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Esser-Z posted:I assume Spycraft 1.0 also adds a whole lot more options and abilities (I've never played it), because playing 3.5 entirely with noncaster sounds... horrifyingly boring. It is if the options stick to "attack/full attack/charge attack" routine, which is why my current Pathfinder game has the PCs as students at a magic school who are secretly FANTASY SUPERHEROES. Even at low level the variety of magic and spells is enough for people to feel cool. If you're gonna play 3.X, you might as well embrace all its myriad options both 1st and 3rd Party. There's really no excuse to limit martials in such a way anymore unless you're some kind of Fighter-hating Caster Supremacist. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Nov 4, 2014 |
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Nov 4, 2014 06:14
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Speaking of the D20 glut's infamous companies, I picked up a copy of Mongoose's Quintessential Drow back around 2005. One of the mini-games in it was called "The Game of Bones," a simulation of drow political machinations. Rules for opposed dice challenges, determining the consequences of success and failure, resource management in the terms of holdings, financial clout, public image, all that stuff between competing factions and individuals. Sounds like some competitive potential between player and GM, or player vs. player? However, the text pointed out that the purpose of it was to be used to generate what goes on in drow cities while the PCs are away at the time and return later. Meaning that this intricate mini-game is the GM playing with himself while the players sit around the table doing nothing. Seriously, what's the point even going into all those rules when a simple narrative fiat would do? "Last time you visited the city of Zashoor, the clergy of Lolth was in power, but your latest visit appears much different. The statues of the Spider Queen are demolished into so much rubble, replaced by red and black flags depicting a fist wreathed in fire. The temples are now home to great pits of extraplanar flames, and the people of the city pray not to Lolth but to the Fire Lords." Boom, easy. With the game of bones, you get this: "Last time you visited the city of Zashoor, the clery of Lolth was in power. Hold on, I need to spent 10 minutes rolling dice and consulting stat blocks to see who gets killed, who gets disgraced..." Rolls dice. Hang on, House Calgress lost control over the Merchant's District, so they're going to get slaughtered in the coup for this weakness. That is, unless they happen to secure an alliance with the Tracha College of the Arcane to supply them with magical defenses." Rolls dice again, and so on and so forth. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Nov 11, 2014 |
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Nov 11, 2014 20:58
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My problem with the Game of Bones isn't random die-rolling for conflict. It's that it's pretty much set up to generate an entire mini-game between competing groups, so you'd assume that the PCs would take some of those roles. You know, to give them a stake in the formation of the city's power structure. But the text actually says that it should be done without any PC input and when the PCs aren't even in the city. This makes it the equivalent of setting up a random encounter between 2 monster groups in the dungeon where the GM rolls for the entire combat off-screen. And when the PCs come to that room, they see the aftermath of that encounter. It's a poor execution of a cool concept.
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Nov 11, 2014 22:04
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ProfessorCirno posted:At a certain point the game is, quite frankly, just jerking itself off. I have a secret to this: half my current Pathfinder group is of people new to Pathfinder. But that's not really the whole story. Between a day job, work projects, and making enough material for next week's adventure, I really don't have time anymore to run Pathfinder as-is or meticulously balance encounters. I actually had to stop writing F&F reviews and regular campaign journals because writing those took an hour and a half to write up each update; if I continued as-is, my workload would be too spread out and I wouldn't get anything productive done for any of them. My players understand this, even the PF veterans know how much of a headache running a game can be. 1. I make up stats for monsters and NPCs which are balanced against the party's expectations 2. if a rule takes 5 minutes or longer to resolve, I make up a ruling on the spot and continue on with the game 3. if a PC is at risk of becoming irrelevant due to lack of inter-party balance, the entire group discusses the issue so that everyone has fun 4. my most recent one this week, I ask my group what kind of subplots/NPCs/etc they want me to focus on so that I can calibrate future sessions for maximum enjoyment. Maybe they want a certain NPC to have more screen time, maybe they want less complicated moral quandaries. I take that all into account for future sessions. A lot of times we're having fun in spite of the rules instead of because of it, and they know this yet don't care. A more group-based improvised input works wonders for easing the load and people don't really care if I'm hewing away from Pathfinder when the alternative is the game falling apart and becoming a farce. I know that this is anecdotal evidence more than anything, but what I'm saying that this whole "rules as physics" simulationist thinking can be discarded from 3rd Edition. It's still a rules-heavy game, but knowing when to go "gently caress it, we're improvising" at the right moment doesn't make it any less of a 3rd Edition/Pathfinder game. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Nov 12, 2014 |
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Nov 12, 2014 01:49
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Gau posted:I never thought I'd say this to anyone, but why hell aren't you playing Dungeon World? I own a copy but haven't gotten around to reading it and absorbing the rules. I'm actually making a list of RPGs I want to play sometime, and DW's on it. It's due to equal parts too busy doing other stuff, reading other RPGs in my Drive-Thru backlog first, and already having 2 Roll20 games (a weekly Pathfinder, and a semi-weekly Labyrinth Lord). I'd totally be up for playing (not DMing) a Dungeon World game, whether on Play-by-Post or Roll20 if I can fit it into my schedule.
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Nov 12, 2014 01:59
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When I first described my GMing style in Pathfinder on a thread somewhere here, someone asked why I wasn't playing Dungeon World. When I made a blog post about the benefits of minimalist, collaborative world-building, another person recommended me Dungeon World. This, combined with that RPG is near the top of the bucket list of games for me to play, along with a lot of positive reviews, made me decide to stop procrastinating and start finding a gaming group for it. I was wondering if any Goons here are running or planning to run Dungeon World games on Roll20? Normally I'd ask in the TG Game Recruitment Megathread, but I don't GM RPGs where I don't know the rules very well. I'd much rather be a player. Otherwise I can try talking my regular group into trying it out, but I'd rather see how people who know the ropes play it first so I don't gently caress it up on my own. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 06:28
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Ettin posted:One time a dude got banned from RPGnet for posting that a Holocaust denier was his favourite historian and he "warned" people not to go there in a libertarian G+ group though, that was hilarious. Oh I can imagine the conversation now.  "The Nazis were just misunderstood, guys! They were liberty-loving small government advocates all along!"I know that this kind of bullshit is a problem in Libertarian circles, but it still weirds me out every time I see it because if there's any legacy which better represents the nightmarish excesses of Big Government, it would be the Third Reich. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 20:28
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In the Dungeon World thread someone mentioned that the game is not optimized for Play-by-Post. In fact, a lot of table-top RPGs seem this way: Pathfinder in particular would take forever if you played combat straight. So, what games work best in a PbP format?
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Nov 16, 2014 20:09
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The Escapist was also responsible for promoting the conspiracy theory of Communists infiltrating the gaming industry via "Cultural Marxists influencing social justice advocates." The problem with that label is that it was originally used by genuine Communists to criticize cultural repression of equality, but several decades later was picked up by European white supremacist groups to accuse any group (pro-women, pro-LGBT, etc) promoting equality of being secret Communists. Google Cultural Marxism. Several of the top results come from Neo-Nazi blogs and wikis. Without any hint of self-awareness US right-wingers and GamerGate supporters picked up the label because red-baiting comes naturally to them. Most GGers aren't Neo-Nazis, but using such terminology only hurt them long-term when genuine racists started joining the brand. See the King of Pol, or that bald guy behind The Sarkeesian Effect. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 19:55
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As someone who's enjoying Darkseid's Sword of Truth thread, I was wondering if folks here can recommend me some lovely, cliched-in-a-bad-way fantasy novels. This is entirely for research purposes.
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Nov 23, 2014 00:04
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:It's cool to read a billion pages of lovely YA novels "to see how bad it goes" instead of using that time to do something that would give you personal improvement or actual satisfaction. Actually, my research project is intended to be a productive use of my time.
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Nov 23, 2014 02:25
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Ettin posted:Voice chat doesn't work so well with my usual group so I'm probably not using Skype again for a while. Welcome to the club. My Sunday PF game sticks solely to text due to several players having various kinds of audio trouble. So far the text-only format's working great for us 3 months in.
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Nov 23, 2014 08:06
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Effectronica posted:Martial artists fit better than samurai for the American West, except maybe ronin. Hey Effectronica, I was wondering if you still had that image you had as your last avatar. It's that stylish-looking dude in a purple shirt who for some reason I want to find again.
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Nov 25, 2014 08:13
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For some reason I confused the hair with the shirt. But thank you all the same.
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Nov 26, 2014 00:42
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What's up with all the newbie avatars changing? Is it an SA Thanksgiving tradition?
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Nov 27, 2014 21:02
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Covok posted:You have to remember that L5R is INCREDIBLY RACIST and UNBELIEVABLY IGNORANT. The game tries to get away with it by saying it's purposely based on the misconceptions that the west had on the east, but that, honestly, only makes it worse. Since "everyone" knows samurai for using swords and hating shields, then they must hate bows, right? That's a coward weapon because it isn't in your face? Ignore all the samurai who used bows and guns. There's this book I own called Writing the Other: A Practical Guide, whose main purpose is to help writers get in the shoes of people of different cultural backgrounds, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, etc. One of the many bits of advice it has is to find a member of said group to act as a sort of consultant. Personal research helps a lot, but the lived experience of a person from that background provides an invaluable second set of eyes to pick up any discrepancies. Even though there are no samurai living today, I get the feeling that an awful lot of these problems would dissolve if they got a Japanese historian to skim their sourcebooks. The same thing can be said for a lot of other RPG books out there.
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Nov 29, 2014 19:57
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I think that cultural appropriation in the form of borrowing elements from other cultural groups is inevitable for any cross-national context with heavy trade and interaction. And it doesn't always have to be a bad thing. What is problematic is when people with no research go all Dan Brown and portray stuff they made up as "authentic." Or borrowing music/art/etc. without acknowledging and respecting the original creators. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Nov 30, 2014 |
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Nov 30, 2014 02:12
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Zoq-Fot-Pik posted:"Who gives a poo poo" Tumblr-esque cultural appropriation: Idealized or otherwise incorrect depictions of samurai in a fantasy role playing game (which the Japanese definitely do not remotely care about). A point and a counter-point: 1. There were some Japanese-Americans who weren't fond of the Burakumin vampire clan in NWoD, in part because Burakumin were a despised social group who still suffer discrimination today. They felt that the linking of the term with zombie-creating vampires was...crass. 2. Given that, L5R is a different RPG, and there have been times where white Westerners have directly talked down to minority groups who said "actually, this isn't really racist or hurtful to our group," so I can see how good intentions can go bad. I recall one incident years ago on The Gaming Den where the prevailing opinion was that 5th Edition was racist for having a chi power source for the monk class; a poster living in Beijing got hammered by the rest for saying that it wasn't because monks wielding chi were an actual thing that showed up in his country's philosophical traditions and literature. He said that it wasn't much different than Paladin's laying on hands being based on Western faith healing, and that a genuinely racist product would exotify or fetishize Asian culture as being "mysterious and foreign." One of our posters Ewen Cluney lives in Japan as an expatriate. He probably has a much better idea on this issue and if L5R is Doing It Wrong. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Nov 30, 2014 |
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Nov 30, 2014 02:26
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Zoq-Fot-Pik posted:If I had to guess, the failure of L5R over in Japan was probably due to the fact that Japan has their own tabletop game and CCG industries. I think the last Western tabletop game that was popular in Japan was probably AD&D 2e and the last (and only) popular Western CCG was probably Magic the Gathering. And L5R is certainly neither of those. We could go around in circles all day and guess as to how it was perceived, but unless we have market analysis or quotes from people in Japan or whatever we can only guess. Which is why I suggested the idea of posted the Burakumin thing and the suggestion of getting commentary from Ewen Cluney or someone living in Japan over how foreigners' portrayal of fantasy not-Japan is regarded by gamers there.
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Nov 30, 2014 02:43
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Relevant: The Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs back in 2007 discussed cultural exchange. This quote talks about manga artists around the world: quote:I would like to touch now upon a few innovative developments before I conclude my address to you tonight. As a country with 100 million people, I'm definitely sure that there's a lot of opinions and I don't know how popular this viewpoint is, but it was an interesting read regarding the act of cultural appropriation and exchange. He discussed it as a positive force for bringing the positive aspects of Japan around the world. He wasn't concerned inherently with foreigners taking Japanese cultural elements in and of itself, so much as whether or not the foreign image of Japan is a positive one. quote:When I start speaking about manga, in my case I find it pretty hard to stop, and I am going to force myself to move on here to the topic of what exactly diplomacy entails. First of all, I would like you to rid yourselves of any stereotypes that diplomacy means diplomats sitting around having dry, rarefied discussions with each other and classified, hush-hush negotiations. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Nov 30, 2014 |
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Nov 30, 2014 02:51
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Zoq-Fot-Pik posted:This is a cool article. I further edited the post once I realized I didn't quote his statement on foreign manga: where he discusses the possibility of a Nobel Prize for manga artists around the world. I had to search through Wikipedia to find it, and figured that it would be a good way of showing one potential Japanese viewpoint of cultural appropriation. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Nov 30, 2014 |
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Nov 30, 2014 03:00
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Night10194 posted:As someone else pointed out, it's also boring as poo poo. When I tried playing L5R back in high school, characters were so tightly bound to the ridiculous parody of honor the game used that there was no actual room to play your character, and the entire setting existed to reinforce that this was exactly how it should be. Yeah, even (or might I say especially) in otaku circles there's a problem of fetishizing Japanese culture, such as assuming you're equivalent to a scholarly expert on the country because you watched a lot of subbed anime. The criticism I hear about L5R point to the designers being like this at times. I remember hearing some things that sounded weird even to 15-year-old me. For example, samurai could not eat sushi because fish meat was dead flesh and therefore unclean. To my knowledge real-world samurai weren't required to be strict vegetarians.
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Nov 30, 2014 03:05
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Made a December chat thread over here.
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Dec 1, 2014 06:13
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