less I wanted to play it (if that is even possible) and the more I realized how much he misunderstood 3.5 and all previous editions of D&D. Esper's statement that he has a solid understanding of the design of previous editions is questionable, because so far we've heard beefs he has with those designs, but not any reflection on what those editions were designed to accomplish. They weren't designed to do what Esper wants. But Esper's playing Dungeons & Dragons, a game that never had him as a target audience. Until 4th edition that is. I won't say his criticisms are illegitimate. They are! However, Esper is not able to look beyond his own tastes and desires and understand what kind of play the game is designed to facilitate. Like I said, Esper was never the target audience of any edition prior to 4th. And I'll go on to explain why after a few more paragraphs. Esper then goes on about how the old methods of marketing and open-source materials were gone in favor of loyalty programs and general, overall consolidation of media sources such as print. His tone makes this seem like a Good Thing, then he shows the evolution of Mario from NES to the Wii. That was a not-too-subtle metaphor for progress. And if there's anything I learned from postmodernism, its that positivism and the idea that "progress" (i.e. change brought about by technological developments) are definitely something that is up for questioning. I mean, technological progress enabled millions to die in two World Wars (that very fact spawned the postmodern movement and brought about the questioning of positivism by-the-by). Besides, these new marketing strategies sounded to me like Wizards of the Coast was trying to cash in on new trends in marketing and things like downloadable content. I don't blame them--they're a business and CEOs keep their jobs by pleasing stockholders (just like the CEO of United Fruit when he arranges to have economic hit-men crash the planes of South American presidents who won't sell-out their people). Okay, that's a bit of a logical fallacy for me to equate Wizards with economic hit-men, but you get what I'm trying to say (I hope). These changes are not necessarily Good and in fact, I'm highly suspect because I know that Wizards and Hasbro (by extension) are after MONEY. And as a capitalist, I believe it is my duty to invest my money in products that I believe have a specific standard of design and quality of production. As the first video comes to a close and Esper basically brings up natural selection, it has now become clear that he is being didactic--4th edition is new, therefore superior. The period in which D&D didn't change was it's stagnant era, when TSR was almost destroyed by bankruptcy. Esper has gotten on a soapbox and is basically calling anyone who doesn't "change with the times" a Luddite and is implying that its time for those people to die off. Maybe he doesn't realize he's saying that and doesn't mean it. But it is a not-too-subtle subtext to everything he is saying openly, whether he is conscious of it or not. When Esper says Kobolds are bland in 3.5, he's obviously never DMed them right. They're like Viet Cong--they're trap-making machines who live underground! I've seen people run encounters with Kobolds that nearly killed 5th-level parties! Attacking by night, using missile weapons, employing false retreats to lure PCs into trapped areas (falling spiked logs, pit traps, etc) and kill-zones, Kobolds can be very ungeneric and... here's the killer... realistic. Let's be honest, if a bunch of 3-foot tall dog-people (2nd edition) or lizard-people (3rd and on) wanted you dead, they wouldn't fight you toe-to-toe, even if they were savage and primitive. Everything Esper says about his first Kobold encounter sums up what he wants out of D&D--a miniature war game. He wants Necromunda with some roleplaying and grid square maps instead of measuring tape. "Movement was more tactical," he says. That sounds like a miniature wargame to me. This is regression alright, like a lot of 4th edition's critics claim. Gygax and Arneson created D&D because their players wanted to actually pretend they were the figures they were playing with in Chainmail, for crying out loud! And if Esper actually had any real cred and an understanding of the design based on purpose, he'd understand that! Indeed, I try to run 3.5 without miniatures because it slows the game down and I prefer to use my imagination and ability to describe a scene effectively. Everything Esper says about building encounters, calculating XP, statting monsters, etc., just drives the point home--the problems with the game that Esper had all focused on combat. And the visuals make it absolutely undeniable--everything during this opening sequence is a picture of people at miniature-grid tables and mats. I try not to use miniatures and mats as visual aids--I prefer my own descriptive abilities and the use of pictures and photographs to build a sense of atmosphere and environment, not tactical positioning and obstacle-placement. Anyway, moving on... Esper is entirely right about how 4th edition was designed as a whole new car as opposed to a remodeled old one (ignoring the fact that old cars are often worth a fortune in good condition). He is right when he says the system is more consistent. He is 100% right about everything he says is strong about 4th edition. It is designed for a new generation of gamers. A generation of gamers that were weaned on Diablo, World of Warcraft, and other computer games. A generation of gamers that has been brought up being told that they're a precious snowflake, individual and unique. A generation of gamers to whom their schoolteachers have been told "you cannot say the student is wrong" and "you cannot mark their answers with red pens" because of their precious little feelings. A generation of gamers who goes online and makes gay and racist jokes while playing Call of Duty multiplayer. A generation of gamers who cannot associate their actions with the logical consequences that come about. A generation of gamers that got a trophy just for participating. A generation of gamers that are occupying Wall Street because they don't have a job and want a hand-out (not because they think banks and corporations need to be more socially responsible). A generation of gamers who are used to having the government, school, and computers take care of everything for them. A generation of gamers that are and will be perpetually spoiled children. I know that sounds harsh, but hear me out. Yes, I know it is hyperbolic, but generations have trends (anyone remember how solipsistic the "Me Generation" of the baby-boomers has been for the past 50-60 years?) and I'm talking in generalities. I'm allowed to. I'm a historian. So what if there are statistical outliers that don't match the norm? When everyone I read or watch who loves 4th edition gives reasons that all lie within one or two standard deviations of the mean, I'm allowed to start making blanket statements. Likewise, when I observe personal tendencies that all seem to conform to the average, I'm again allowed to speak in trends, groupings, and generalities. Anyway, if you want encounters to be more interesting, don't use game mechanics. That simply reduces every opponent to combat tokens meant to be killed and little else. Yeah, I understand how the powers and stuff 4th edition gives to opponents makes them interesting to fight. What about other forms of interaction? The game is a system that encourages a certain style of play, and that style is to consider every encounter a fight. Want to make those kobolds more interesting? How about all creatures (not just the PCs) go to negative hp? When the fighter deals that 4 hp kobold a hit for 6 damage, don't have it just die. It collapses, bleeding out. The kobold out of a threatened square with the next initiative then drags his dying friend out of danger by the arm. Next turn, he and another kobold hoist the body onto their shoulders and flee to a safer place where they can try to stabilize him or at least comfort him as he dies. He's their friend. They aren't just evil base-attack bonuses worth 1/2 CR, they're living creatures when you do that. Think realistically. Think the magic words "suspension of disbelief." (I'll probably go deeper into the whole "suspension of disbelief" in my next post on 4th edition.) And read what Justin Alexander has to say about how it is not difficult to design better encounters in 3.5 D&D so long as you approach the text without all your erroneous preconceptions about design purposes. Anyway, to continue, a lot of this comes from the schizophrenic nature of D&D. It's always been a role-playing game built around a combat engine, an engine derived ultimately from Chainmail back in the 1970s. It isn't a role-playing game with a combat-resolution system as a part of its greater problem-resolution system, like, say, White Wolf. The D20 system addressed this, but the inclusion of miniatures and tactical rules, like attacks of opportunity, actually reinforced the combat elements, as did the removal of the ecology and society segments of every entry in the Monster Manual. More and more classes, toys, and feats all helped to create a combat-heavy bent to 3rd edition and 3.5. The idiosyncrasies this brought about play a huge role in Esper's dissatisfaction with 3.5. They also play a huge role in why the OSR was established. Esper wants D&D to be primarily a combat engine, with all role-playing elements taking place outside of the actual pages of the rulebooks. Don't deny it, watch Part Two of his review. Every aspect of the game he raves about (except for the online and computer stuff) has to do with combat. Monsters have stat-blocks that describe all his abilities, attacks, and powers? Combat. Races have one good ability that you can use once per encounter? Combat. At surface level, this appears to be what the OSR is about. So why don't they convert to 4th edition? Why do they continually stick with an "outdated" system? Consequences. Esper seems to be a bit more mature than a lot of the people I'm going to take aim at, but I'm going to do it nonetheless. Most 4th edition players I've met are geeks, nerds, and dorks. Alright, fine, most gamers period are geeks, nerds, and dorks, but I'm talking about a specific kind--the kind that has a lot of deep-seated insecurities. They were bullied as kids. They sought solace in their hobbies and interests and developed a superiority complex and as a result they act like little Napoleons when they talk about comic books, argue over whether Kirk or Picard was a better captain, or play D&D. I saw this kind at Captain Blue Hen in Newark, DE one day while I was shopping for trade paperbacks of Sandman. They were recording a podcast and were trashing Joe Satriani for calling himself the "Silver Surfer." "How dare he? Who is Joe Satriani to call himself that?" I wanted to call them sad, pathetic little virgins, but they've probably got girlfriends (geek girls exist now) or wives (they're old enough to be married). Joe Satriani surfs, he has a silver guitar (upon which he surfs the frets), and he's one of the best guitar players alive. Frankly, more people will benefit from his musical talents than will ever read the drat comic. Grow the f--- up. It's called a Napoleon complex. I saw it all over the gaming community in Newark, DE, when I was in graduate school. Their self-esteems are so fragile, they have to haze newcomer gamers. They play nigh-unkillable characters. When they die, they whine when they lose a level upon resurrection. They don't like to face the consequences of failure because it subconsciously reminds them of when they couldn't do a single sit-up in gym class or couldn't get a date to the prom. I've had characters die. I rolled up new ones. If I was purposely f---ed over by the GM, I left the game. If it was just how the dice went, nobody was to blame. If it had been a product of incautious behavior or overlooking an important detail, the fault was mine. Hell, once I had a samurai who was defeated by a treacherous PC in such a way that he felt he had dishonored his ancestors and his lords. He committed seppuku. I basically killed my character because it was what my character would have done. And I rolled up a new one. It's how the game is played. Actions have consequences. The players of my Forgotten Realms campaign are fully aware of that. Sometimes, they make bad decisions. Hey, if Star Wars was being roleplayed by the kind of gamers who complain about setbacks (like losing a level for having been killed and resurrected), what do you think they'd say when Luke's player got Luke's hand chopped off by Vader and lost the lightsaber duel against a more powerful opponent in The Empire Strikes Back? Consequences make a game believable. Otherwise, it's just a mentally masturbatory game where you live out your fantasies of revenge and empowerment in a make-believe world. It ceases to tell any kind of entertaining or meaningful story. Some people can't get through John Updike's novels because all of his main characters are assholes. If that is the case, why do I want to watch a bunch of nerds and geeks who are angry about getting bullied turning around and bullying others? MovieBob covered this pretty drat well in regards to video games, but the "Hard Truth" applies to D&D. Check around 8:35 and listen to what he has to say about Six Days in Fallujah. Basically, 4th edition isn't challenging. "Balance" is so darn important because every single drat encounter is resolved through fighting (at least, that's what the system lends itself to and how the game is designed to be played). (As an aside, Justin Alexander's essays on "Fetishizing Balance" and balance types discuss how people approach balance wrongly in 3rd edition.) Yeah, you can run it differently, but the point is, because Ron Edwards is right and SYSTEM DOES MATTER, the system has an effect on the player's approach to the game and if it is designed for combat to resolve encounters then playing it any other way is going to bring about just as much house-ruling, inconsistency, and idiosyncrasy as every single previous edition. The OSR method of playing is incredibly unbalanced and lethal because you're supposed to be smart, think outside the box, and find ways to avoid, kill, trap, or negotiate with the monster in order to get the treasure. Killing creatures earned next-to-negligible XP. Treasure earned lots of it. How to play OS D&D? Think outside the box, dammit! Solve problems! Exercise your drat imagination! D&D 4th edition isn't designed for that. Since balance is so overly fetishized, it's designed to be the sort of "fun" that comes from "pwning n00bz" not overcoming actual challenges through brains. "Oh, but there's tactics!" Yeah, sure, fine. If I want to play a tactical game with miniatures I'll play Warhammer. I want to solve problems and how to separate the ancient red dragon from his hoard as a third level mage is a drat difficult challenge, but it's worth a whole hell of a lot of XP. If self-esteem, real, true, actual self-esteem is built through accomplishment, then it becomes apparent that OS D&D actually does more to build self-esteem than 4th edition does. Esper's claim that from a design-standpoint 3rd edition and 3.5 is bad was basically refuted even before it was written by Justin Alexander in "Calibrating Your Expectations." Here's a quote: I’ve been working and playing with the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons longer than most. Ryan Dancey sent me a playtest copy of the new Player’s Handbook back in 1999, almost a full year before it was released at GenCon 2000. I had been an outspoken critic of AD&D for several years at that point and, more recently, been involved in a number of heated debates with Ryan over the OGL and D20 Trademark License. By the time I was done reviewing the playtest document and sending my comments back to Ryan, I had basically done a 180-degree turn-around on both. Wizards of the Coast had assembled three incredibly talented game designers – Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams – to rework the system, and they had succeeded brilliantly. They stayed true to the roots of the game and captured the best parts of it, while shedding decades of detritus and poor design. There were still a few quibbles here and there, but they had taken advantage of the largest and most expensive design cycle for an RPG ever conceived and used it to deliver an incredibly robust, flexible, and powerful system. One of the most impressive things about 3rd Edition is the casual realism of the system. You can plug real world values into it, process them through the system, and get back a result with remarkable fidelity to what would happen in the real world. Some people will consider this to be a remarkable claim. It doesn’t take much experience with the roleplaying hobby before you're familiar with dozens of vehement diatribes on the lack of realism in D&D and the resulting shortcomings in the system. Whole laundry lists of complaints (aimed at hit points, the encumbrance system, falling damage, or attacks of opportunity, for example) have been generated. In fact, such claims are so prolific that making the opposite claim (as I have done) is practically a heresy of sorts. But, in my experience, these complaints largely originate either from people carrying over their criticisms of previous editions (where many of the criticisms were true) or from people failing to actually look at the facts and run the numbers. So what I want to do, rather than just making my claim, is to take a look at a few rules, actually run the numbers, and demonstrate how effective D&D really is at modeling the real world. And run the numbers he does. Justin Alexander demonstrates conclusively (in my opinion) that D&D 3rd edition and 3.5 is a highly adept simulation of reality that works extremely well without excessively clunky mechanics that wreck suspension of disbelief (before you say anything about realism and clunkiness of system, go take a look at Riddle of Steel). Johnathan Tweet, Skip Williams, and my God, Monte Cook designed 3.5. Seriously. Monty F---ing Cook. For nearly every complaint Esper had, I gave a discussion and occasionally posted a link to an essay (by Justin Alexander) on that exact topic which demonstrated that Esper wasn't approaching the game's design in a manner that maximized its actual potentials. Justin Alexander's observations on the very design decisions of 4th edition are incredibly revealing into the very purpose of the engine's design. Another quote: Unfortunately, since Mearls started working at WotC, there are plenty of indications that he's swallowed the Kool-Aid. Which leads to the other big strike 4th Edition has against it, in my opinion... DESIGN ETHOS AT WIZARDS The current design ethos which seems to be holding sway at WotC is radically out-of-step with my own tastes in game design and gameplay. Take, for example, an article Mearls wrote on the rust monster as part of the "Design & Development" column at WotC's website. Here we have a rust monster given an ability which corrodes, warps, and cracks metallic equipment and weapons. 10 minutes later, though, the metallic equipment and weapons are A-OK. They just repair themselves without any explanation. This design is an example of the "per encounter" and "no long-term consequences, because long-term consequences aren't fun" schools of thought which the WotC design department seem to be mired in at the moment. But the result is a cartoony game system: My characters no longer live in a world I can believe in. They live in a cartoony reality where actions don't have long-term consequences and the grid-lines of the holodeck are clearly visible. Another example from Mearls would be his blog post about skills from late last year, to which I have already written a response. I'm not saying that this skill system is one we're likely to see in 4th Edition, but I am saying that it shows that Mearls' design sense has radically altered since he designed Iron Heroes and The Book of Iron Might. Let's take a look at a recent quote from David Noonan: "Powers unique to the new monster are often better than spell-like abilities. At first glance, this principle seems counterintuitive. Isn’t it easier and more elegant to give a monster a tried-and-true power from the Player’s Handbook? On the surface, sure. But watch how it works at the table. The DM sees the spell-like entry, grabs a Player’s Handbook, flips through it to find the relevant spell, reads the relevant spell, decides whether to use it, then resumes the action. See where I’m going with this? That’s a far more cumbersome process than reading a specific monster ability that’s already in the stat block. Heck, the physical placement of one more open rulebook is a hassle for a lot of DMs." This quote is interesting to me, because it shows the type of wrong-headed logic skew that I see prevalent in a lot of the WotC design decisions of late. Basically the thought process here goes something like this: Step 1: A spell-like ability looks easy to use, since it's a tried-and-true power from the PHB. But, in practice, the DM actually has to open up the PHB to see how the spell works. So instead of having all the information at their fingertips, they have to open up another book. And if the creature has multiple spell-like abilities, you've actually got to look at multiple page references in the PHB to figure out what the creature's range of abilities is. So far, so good. This is all absolutely true. Step 2: It would be easier if we put all the relevant information in the monster's stat block, so that it's right at the DM's fingertips. Right again. Some people might complain about "wasted space", but I would love the utility of it. I have a similar reaction whenever I see "undead traits" in the stat block. You mean I have to flip back-and-forth through my copy of the MM to keep on top of this creature? It took me many months of DMing 3rd Edition before my undead stopped losing random abilities from that "undead traits" entry. Step 3: So they shouldn't have spell-like abilities. Every creature should have a completely unique mechanic designed just for it. ... what the hell? How did you go skewing suddenly off to the side like that? The problem is that Noonan is fallaciously conflating two types of utility: (1) Spell-like abilities make it easier to use the rules because, as your familiarity with the rules for various spells grow, you will gain greater and greater mastery over a larger and larger swath of the ruleset. (2) Putting all the information you need to run a creature in the creature's stat block makes it easier to use the creature because all the information you need is immediately accessible (without needing to look in multiple places, which also ties up books you may need to be using to reference other information). There's no need to jettison utility #1 in order to achieve utility #2. The correct solution is to use spell-like abilities and list the information you need regarding the spell-like ability in the creature's stat block. (Which is not to say that a creature should never have a unique ability. There is no spell to model a hydra's many-heads, for example. The point here isn't to stifle creativity. The point is to avoid reinventing the wheel every time you want to build a car.) We actually saw a similar logic-skew in Mearls' treatment of the rust monster: Step 1: Rust monsters feature a save-or-die attack (and often you don't even get a save). The only difference is that it targets equipment instead of characters. Save-or-die effects aren't fun, because they simplify the tactical complexity of the game down to a crap shoot. This is absolutely correct. Step 2: The rust monster should still be able to attack, corrode, and destroy equipment (because that's its schtick and it's a memorable one) but it shouldn't be a save-or-die effect. Yup. Step 3: So we should keep the save-or-die attack, but make the armor miraculously un-rust and de-corrode after 10 minutes. ... and there they go again, skewing off towards the cliff's edge. (The correct answer here, by the way, is: "The rust monster will use the existing mechanics for attacking items. Because we want the rust monster's ability to be frightening and unusual, we will allow it to bypass hardness. The damage will also be inflicted on metallic items used to attack the rust monster. Magic items are affected, but may make a saving throw to avoid the damage.") I know that's an enormous quote of text, but it essentially isolates two major problems of design and the illogic behind the design of 4th edition--problems that Esper and other gamers actually see as strengths. Make no mistake, they do! Esper's complaint about losing a level is indicative of the whole approach the 4th edition design team took regarding the rust monster. The game is purposely designed to allow the players to fight through a dungeon as close to consequence-free as possible. And fight is the key word here. All utility and non-combat abilities (especially spells) are relegated to long, time-consuming (in game) tasks or actions (like rituals). Basically, this renders utility spells, like knock, entirely useless. Most of the time knock is used is because you come to a locked or stuck door and need to open it quickly before your pursuers catch up to you. But since there are healing surges and "running away" and "losing a fight" isn't "fun" then why would you need knock for that purpose? Hell, why have knock in the game at all when the rogue can just keep trying to pick the lock ad infinitum? As Esper describes the fact that monsters use different rules (in his second segment), what he's talking about is how the monster behaves in combat and what powers the monster has. This is because 4th edition has basically reduced all monsters to combat-obstacles to be killed, period. Again, a quote from Justin Alexander: This is yet another logic skew at work. They correctly identified a problem ("when combat and non-combat abilities are mixed together in the stat block, it's difficult to quickly find the combat abilities on-the-fly") and simultaneously came up with two solutions: 1. We will have a new stat block that separates the combat information from the non-combat information. This will make it much easier to use the stat block during combat, and if it adds a little extra time outside of combat (when time pressure isn't so severe) that's OK. (You can see the logic behind this solution discussed, quite correctly, by James Wyatt in another column.) 2. We will get rid of all the non-combat abilities a monster has, since they'll never have a chance to use them given their expected lifespan of 5 rounds. Now, ignoring all the obvious problems in the second design philosophy, why do you even need to implement such a "solution" when you've already got solution #1 in place? (In case the design problems in the second "solution" aren't obvious, here's another quote from David Noonan: "Unless the shaedling queen is sitting on a pile of eggs, it doesn’t matter how the shaedlings reproduce. The players will never ask, and the characters will never need to know." What Noonan is ignoring there is that the reason the PCs might be encountering the shaedling queen in the first place is the pile of eggs. If D&D were simply a skirmish game, Noonan would be right: You'd set up your miniatures and fight. And the reasons behind the fight would never become important. But D&D isn't a skirmish game -- it's a roleplaying game. And it's often the abilities that a creature has outside of combat which create the scenario. And not just the scenario which leads to combat with that particular creature, but scenarios which can lead to many different and interesting combats. Noonan, for example, dismisses the importance of detect thoughts allowing a demon to magically penetrate the minds of its minions. But it's that very ability which may explain why the demon has all of these minions for the PCs to fight; which explains why the demon is able to blackmail the city councillor that the PCs are trying to help; and which allows the demon to turn the PCs' closest friend into a traitor. And, even more broadly, the assumption that detect thoughts will never be used when the PCs are around assumes that the PCs will never do anything with an NPC except try to hack their heads off. One is forced to wonder how much the design team is playing D&D and how much the design team is playing the D&D Miniatures game. This was before 4th edition was even released, and his predictions were correct. 4th edition is basically a miniatures game. It's Chainmail morphed into D&D (minus lasting consequences) all over again. So much for "progress." Like I said above, 4th edition is outdated and Esper is apparently unaware of his inadvertent hypocrisy. The entire thing is all about the players having a superficial and ultimately empty experience that is "fun" but not "challenging." Once you figure out how the mechanics work and get enough tactical experience down, you can literally use a few simple math formulae to calculate the results of any given encounter simply using the given stats of the PCs and the mean stats for the opponents (which isn't hard, especially for minions). Most of my friends who quit playing 4th edition quit because they would spend 5 minutes calculating the results of a 1-hour combat session and their predictions were so accurate that the game became utterly predictable and boring. Add-to-that the lack of consequences and what you have is something I am not interested in playing. Ever. I won't even try it. The very system irks me. I've not played with enough good GMs in my life to feel any sort of certainty or trust that whomever runs a 4th edition game and invites me will be willing to let me try to negotiate with the kobolds instead of kill them. I have the feeling that I'm going to echo lindybeige's complaints about the system when the DM says "you can't do that" to me whenever I try to do something that the game doesn't give me an express power. Why would anyone want to play a game like that? Well, like I said, nobody in generations X or Y can seem to take failure. It hurts their precious little egos. So when they fail in real life, they blame Wall Street instead of getting back on the drat horse. Compare Esper's attitude regarding his character's death to this old grognard's tale I saw on rpg.net a few years ago: I played a Magic User in Greyhawk .. THE Greyhawk... for a while. Up to 6th or 7th level when I retired him because I was tired of him and went back to my 8th level fighter. My favorite adventure was as a 1st level MU. I had heard about an entrance to the 3rd level of Greyhawk and went down. Alone. With 3 HP and a Charm Person spell. Just me. A 1st level MU. In Greyhawk Castle. With Gary Gygax reffing. I hit 2nd level at the end of the night with enough XP to be one shy of 3rd. I ran, I snuck, I threw lanterns (fire, oil, and a handle in one convenient package!), I ran, and I ran some more. It was still one of the best single evenings of gaming I've ever had. So, I have heaps and heaps of "no loving sympathy" for people who complain it's boring to play a low level MU. Someone else posted that one of the designers of 4th edition had played with Gygax as a preteen and was always complaining that his magic-user died, but the kid never learned how to play smart like the others--he wanted to zap and zap and zap away. Behold. The "Me Generation." On that same forum, one of the posters wrote: "Though I might argue that the amount of information that a new player has to understand by looking at a 4E character sheet is certainly more to digest than a OD&D character sheet. ... 4E also presumes... or at least encourages through example... a certain style and approach to play. OD&D had so few rules to "anchor" it that it meant that new players could make the game their own. " The response? "Mechanically yes, but OD&D demanded a lot more out of it's players. Modern D&D demands less. ... [Presuming/encouraging a specific style] is a huge bone in 4es favor. Again placing more demands on the player. Game design is about crafting a players experience." I'll reiterate and link again: SYSTEM MATTERS. The worst thing about the whole system of consequences being removed and character death being so remote a possibility is that there's no real challenge (unless the DM basically goes out of his way to try to kill the PCs with extremely unbalanced encounters). Therefore, there's no real psychological reward. Oh, it's fun. But there's no real sense of player agency. By removing challenge and consequences and reducing everything to a series of combat encounters in a linear dungeon, the ability for the players to actually participate in the creation of a story (like the players are doing in my Forgotten Realms game) is diminished. I have half a mind to think that 4th edition is so friendly to DMs because it allows them to railroad the players so effectively and convince them that they're having a grand old time while he's doing it. There's no way in 4th edition the PCs are going to chase the brown bear off using bells, whistles, banging metal, and other things that generally drive bears off in real life. They're going to have to kill it because that's how the game works, that's how it is designed, that is how it is supposed to be played. If the DM allows for anything else, he is literally and most assuredly doing it wrong because he is not using the game for the purpose for which it was designed. Again, I'll link Ron Edward's article: System Does Matter. And the above paragraph is proof. If you think a good DM and veteran role-players (as opposed to "roll"-players) in your group redeems your game, I'm sorry, you are wrong because your style of play is actually misusing the system, making it do something it wasn't designed to do. Therefore, any arguments that the "fun" and "role-playing" aspects of 4th edition are all dependent on the group composition and DM are hereby demolished. QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM. As lindybeige says in his review of 4th edition (linked above), 4th edition "is not a role-playing game at all. It is sort of a weird miniatures skirmish game, and an incredibly slow one at that." Yeah. I'll take 3.5 or OS D&D over 4th edition for the fantasy role-playing and Warhammer Fantasy Battle if I want to spend a fortune playing miniature skirmish games. Next part, I will discuss the mechanics of the game a little and how it totally destroys suspension of disbelief, which in turn discourages immersion and role-playing. --- This was part one in a series, fortunately aborted for the following reasons: --- Monte Cook Leaves D&D Design Team I just had to post on this. I'm delaying my personal opinion on the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle in favor of this particular story and its implications. Monte Cook has left the WotC design team for 5th edition D&D. I have to admit, this gives me a very "I-told-you-so" sort of feeling, mixed with a bit of Schadenfreude. I can't help it, I think 4th edition was very much not a roleplaying game and am perplexed by those who say it is and enjoy it (read this if you haven't already). The announcement of 5th edition pretty much made a Part II of my diatribe against 4th edition kind of pointless, admittedly. The implications of Monte Cook leaving 5th edition's design team because he and WotC had creative "differences of opinion" should be apparent to almost everyone--WotC has learned nothing. D&D 5th edition is probably going to be a disaster. I don't blame people for holding out hope for 5th edition, but I'm not holding my breath. See, by trying to create a versatile product that can be customized to satisfy the OSR player, the 3.5/Pathfinder gamer, and the 4th edition adherent, WotC is going to make a product that satisfies no one. I don't care about all of the fans playtesting it and saying it's great. Research states that focus groups don't work. Psychology and in-group acceptance help to shape our perceptions and make us biased. Therefore, people playtesting a game are predisposed to rave about it even though, six months later in their friend's basement, they're going to realize that the game is the opposite of fun and get this very sour taste in their mouth. When you try to make a product that pleases everybody, you end up pleasing no one. Now that one of the most creative minds in tabletop RPG gaming and game design has left the WotC design team, I have pretty much shed all doubts I had about the poor design and unplayability of 5th Edition. What's worse is that the D&D community might fracture even more as a result! If 4th edition fanatics dislike 5th edition, that's an entire faction that WotC just lost. I keep saying that WotC should just sell the entire franchise to Eric Mona and the guys at Pathfinder. --- I considered including comments, but these two posts together put me within 500 characters of the post limit.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2013 21:02
|
|
|
That was originally my grog find! My favorite part is that despite the Part One title, he never wrote a second part and only followed it up with this puny"interlude":quote:What's Wrong with 4th Edition, Interlude He explained why he never finished it up four months later: quote:Monte Cook Leaves D&D Design Team
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2013 03:57
|
|
|
grognards.txt- I'm a historian, I'm allowed to. (This is terrible and it should never be used and I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going but I sure know where I've been) In any case, let's contrast the weightier posts with some lighter, simpler pieces. -- 4th edition is more about combat nd less about role playing. If you want something thats more into actual role playing then I suggest pathfinder, as it closely resmebels 3.5 -- Its a PC game on the tabletop. Which is odd because pen and paper roll playing shouldnt be that restricted. -- Yeah with 4e they pretty much turned it into a pen and paper mmo. It's just cheaper to do their own fantasy DND knockoff than pay Wizards to allow em to do the real thing. Wouldn't really be much different than Dragon Age, less graphic maybe. -- It took a lot of the individualism out of the game. Everything has been streamlined to the point where it feels we were playing 2nd edition again. Whereas 2 fighters of the same level were cookie cutter and the only difference was gear. In 3.5 skills and feats made 2 fighters wholly different from each other. -- The thread feels empty without antigrog. That's kosher to post if we include some grog for contrast, right? -- The two games are very different, despite sharing the same underpinnings. I know plenty of people who played previous editions who don't like 4e, and I know plenty of people who played previous editions who loved 4e. Hopefully we can navigate these rocky, contentious waters without flames. First off, 4e is fairly light on non-combat rules. This doesn't mean that 4e games are all about combat; it means that the rules assume that a lot of the roleplaying activities that were codified in 3e will be done via freeform roleplay. For example, there aren't any crafting rules for anything other than magic items. There also aren't any general professional skills, and there aren't any NPC classes. If you prefer to have rules for that sort of thing, 3e will be a better choice for you. Second, 4e uses a power-based design methodology. Classes can be thought of as collections of powers; the differences between classes are defined by the different power choices they have. This makes for a very modular and flexible system. Some people find that it makes the classes overly homogeneous; some people like it. Third, every 4e class uses powers. That's implied by my second point but it's worth mentioning specifically. A character begins with two at-will powers, that he can use whenever he wants; one encounter power, that can be used once per fight; and one daily power, that can be used once per day. Even martial characters, such as warriors, use this paradigm -- although their "powers" might be better thought of as something akin to a martial arts kata. This was intended to make combat more interesting for (say) fighters, in comparison to the earlier model where fighters just tended to hit things over and over again. If you didn't mind that model, this change may be unnecessary for your play style. Fourth, 4e leans more heavily on the battlemap. My impression is that the large number of movement-oriented powers both make the battlemap more important and make combat more fluid, but that's definitely a subjective opinion on my part: consider it something to think about if you try 4e rather than a definite fact. Fifth, 4e introduces the concepts of roles. Roles are a way of classifying classes by what they tend to do in combat. You've got leaders, who heal. There are more of them than just the cleric; for example, the bard is also a leader. You've got defenders, who control the battlefield by encouraging enemies to focus their attacks on them. The fighter is a defender; so is the paladin. You've got controllers, who are somewhat difficult to define, but you can think of them as the classes that affect the flow of a fight: they can hamper enemies, reshape terrain, and so on. The wizard is a classic controller. And, finally, you've got strikers, who purely focus on doing damage. The ranger and the sorcerer are strikers. Every class is primarily one role, but every class has the ability to take on aspects of another role, depending on what the player wants to do. Sixth, multiclassing is more limited than in 3e. You can multiclass in a couple of ways, but you don't get the same ability to take six or seven classes/prestige classes during the course of your career. 4e classes are fairly flexible, but you don't get the same complete freedom you would with 3e multiclassing. Seventh, the scope and feel of 4e can be somewhat more epic; or, to put it differently, more broad. The highest level is level 30, and that's very epic play, with abilities that allow characters to come back from the dead. Even at level 1, your characters are significantly more durable than third edition characters, and they'll be able to pull off some really wild things. I think that hits most of the major differences. It's good to remember that it's still a heroic fantasy game in which characters fight monsters. It still uses a 20 sided die. Also, if you want to try it out, WotC has a free Quick Start kit available. Alternatively, the new Essentials Red Box will be out in a few weeks; at $20 US, it might be a good way to take a peek at the game and decide if you like it. The Essentials core books will present a bunch of new class variants that change some of the things above: e.g., fighters won't have the same power structure I mentioned. So that might be a better entrance point.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2013 04:26
|
|
|
Elfdart posted:Greetings, Colonel! Well, It's pretty easy, I should think. If the command was "Whirl", the individual would do that and likely disrupt all those in touching distance of his arms. I agree with Elfdart's suggestion that two of the opponents would have been directly effected by the command spell's activation success. Cheers, Gary
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2013 06:51
|
|
|
quote:Bottom line, this is not Dungeons & Dragons. I was sold something different than what the name on the cover is. It's like a pet shop selling a turtle under the name of "cat". Or like the Coca-Cola Company deciding to change the formula for "Coca-Cola" so that it is now a transparent lime drink. Many familiar tropes are gone. The alignment system is dumbed down from nine alignments to five. Everybody can Raise Dead. Magic Missiles require to-hit rolls. Fighters and Rogues have as many "magic" powers as Wizards do. Classic races and classes like half-orcs and druids were dumped in favor of unproven quantities like dragonborn and warlords. quote:I'm used to some people complaining when a new edition of the rules comes out. Some people just resist change. quote:How do I hate thee, 4th Ed? Let me count the ways quote:This review is from: Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook (Hardcover) Are Amazon reviews cheating? This last one is titled: Gygax you are truly dead now......and missed quote:I cannot fully state my disappointment in 4e. So, let me start by giving kudos to its one, and only one, improvement. Magic has now been successfully separated into combat magic and longer more difficult (ritualized) magic. That's it folks. The one thing I find better about 4e. The death of another human being is ammunition in our petty nerd feuds!
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2013 07:37
|
|
|
Chaltab posted:The death of another human being is ammunition in our petty nerd feuds! There seems to be quite a net furor on. Apparently several people, perhaps a gaming group, were at Gen Con wearing t-shirts saying “4e Killed Gary Gygax.” (There are further claims that a company was selling them at Gen Con, but as no one from the thousands of people at the con can quite remember which company it was, that stinks of wishful incorrectness.) This immediately generated a wave of incorrect rumors that a company called Dragon Root was selling them at the con – they weren’t, but people are happily spreading the misinformation since no one wants truth to get in the way of “revenge porn,” as one ENWorld poster puts it. I’ve been treated to about a hundred forum posts by “offended” people who, claiming two or three more balls than they have in real life, want to “find whoever did it and beat them senseless.” (My ex, following along as I write this story, notes “There seems to be quite a lot of woodwork, doesn’t there!” with her trademark dry wit.) 1. Yes, it’s tasteless, and yes, it’s funny. It’s 2008, get over it. If you live in a flyover state that has a lower than usual irony/postmodern humor quotient, watch a Comedy Central roast or something. 2. 4e didn’t kill Gary, it just makes him roll over in his grave. Bonus Gamespy Interview quote: GameSpy: Have you had a chance to play or even look at some of the current Dungeons & Dragons games? Gygax: I’ve looked at them, yes, but I’m not really a fan. The new D&D is too rule intensive. It’s relegated the Dungeon Master to being an entertainer rather than master of the game. It’s done away with the archetypes, focused on nothing but combat and character power, lost the group cooperative aspect, bastardized the class-based system, and resembles a comic-book superheroes game more than a fantasy RPG where a player can play any alignment desired, not just lawful good. Although I have my doubts about whether this is really a Gary quote, as it doesn’t use the words “fatuous,” “jejeune,” or “scrumdiddlyumptious.” Anyway, all of you fruits feigning rage since of course YOU were the one who loved Gygax more than ANYONE – give it a rest, you’re passive-aggressively trying to cash in on his name yourself by publicly declaring yourself his biggest fan and posthumous defender. (Hey, Posthumous Defender, that’s a great name for a prestige class!) All of you with real rage over it – and I say this in love – Jesus, get a grip and out of your parent’s drat basement, or the dark bungalow where you live singly (more common for older adult geeks). I’ve seen twenty people post “what must his FAAAAAAAAAAAMILY think.” Well, you’re not them, so keep it to your loving self. How about instead, you show some sympathy and consideration to people you know when someone you actually *know* dies.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2013 14:00
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:
The best part about that quote is that it's not talking about the edition everyone wants it to be about. And now, some horseback riding in Reign grog. quote:
quote:
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2013 16:50
|
|
|
Under discussion, the following "no exploits rule":quote:"If it looks like, feels like, or you think it's an exploit than you already know the answer is no" Seems reasonable? That's where you're WRONG. quote:You clearly have no idea what this sort of reaction to a "rules hole" has on some people. It is not the desire to "rules lawyer," or however else you'd like to degrade the approach; it's the desire to have a consistent setting. Clearly the intent of the item in question is not to provide a source of infinite cash - so the rules should be tweaked to make the item better serve its function. quote:I'd rather not have to tip-toe around a GM's sensibilities about what constitutes an exploit or not because they're unwilling to make mild modifications to rules that clearly have holes in them. quote:One thing I DO enjoy in old rules sets is the ability for the players to come up with "exploits". Call it thinking outside the box, using your spells cleverly, whatever: it's part of the game to me and that's one thing the rules-lawyer squad got wrong all along is that with their pixelbitching bullshit they killed that clever aspect of the rules' design which leads to memorable (glorious and/or ridiculous) moments of game play - that is, a good thing, not a bad one. Therefore, that quiver is badly designed. "Thinking outside the box! You know, using your spells cleverly or, uh, um, (long pause, strokes beard) whatever." What about other player/GM expectations, like genre? quote:I remember a GM trying (somewhat inarticulately) to explain to me what he meant by "heroic fantasy" and it sounded like a lot of guff to me. Why should I be forced to mould my character's natural personality to his concept of "heroic fantasy"? A concept that I find naff enough that I'm not sure I can ever completely internalise it? quote:Well, yeah, RPgs aren't good for modelling fictional material. Thats what storygames are for. quote:Ditto. Ditto indeed.....ditto......indeed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2013 05:36
|
|
|
If Philip K. Dick lived today, he'd write a novel about a man wrongfully imprisoned by Thought Police for wanking to his imagination of a naked woman, as he has committed a crime of objectification. It'd be later revealed that he is a transsexual and was imagining himself as a woman, and would in the end be paid hush money by the government. I just love this split in modern feminism - on one axis you have those attacking Putin with titties (making him basically laugh at the prospect of free, young, tender boobs), on the other you have those women who are acting as if they should all be wearing burkas. First ones are then acting surprised when they get the shaft for public nudity (I'm all for relaxing laws on public nudity, scum that I am, but well - dura lex sed lex), while the others protest minor indignities (that can hardly be even constructed indignities), while ignoring the notions of true misogonysts such as hardcore salafists and wahabists. I'll lower myself to the same level and retort - is that too hard that I like women so much, that I do in fact love looking at you? Why am I compared to a women - beating scum, because I try to appreciate beauty? The sad truth is, that if anyone starts accusing you about this War on Women (and unless you are a women beater or some sort of a pimp, whether literal or metaphorical, etc. etc.), whether it's sexism or objectivism or promoting rape culture, you need to walk away. Because any argument you may give, any joke you'd try to crack, will just be turned against you. ... (This is in a thread about the Riddle of Steel remake and the naked women in the margins.) JDCorley fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Apr 17, 2013 |
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2013 15:33
|
|
|
In response to someone being upset that his GM arbitrarily decided in the middle of a combat scene to take away all of his character's magic:quote:And finally, IMHO asking the GM if he could play another character is just as bad as the GM taking his powers. Saying something like "Can I fix it or change deities? No? Ok, then I'm done with this character, I make a new one." shows a lack of interest and respect for the game, the story and the character itself.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2013 19:22
|
|
Heart Attacks posted:In response to someone being upset that his GM arbitrarily decided in the middle of a combat scene to take away all of his character's magic: You're doing just fine, I'd say! In any case, an assortment: quote:These figures pretty much guarantee that the entire size of the serious Storygamer hobby is well under 3000 people. He's pretty much their most successful writer, and he's never sold 3000 copies of even his most successful games. quote:Twat. It's been defined a billion times on these very boards. Just because you refuse to acknowledge the difference (or at least that's what you imply here whereas... look, I'm confused, because you seem to very well understand it when you are talking about story games versus traditional games yourself... what gives?) doesn't make it somehow not exist. quote:I tend to look at it as three pillars of failure: 1974-1979 is a period covering ten years now, apparently. Hell, if Essentials is a "reboot", then it's really only AD&D and BECMI that had decade-long careers, since 3rd edition lasted only three before being "rebooted".
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2013 20:24
|
|
|
unseenlibrarian posted:The best part about that quote is that it's not talking about the edition everyone wants it to be about.  quote:GURPS sucks, and stop talking about it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2013 22:58
|
|
|
quote:This is true, but my players always investigate as much as they can before venturing into the dangerous part, and even then the player who plays the wizard prepares the backup spells just in case if the party over saw something in their planing or didn't investigate enough. quote:The party winning isnt a problem. That could be your disconnect. From yoru other posts though you just dont seem to really know anything about the 3e casters. Learning more would make most of your misconceptions about their power disappear. quote:I've been playing 3e for past 10 years now and phb I know by heart... Like I said, for me and our style of play, caster are overpowered. quote:Ha, being able to win isnt overpowered. And rewriting the class immediately, (what 9 years ago?) doesnt give you a fart in the winds experience with how it should play. quote:erm yes, you must know every minute of my life for past 10 years. I rewrote the class 2 years ago after 8 years of patching, experimenting and finding what is best for my group. quote:"patching" and "experimenting" means re-writing parts of the class or rules. Not learning how it actually plays RAW. quote:What's with you? I'm not telling you how to play your game. yeah, actually you dont. You know how your patchwork house ruled wizard plays under your playstyle. That doesnt tell you squat about about the RAW wizard. ~*~ I will always find it adorable when 3e fans take personal offence at someone saying "I had a problem with the game I'd like fixed" ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Apr 18, 2013 |
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2013 06:18
|
|
|
Balance in relation to commoners and other "normals" in the campaign. This issue isn't a difficult one to handle by the RAW. Wizards should be treated as a highly trained and extremely rare thing. The education required for it is beyond our modern PhD. So yes, a wizard's spells can be beyond normal in the economy and in relation to the other abilities of "normals" in the game, but they are supposed to be. Most commoners have rarely seen magic, much less have an available wizard. They've heard stories... and maybe, at best, in a city they saw a wizard once. Can a single wizard break a village's economy... sure, but that's not a problem in my opinion. Wizards are and should be rare.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2013 06:22
|
|
|
If the NPC is built with standard character class rules, I can put the NPC into a context relevant to the PCs as well as myself. If I can identify his abilities, I may be able to come up with a rational understanding of what he can do (and is unlikely to be able to do) that may guide my interaction. But if the abilities don't come with an identifiable framework or, worse, are arbitrary, I can't really learn much predictive about the creature I'm encountering. For example, if the fighter in heavy armor comes swinging into the fight, I'm generally not going to expect him to unleash a cone of cold as a spell at me all of a sudden once he's in close and we've exchanged a few blows. Or if he does, I might have been expected or able to see evidence of some trade-off that got him to that level of spell-casting proficiency. At the very least, from that point on, I'm going to expect he might do more of the same and use tactics accordingly. But if he doesn't (perhaps because that cone of cold was all he had), I'm going to be a little irritated. It feels to me that the opponent's spell was just a random "gotcha" to sucker me into taking more damage rather than interact (in this case fight) with a coherent NPC. ~*~ The DM sent an enemy at us who did something surprising and new. I HATE that. Way to break my suspension of disbelief!
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2013 06:49
|
|
|
The mainstream rpg market, the one dominated by games like Paizo's Pathfinder and WotC's D&D, has changed a lot from the roots of the hobby. Where once most gamers would have been content with a photocopied manual made in their local library and purchased through the mail, the format of the books has become of greater and greater import to the people buying them. We want books that look good and have lots of pictures, presumably because our imaginations are no longer working on overtime, so we need to have illustrations on every page to remind us what our own particular fantasy worlds look like. This is really an aspect of the DIY problem spilling over into book design. D&D, like most modern well-known and mainstream pnp games, isn't about coming up with your own stuff anymore but rather purchasing stuff that you find in a store. The shiny pages, the full-page artwork, and the strange layouts are themselves a selling point now with the content taking second place. The encyclopedic style of late-stage TSR has been supplanted by a very simple and easy-to-read method of writing. As the writing of the books has gotten less complex their layouts have taken up the slack. They are now shining examples of overdesign. Yes indeed! I said it once and I'll say it again! They have less content and more glamor than any books that came before them. Paizo is perhaps slightly less guilty of this (their Pathfinder book is as gigantic a paperweight as I've ever seen and I confess that I couldn't be bothered to read it thoroughly as I despise 3.x in all its incarnations) but WotC has taken this design schema to heart and so have many lesser companies following WotC's wagon train. Take a look at any roleplaying supplement produced in the golden or silver ages of the hobby. Take a look at the original Starship Warden in the very first Gamma World set. These things aren't tarted up to the nines, they're simple. They contain what you need to play the game and often do so in a very high level of language. They're complicated, hard to grok with ease, and often times extremely ugly. People will tell me that the expansion of the player-base is the best thing that could happen to an rpg. I deny this vigorously! The contraction of the player-base, its status as an elite group, is what made these games work. If you can't read tables, I don't want you in my game. If you can't parse strange and backwards language or college level instructions, I don't want you in my game! We're dealing with serious poo poo here, the expansion of the imagination to levels where it encompasses whole universes! We are exploring interior realms of vast complexity and far-reaching meaning. If you can't understand a handbook written in a dry style, I don't want to play with you. There is a barrier here that has been removed, and as the barrier has come down we've been flooded with mediocre content. Mediocre content can be protected by flashy page layouts because mediocre people don't care. Anyone who values the layout and art of a book over the book's actual contents doesn't belong in the same roleplaying circle as me. YES, this is the most elitist snobbery, the hardest line of grognardism. I don't care. It's my game too, drat it, and I can fight to preserve the way I play.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2013 21:57
|
|
|
quote:Pat Robertson knows that demonic spirits are behind everything from homosexuality and Halloween to karate and secondhand sweaters, and so it came as no surprise today when he warned 700 Club viewers that Dungeons & Dragons is a “demonic” game. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-demonic-dungeons-dragons-literally-destroyed-peoples-lives
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2013 16:43
|
|
|
I hate it when people try to take the piss. I hate it when they try to hide it under a veneer of “hey, I’m just like you!” Rubbish! I have difficulties taking it, and therefore here goes this article/rant. For the last few years we have seen, and quite a few of people applauded, comedy series that feature geek people. Big-Bang Theory, Community, The IT Crowd, The Guild, A Town Called Eureka…Suddenly people are claiming that we geeks are “taking our place and being more accepted” because we’re getting more exposure on TV and the internet. Nonsense! We are being laughed at!Most of those series put geeks into stereotypes and then compare those stereotypes to “non-geek normal” people to exploit what make them “funny”. With the exception possibly of Community (the series I am less familiar with), the rest blatantly and openly ridicule the role of the geek. Let’s take a look at the average geek characters of the series. Let’s start with the young ones. They are all mega smart but socially awkward. Most of them have problems interacting with women, they are clumsy, have a poor sense of etiquette, have even poorer social skills. Geek women are portrayed as awkward and emotionally incompetent or detached and every single one of them has an “unique” approach to fashion. The adults are more responsible, less socially awkward, they dress more like the average Joe does and they behave normally. Like you and me, that is. But they’re not in geeky jobs. If they are they’ll still have some awkward traits like poor social skills, a “unique” sense of fashion, or something in those lines. Of course not every series is the same and not every character within each series is the same, but there are common points here and there. Let’s take a more detailed look to some of them. This are just the ones I am a bit more familiar with. It is not a comprehensive list, but just a list to illustrate my point. The Big-Bang Theory This is one of the biggest culprits. i don’t know if I should feel sorry or angry at this comedy/parody/mockery. The geeks are not just geeks, they are hyper-geeks. They have very obvious and impossible to avoid OCDs, PHDs and incredible jobs as scientists. And they don’t know how to behave in front of the attractive neighbor. They either have such low self esteem they don’t think they’re worthy so no bother interacting, see the woman as a trophy to hunt, become so awkward that they always mess it up or, simply, can’t even talk to her. Exactly how pathetic is that view, comedic or not, of what geeks are like? Yes, it’s comedy and yes, I can laugh at many things, but there is no balance and the series plays a lot with the “Aww… you poor thing who can’t get a girlfriend” attitude. What I don’t like is that series is allowing people who are not geeks to laugh AT me, not WITH me. And make no mistake, there are plenty of people out there who laugh at us. Admittedly the series has changed from the original season to today, but, better as it's got, it's still a long way off not laughing at geekdom. The Guild Where to start? Another comedy that takes the piss, blatantly, of an exaggerated view of what a guild of MMO players is like. But it’s not just that it mocks the players because they play, it mocks the players because they are geeks. They have dysfunctional lives and even have difficulties relating when not playing the game.I am sure there are plenty of MMO players like that, but the majority of MMO players I know are seriously normal people who don’t behave anywhere near what you see in that series.What annoys me the most about this series is that is produced by someone who openly and loudly claims to be part of the geek-society. And this is how you want the rest of the world to see the geeks you so much claim to love? Seriously. If being a geek is such a cool thing, why not showing it? Why not writing the scripts so we are not nut-cases who need counselling or leave toddlers to fend for themselves near the microwave? Why not showing them just are you are in real life? Funny, clever, lovely, charming and a bit annoying. What is wrong with that? Because I really like it! Oh, wait! because that probably won’t create the sense of ridicule that people need in order to laugh at us so they can feel better about themselves at our expense. No thanks! A Town Called Eureka This one has a balance. Young geek, awkward geek. Older geek, responsible and mature geek. Seriously. Did Fargo have to be THAT stupid? Did the chef have to be the fat bloke? Did the guy who run the place (don’t ask me for many names… not good with names) have to be the evil-up-his-own-arse genius? Did the sheriff with less-than-average-intelligence have to be the hero? Did the strong woman who can make a meal of said sheriff have to be the sidekick? For a series with some very good plots and storylines, it sure has some of the stupidest character clichés ever. And the funny bit? We love it!The geekosphere has taken on those series and we (and I use the term “we” VERY loosely here) wear t-shirts, use the series slogans, take on nicknames, buy the DVDs and idolatrize the actors and actresses. Can’t we see we are being used and abused by a bunch of people who are there to make money?They have found a niche that can be exploited for laughs and they don’t give a monkeys about us. They give a about getting the next production contract for the next series. And if they have to laugh at us for that, then so be it. Of course not everything is bad and horrible and even I have to admit that some good has come out of it. We have gained more exposure in some circles and some people have felt empowered to “come out”, so to speak, and be themselves in the face of adversity. Plenty of people have identified traits with those of the characters and realised they’re not alone. The community has become more self-aware. And that is good. In fact is very good. But it’s time to stop now. It is time to start giving the world a more positive spin on geekdom. For starters expand outside science and gaming. There are sports geeks, make-up geeks, biology geeks, cookery geeks, car geeks… Secondly, please be balanced in the portrayal of our idiosyncratic personalities. We are all like that, geeks and non-geeks. Why does the world have to be able to laugh at us more than at anyone else? Why laugh at anyone at all? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2013 01:00
|
|
|
I'll draw a parallel and try to illustrate what I am talking about with a different segment of the population that has seen a lot of changes in the last 40 years or so. Gay men used to be portrayed as "people who read" (last time I saw that was in The Bill, a few years ago when a copper was about to come out and one of the reasons the wife had to suspect he was gay is that he liked to read), or that he likes to cook (can't remember in what movie, but Rock Hudson flirted with a woman in a bar by making her feel he was gay using his love for cookery as a strong hint an putting her at ease because, suddenly, he wasn't a threat), or with similar hobbies and inclinations (we are artists, into interior decoration or fashionistas). They were also portrayed as effeminate people who like to wear female underwear or dress up as drag as alter egos. That was the vision that society had of homosexuality in the 70s and 80s. Then things started to change and now we have gay characters a lot more often without the stereotyping nonsense we used to see. Homosexuality is a non-issue. It just is.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2013 01:07
|
|
|
Part of this was posted in the last thread, but since that one was sent off to the Land of No Return, I'm going to repost it here with some extra stuff from the same thread. So without further adeu, let me show you guys why 4e doesn't need a Book of Erotic Fantasy!  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skills & their uses in Erotic Skill Challenges Mar 19, 2010 -- 8:39PM, MechaPilot wrote: The other day I was discussing an old D&D campaign with a friend. The campaign was RP heavy, based almost entirely in a capitol city, and focused on courtly intrigue (with all the romantic entanglements and sexual politics involved therein). As a joke, he suggested the idea of "passionate" skill challenges for 4e. We both laughed, and were quickly on to other topics. Tonight, while taking a break from writing an essay (the research was giving me a serious headache), I decided to try it as a lark. I thought I'd share with you some of the skill uses I've come up with. Hopefully it gives you a chuckle too; and if you should happen to find it useful (or that it at least gets you thinking about skill challenges), then more power to you. If nothing else, at least my headache is gone. Arcana1: Enhance your partner's sensitivity by whispering words of power or tracing arcane sigils on your lover. Good for one success. Arcana2: Whisper an incantation that helps fortify your body against the rigors of passionate activity. Can be used one time to either remove one failure of the Endurance skill or to add a +2 bonus to your next Endurance check. Athletics: Perform effectively to please your partner. Good for a number of successes dependant on how many are required: 4=2, 6=4, 8=6, 10=8, 12=10. Diplomacy1: Saying passionate things to enhance your partner's enjoyment. Includes both talking dirty and loving/supportive things. Good for only 1 success. Diplomacy2: Can be used to inquire into a partner's fantasies, getting them to reveal a kink/fetish. May advance a multi-stage encounter. Endurance: Ignoring fatigue, muscle-cramps, and the discomfort of unusual positions to focus on your partner's needs. Good for only one success, perhaps more in a multi-stage encounter. Heal1: Enhance your partner's sensitivity through application of aphrodisiacs or a pressure-point manipulating massage. Good for one success. Heal2: Consume a holistic remedy or stimulate pressure-points that helps fortify your body against the rigors of passionate activity. Can be used one time to either remove one failure of the Endurance skill or to add a +2 bonus to your next Endurance check. History: Recalling success with past lovers, or the wisdom of texts/tales pertaining to physical love. Can be used once to get a +2 bonus to your next Athletics check. Insight1: Can be used to pick up on what techniques your partner is particularly enjoying, granting a +2 bonus to your next Athletics check. Can't be used until after your second Athletics check, and can only be used once. Insight2:Can be used to pick up on subtle cues given by your partner to discover a kink/fetish they possess. May advance a multi-stange encounter. Intimidate: If your partner has a masochistic/submission kink/fetish, you can use this skill to cater to those proclivities. Good for a number of successes dependant on how many are required: 4=2, 6=3, 8=4, 10=5, 12=6. Perception1: Can be used to notice clues in your physical surroundings that reveal a partner's kink or fetish. May advance a multi-stage encounter. Perception2: To notice a partner's significant other unexpectedly returning before they become aware of your being with their unfaithful significant other. May advance a multi-stage encounter, or may impose a deadline on an existing encounter. Religion1: Enhance your partner's sensitivity by whispering supplications to divinites and other mythic beings related to physical love or tracing divine sigils on your lover. Good for one success. Religion2: Whisper supplications to divinites and other mythic beings related to physical love that helps fortify your body against the rigors of passionate activity. Can be used one time to either remove one failure of the Endurance skill or to add a +2 bonus to your next Endurance check. Acrobatics: Acrobatics checks may be required if the character and their partner are engaged in passionate exploits while in a precarious location (up a tree, on a narrow ledge, etc). There are no successes available from these checks, only failures. Bluff: Can be used to boost a partner's confidence, or releive their anxieties about under- endowment or another unflattering physical attribute. Good for only one success. Stealth1: Can be used to hide from the unexpectedly returned significant other of your partner. May advance a multi-stage encounter. Stealth2: Can be used to sneak out of a partner's home while they keep their unexpectedly returned significant other distracted. May advance a multi-stage encounter. Streetwise: Can be used to discover, through local rumor, the kinks/fetishes of a partner. May be done retroactively if the DM conceeds the character had the time to sift through the rumors prior to the skill challenge. May advance a multi-stage encounter. Thievery: Can be used to open the locks on chastity belts. Refluffed Damage For sexually-themed combat, a power's damage type is an effective way of determining the fluff for the stimulation the power provides. Some damage types are similar enough in effect that their fluff has been consolidated. Cold: A tingling cold that rushes through the target's skin and plays across their erogenous zones. Acid/Fire: Lustful deep tissue heat that dampens the skin and hair with sweat. Force: Kinetic stimulation (see “physical attacks” below). Lightning: Electrical stimulation that courses through the target's body and surges through erogenous zones. Necrotic: Pleasure augmented with pain that enhanced the target's sensitivity. Poison: The target is intoxicated with desire, as if it were coursing through their veins. Psychic: Intense, persistent lustful thoughts swirl through the target's mind. Radiant: A sparkling burst of passionate colors and feelings of transcendent pleasure. Thunder: Vibrations that reverberate through the target's body. Physical attacks: All physical melee attacks get re-fluffed as gropes, pinches, licks, kisses, blowing on the skin (or in the ear), love-bites/scratches, etc. All physical ranged attacks get re-fluffed as ranged erotic powers. Bloodied Condition Refluffed Bloodied: PCs no longer become “bloodied” when half their Hp have been lost. Instead the they become “aroused”. PCs that are aroused have ruddy cheeks and increased blood flow to their erogenous zones. Death Refluffed The default assumption is that death is not the end result of sexually-themed combat. A character who has been reduced to 0 Hp, or less, is helpless from ecstasy and is treated as if “unconscious”. A character that “dies” from sexually-themed combat is overwhelmed by unquenchable lust, and is able only to pleasure themselves, others, and even monsters. A character who has fallen to this state can be restored to their usual self with ritual magic that binds their lust (a re-fluffed version of the Raise Dead ritual). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, so after giving it some thought I came up with some concepts that are integral to a sexy version of D&D. Sensuality Description is very important. When you describe something, be sure to do it in layers. Describing shapes and colors is a good baseline, but you need to add things like texture and/or temperature to make it sensually evocative. Sensual description draws people into the story world and reduces how much the players need to suspend their disbelief (allowing them to focus on the story). Intimacy Intimacy comes in three flavors: spatial, emotional, and contextual. Spatial intimacy is the physical closeness of characters during their interactions. Emotional intimcay is the mood/connection that exists between characters during their interaction. Contextual intimacy is how spatial and emotional intimacy react to their physical/social environment. Example: Consider a PC meeting an NPC at a tavern to get some information. If you want to create spatial intimacy, the PC and NPC can sit close together (perhaps so close they're touching). To create emotional intimacy (via mood) you can say the tavern has low lighting. Putting these two elements together you can have the PC and NPC meet up at a table/booth that is dimly lit. The PC and NPC need to be close together because of the dim light (maybe the dim lighting would impose a penalty to social skill checks, or skill checks to determine if the NPC is lying). Now add in the contextual intimacy. Perhaps the table is in a secluded corner; or maybe the booth has a curtain that can be drawn closed. With these three elements considered, you are left with a very intimate encounter between the PC and her contact. Tension Sexy and horror storytelling are similar in that both rely on building tension toward an eventual cathardic release. Whereas horror uses fear to build tension, a sexy story uses passion and desire instead. Both horror and sexy stories rely upon anticipation to heighten the tension. Sexy stories anticipate physical pleasures and wish fulfillment while horror tales anticapte danger, death, and pain. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2013 03:17
|
|
|
quote:I guess some people haven't read Erekosë and the way he breaks the balance in the end, which basically, from a Moorcockian point of view, validates the exact point you are making, that Law and Chaos are human constructions, the way Evil and Good are in other ways.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2013 04:54
|
|
|
I like playing evil characters. A lot. I'm that guy. Necromancer, cannibal halfling, dread warlock in it for the lulz, you name it. I'm okay with acts of fantastic depravity outside of most peoples' comfort zones and play them up given the chance. Calistria is probably my favorite D&D-esque deity and Dread Necromancers are my favorite class.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2013 09:48
|
|
|
quote:Sexual reproduction is the norm, because you can have female goblins/orcs in path finder, that would suggest the need for some kind of mating even if it isnt purely internal
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2013 13:43
|
|
|
Freshly minted grog! --- quote:Just out of curiosity, did you start gaming with 3E D&D? Yes that's why my jimmies are rustled, I want to see more than a combat simulator for D&D -_- quote:Page 42 That's why I put down 4e for good! I looked at page 42 and then my heart broke ;_; Putting PCs on a treadmill is one thing, but showing them the treadmill ;_; --- Yes, having guidelines so if a PC wants to use the environment against their enemy and making it so it's effective at later levels as well as early is COMPLETELY TERRIBLE.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2013 23:44
|
|
|
From the comments section of http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-gaming-design-tale.html: Let YOUR character be as good as MINE?! Stop being so self-centered!! quote:Why does it matter that the contributions are even and balanced? I'm sorry, but that's total bullshit thinking. I know of no activity on the planet that people participate in where the contribution of all involved is "balanced." The very idea is absurd. OF COURSE everyone in contributing. So long as you're in it and trying, you're contributing. How in the name of all that's rational did the idea that the wizard is more powerful than the fighter become in any way RELEVANT to people participating in the game? It doesn't matter if the wizard's player controls the game, because everyone with a useless character is free to offer suggestions! quote:Finally, I don't know about other DMs, but I start my gameplay by saying, "What do you want to do?" In that moment, regardless of who is running whose character, I have always found that ALL players will make suggestions regarding what ANY and ALL players will do at the table. The player on my left may not be the wizard, but he or she is perfectly free to CONTRIBUTE by saying, "The wizard should do this!" quote:If we're running a pulp RPG, and one player makes Indiana Jones, that's because he wants to influence the world through Indiana Jones, not so he can help the guy who's playing James Bond solve everything through his. quote:Your Indiana Jones reply simply gives a reason for conceited self-interest; it doesn't justify it. While simultaneously arguing that Wizards are balanced because you can drop them with an arrow they didn't see coming: quote:I would like to clarify - my players are appalled and disgusted by these revelations I've made this week. They are absolutely appalled. "Balance advocates" are, in the opinion of everyone I speak to, nutjobs and people who have a clearly warped conception of the game. They are, in the words of my daughter, "The sort of people who cheat at board games." Usually, when you're relying on a strawman argument, you don't go ahead and make it explicit that you've come up with your own, idiotic definition. quote:"Balance" would imply that if I shoot the mage this round, I ought to shoot the fighter or the thief or someone else next round "to be fair." It implies that the mage ought to survive the arrow hit as well as the fighter would. It implies a lot of things that are just pure crap. I never used the words "balance is a good thing." Assuming that I meant this in any way, shape or ideal is where your misunderstanding begins. You need to think to yourself, "He can't possibly mean 'balance' in the sense that the game designers are thinking it." Balance is bad because no one deserves special treatment. Balance is bad because no one deserves special treatment.  quote:Why is 'Balance' bad? Because it makes the game about everyone feeling good and pampered and treated like infantile little babies by their loving mother, except as people who must suck it up, recognize no one's going to tuck them in and give them a tit to suck, etc. You succeed according to your abilities as a Player, NOT according to the game giving you special treatment.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2013 00:17
|
|
|
Paizo forums thread entitled "How do you handle homosexuality in your game." Largely a decent thread, but then...This Guy posted:
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2013 04:00
|
|
|
That's not a post. This is a post. Have there ever been gay NPCs is D&D? quote:Other than the Black Eagle & Bargle, that is. quote:Probably the same ratio as in the real world... just when you are fighting monsters, questions like that didn't seem to matter... quote:
quote:The majority of fantasy writers can't even write about a girl n guy being intimate without the most cloying scenes in the world! Hell, look at how bad Lucas did with Han and Leia! quote:TSR published I have no idea. quote:My brother thinks my Skyrim character is gay, as he always creeps into this one guy's room with a particular thirst (for blood- as he is a vampire). When he comes out, his thirst is sated. As it is only one guy and only that one guy, I can see how people would think that quote:
quote:It only takes 3 pages until someone says "faerie". quote:I have one "cryptic alliance" in Gamma World that carries on the "gay" lifestyle; they're the bad guys of course. In D&D I usually have some horde of other that are "gay"; orcs sometimes. Usually kobolds. quote:Much like the "anyone play a PC with Asperger syndrome?" in the 2e forum a while back my main thought is.... really? Why the hell is this even a topic? quote:Elves are androgynous. Does that count? quote:I don't care if an NPC is 'openly gay' any more than I give a rats arse if it's for or against globalisation, water boarding, veganism, 'big oil', abortion, campaign finance reform, affirmative action, wearing socks with sandals, or any other red hot sociopolitical issue.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2013 04:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 15:49 |
|
|
Because if there's one thing that was hated in feudal Japan, it was homosexual sex. It's not like there are several words for same-sex relationships of the time, like nanshoku (man-boy monastic relationship dissolved on the boy reaching adulthood) or shudo (formal contractual romantic relationships between a samurai student and his master). It's not like there weren't countless literary works about the wonders of homosexual love, or that the Hagakure has a section on how to honorably conduct your homosexual relationship. quote:
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2013 04:56
|
|
