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Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

quote:

Bzzt. Nice try. Did you read this post until you got to a personal trigger, or are you just a good guesser and tl;dred? 2nd ed. was obviously an attempt to sanitize the game of some of the essential - but weird - origins of the wargame-turned-rpg. The demonology was cartoonized away from its historic/mythological origins, likelihood of death was statistically curbed, and 2nd ed. was a much more publically palatable-though also less memorable for the players-game.

If you didn't live through the period of D&D's decline, you can't possibly understand the social pressures there were for players to "grow up and put the game away." Video and computer games provided a very attractive alternative as they moved from Wizardry to Quake to Diablo, etc.

So Tabletoppers of the 1980s did not fight. Tabletoppers of the 1980s were a different demographic (with some obvious overlap) to the Masquerade kids of the 1990s. The politics were different. The objectives were different. The fun was different. Maybe if Tabletoppers had fought the stigma like Frank Zappa and John Denver and Dee Snider fought the PMRC, maybe if they had #GamerGated their own defense, and applied some of the rules from the games that they had played, tabletop would have expanded, extended and thrived. Maybe the nostalgic bastards who bicker about whether Gygax killed TSR or if it was the lawsuits would actually be extending their homebuilt megadungeons in their 30th or 40th year. Maybe they, instead of today's #GamerGate-rs would have been able to say: the SJWs started it, but we finished it.

The OSR consists of a lot of men who wished they had gone public and fought for the games and campaigns they loved, back when it might have mattered.

Or maybe not. Maybe it is just me. I don't care. That's why I'm fighting now.

Don't be stupid. Don't post anyone's personal information. Do get people mad. Go.

New rule since I'm the OP: No more asking about Mikan. She was harassed out of the hobby by Zak S and his cronies. Feel free to talk about Zak S and his abusive bullshit, just leave her alone.

Arivia fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Dec 31, 2014

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Zemyla
Aug 6, 2008

I'll take her off your hands. Pleasure doing business with you!
I found an almost RPGSiteian abuse of 3.5 mechanics.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton posted:

Combine the Necrotic Cyst line of spells with Hindsight. Investing in items of necrotic cyst, necrotic scrying, and one or two hideously expensive polished steel and diamond blocks (nothing breakable, mind you) of hindsight would make any rather evil but almost annoyingly hard to corrupt police force proud.

Start up your reign of spying with listening coins and spymasters coins for basic surveillance techniques, casual police stationed in the streets for detect thoughts, enchanted beds of dream sight for traceless spies wandering around, and the gem tracer spells for monitoring established areas.

A quick summary of the spells and items referenced in this answer:

Necrotic Cyst (line of spells)
  • Population control and traceless scrying. Requires a policy of implanting population with Necrotic Cysts.
  • Available from Level 2, good to establish domination over a town.

Hindsight
  • The ultimate forensics spell. Squashes conspiracies.
  • Available from Level 13+. Absurdly expensive. Worth considering a spell-to-power erudite for this one spell in lieu of sublime chord.

Spymaster's Coin and Listening Coin
  • Available at low levels. Great cheap scrying sensors for bugging people you know are plotting against you.
  • Doesn't scale to population.

Distilled Joy/Distilled Pain
  • Available with some money. BoED/BoVD. A way to fund your city, properly. Only include if you need a source for all of these items.
  • Kind of obvious.

Susurrus of the City
  • Urban Druid (very obscure spell list)/5
  • Answers questions about anyone located in the city, to the best of the city's knowledge.

Identify Transgressor
  • Answers any question with a name for an answer. Have a "jury" of 7 clerics who spend their days casting this.

Gem Tracer
  • Gain reusable scrying foci. Scry on target object as standard action (no cost), locate object (for ever, and for free)
  • Great for identity cards.

Mind Probe
  • Telepathy/5
  • Does what it says on the tin. Once you capture the rebels, you can figure out why they don't like your benevolent rule. Then implant them with a cyst and dominate them into being fixed.

Modify Memory, Psionic
  • Telepathy/4
  • We totally didn't do the prior mind probe. These aren't the secret police you're looking for.

Hypercognition
  • sometimes the threats come from outside. This is the way to identify quest targets.

Amanuensis
  • Necessary for transcribing reports into books

Scholars touch
  • The ability to read books in a round, allowing for efficient information processing.

Call to mind
  • The ability to retrieve read information, creating a colourable excuse for the prior stuff to work for management of a city and secret police.

Magical items: any of the above enchanted into an item.

Other answers in the theme of magical cities and evil:

Restate our assumptions

This sort of game isn't a historically accurate fantasy game. With a city that will be this powerful, the game itself should be relatively high optimisation. The city needs to have reasons for a secret police, otherwise there's no need to spend this kind of effort on the task. Beyond that, the capabilities in this answer presume a relatively high level of information processing capability. (See the book IBM and the Holocaust for details on why information processing is a necessary precondition for massive institutionalised evil.)

However, presuming that this kind of ahistorical situation exists, and the city exists in an ideologically charged world with a nominally "backsliding" populace, these kinds of secret police are quite effectve at enforcing the pretense of ideological change. Shaping the thematic elements of the setting to be equivalent to a post-war, ideologically riven Europe, is also an excellent fantasy basis. Take a look at Max Gladstone's books for this kind of true urban fantasy workup.

I'm also presuming that alignments don't really matter, since "detect evil" rather spoils the conceit of the game. The number of people ... doesn't really matter, though there are some efficiencies of scale. Looking at the historical picture suggests a ratio of 1:400 is normal for soviet times, not counting informants. Looking at penal colonies, like Caldoche, we can infer a guard ratio of about 500 to 12000 or about 1:24, presuming external imperial support and a very facticious population.

For these purposes, we'll presume an administrative ratio closer to 1:40, allowing for technological inefficiencies. This ratio would likely comprise the full military of the town, ultimately scaling to a 25,000 metropolis.

The character of the Mayor, his Staff, and his police.

We will presume leadership of true believers. These guys obey the maxim "the ends justify the means," and actually care about achieving their desired ideological conversion goals. The need for ideological purification drives the establishment of the secret police, and concerns about the old order and reactionaries, imperialists, hegemonists, etc... explain their presence.

The Mayor

To pull this off, we best need three characters. The party face, "Mr. Mayor":

Our mayor must be charismatic, charming, manipulative, and probably should be clean shaven with stressed wrinkles. Nothing says evil vizier less than slightly shabby clothes (in suitably heroic colours. No villain black here), no goatee, and an expression of overworked ... non-malice.

Our ultimate spell for police work is Bard 6, Sor/Wis 9 "Hindsight". It's got a 1k material component. This gives us two options (not counting archivist + cheesy divine bard). Bard + sublime chord or spell to power erudite (in the most conservative assumption of powers known.)

Given his nominal mayoral duties, Bard + Anima Mage + Mindbender(1) + Sublime Chord is quite appropriate. Bard is obvious in this context, and allows him to start his plot by Level 3 with the Necrotic Cyst feat. Anima Mage is important because of the cheap spying it provides. His two binds are going to be Naberius for public speaking (taking 10 on diplomacy as standard action can be quite useful for calming people down) and spying via command + disguise self and Malphas for Birds Eye viewing, allowing a scout at level 4 that can sit on windowsills and peer into rooms. Sublime Chord is for better spellcasting, due to an early need for hindsight.

Effectively, this auditing apparatus can be completely effective by level 13. Spot checks with the bird, Hindsight to investigate any known subversive meeting places without fail, and Necrotic Cysts implanted in people to use them as hidden spies and dominatable (without need for line of sight) patsies. Beyond that, regular dinner parties with a random selection of the city's population (a good census is critical) should allow for effective sense motive checks combined with a detect thoughts in the background to get a sense for where the hindsight spell needs to be targeted.

With the correct city building codes, no wall will be able to be able to block the mindsight via the mindbender's telepathy. Random wanderings of the city should provide for suspicious gatherings for subsequent investigation.

The critical feats for Mr. Mayor are: Necrotic Cyst and Mindsight.

His job is to establish the network of cysted individuals and ensure that the majority of the non-ideologically backwards population supports his goals. Frequent, significant, feasts are his style. Attendance is drawn by lot from all people in the city (completely random, I assure you, and is absolutely voluntary. He'll even send people around to tend you if you're ill and can't make it.) Here, glibness, detect thoughts, improvisation, and the insidious insight spell all work to supplement an evening of glad handing and sense motive. Most people will be put at ease: the food is good, no arrests are carried out, and everyone is made to feel loved by the state. Enjoyment will be had. By order.

During the day, he will maintain and implant the network and records of the citizens with necrotic cysts (all criminals and people of power, eventually growing to a mark of citizenship). As his levels grow, so will his control.

The town ideologue

The archivist can serve as the town ideologue. Rejecting the false theurgy of the old bourgeois, the archivist can usher in a new era of right thinking and prosperity. By order.

Her job will be to maintain and craft the divine half of the magical items to be used for the town's benefit, figure out problems of ideology and other research. Her job will also be to maintain the records of the citizens, keeping all the reports current and making judgements as necessary. We will gloss over the need for finding the divine spells (urban druid especially), by passing the buck and saying that the empire that founded this city in contested lands is handling that problem. If there isn't a special library for the archivist, we can replace her with a team of an urban druid and a city domain cleric, but that is less... cute. She will, of course, have the Necrotic Cyst feat, because there's no reason why she shouldn't be able to dominate any of the citizenry at no notice.

Special attention must be paid to the spells Susurrus of the City, Identify Transgressor, and Expose the Dead. At level 7, with access to identify transgressor, most crimes found in the city can be punished. Expose the dead at least provides level 3 crime scene forensics for an ad-hoc solution to this problem. Susurrus of the City, at level 9, allows the archivist to settle into her niche of finding out intelligence about the city -- by asking the city. She will have developed a checklist of daily questions allowing for the efficient identification of threats to the city. Enchanting this into a device is top priority due to the frequency of communion. She will also be responsible for establishing the taxation office (discussed later), corrections office, and food centre.

The divine variant of anima mage is also an interesting choice here. I personally like it as a thematic link between the characters, and it provides significant low-level options to the budding ideologue. At the cost of a single spellcasting level, it technically isn't worth it, but I'd recommend it.

Judge Fred

Judge Fred is a spell-to-power erudite. I would accept the number of unique manifestations per day limitation here in exchange for the note of levelling up in other psionic classes being limited to base classes only. I would also multiclass him binder, again, to maintain the theme, but to keep his options open throughout the days of judgement.

Her job is to be the inquisitor, the leader of the city's police forces. Being able to take mind probe and object reading is critical for proper forensics, and she is happy to take advantage of the knowledge of the completely reformed reactionaries currently pondering the errors of their ways back in the new glorious republic. Between seer powers, telepath powers, and strategic spell-to-powers (taking advantage of spending power points instead of absurdly expensive material components), Judge Fred is nominally weak, but extremely good at finding out information. Again, Level 13 is the sweet spot for Hindsight, allowing a comprehensive investigation into the city to begin. She would also take Necrotic Cyst (adapted for spell to power), just to fit in.

She will also manage the library of Gem tracers, enchant spymaster's coins at low levels, and deal with hypercognition at the highest levels. She will also spend her spare time enchanting as appropriate.

Feats wise, she should make sure to take earth sense and earth power, both of which are useful, and in general invest in power point cost reduction feats.

They will live in a tasteful, subdued... monument to the people's glory.

She won't tell anyone why her name is Fred, or what it's short for. Given that asking tends to lead to disappearances or other corrective activity, no one has ever asked twice.

On Cysts

Necrotic Cysts can be implanted in "living creatures". Therefore you can achieve your optimal panopticon via caged mice or glassed oozes or equivalent. Enchanting a mirror with necrotic scrying, which is a hilariously cheap spell (Sor/wis 2) will allow using it to use the subject's eyes xor ears. It's also worth implanting prominent citizens with these cysts.

At higher levels, necrotic domination makes it trivial to dominate the important members of town "to protect the children," if necessary. Most days, however, necrotic domination will be spent dominating telepathic creatures with mindsight. These creatures can detect thinking beings in their radius, and more importantly, can be told to query beings they suspect of suspicious activity. A bad answer or not obviously following instructions will lead to immediate and completely voluntary happiness intensification.

The security force, or Stasi++

A police function is almost always an audit function. It's not so much catching people in the act (though it's nice when it happens), but the forensic work necessary to prevent someone from breaking the law again.

At the end of the day, most of the citizenry will be fanatically dedicated to Mr. Mayor, there will be virtually no crime not allowed by him, and he will have knowledge of the city's workings.

The police force simply needs to have portions of the builds above. Level 1 binders get birds to spy on people, which scales wonderfully, Bards get fascinate and glibness and mindbender -> mindsight. And since every policeman carries a cyst, it's trivial to ensure their loyalty (especially if you are in charge of the two or three "rival" organisations trying to take you down.).

The only real problem is defending the city from external threats. But, given any organisation in the threat, Mr. Mayor can simply "convince" the leaders to be more receptive to his needs. Unorganised threats, unfortunately, require adventurers.

The Stasi are, in this instance, the force to be emulated:

quote:

One of its main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants, and fighting any opposition by overt and covert measures including hidden psychological destruction of dissidents (Zersetzung, literally meaning decomposition). It also worked as an intelligence agency abroad, the respective division Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung was responsible for both espionage and for conducting covert operations in foreign countries.

To be clear, these spies were not very nice people. Ideologically driven, granted secret power and a thankless job, most of the time spying on people who weren't very objectionable. For a host of NPCs, watch The Lives of Others. (Or, for an even more sinister feel, watch The Prisoner (1967).) The objective of these forces, narratively speaking, is to force the players to wonder "are they doing more harm than good?".

With magic, however, the job of the secret police is much much easier. The primary job is to locate, identify, and sanitise threats. At the epitome of the arc, the Hindsight spell (appropriately widened) can provide detailed and traceless transcription of all conversations and actions within a 120' radius for over a week. This makes plotting of any kind extremely difficult, since silent gatherings of people using telepathy can be instantly identified and all other conversations analysed for potential problems.

Keeping the populace in line will actually be fairly easy, since a decent PR effort is just common sense. (Especially as, after some time, most of the population will have figured out how to pay taxes via strategic bliss and will likely be addicted to it.)

Keeping adventurers in line will require second order agents provocateur. It's important to have signs of an resistance movement (along with a thieves guild) in town, as lightning rods for discontent. The first order of business for these lightning rods is to use the energy of the people attracted to them against useful targets, either actual dissidents in the city, or against external threats for whatever reasons can be fabricated. This is where the other beauty of hindsight comes in, as it's not an active divination, most protections and detections against divinations are moot. Outside of that, all public guards should have arcane sight enchanted into them, and anyone carrying objects marking them as very high level should be treated with the utmost respect.

Digressions aside, the growth of the town's Stasi should reflect the population needs with a strong ideological "devotion to the state" component.

The difficulties of information processing

The inherent challenge here is that there are no ways of tabulating data quickly. On the other hand, with the spell Amanuensis, reports can be collated quickly into books and read instantly by Scholar's touch. If enchanted into an object, call to mind should allow for the reasonable accession of this knowledge by either the ideologue or judge. Note well that the books should be significantly sized as scholar's touch operates per book, rather than per page. With a high autohypnosis, a precis of this reading can be cemented into mind, for future work.

Beyond this collation mechanism, (and again, assuming modern technological ideas), the principles of relational algebra are of huge importance here. So long as creatures with a minimal (4-5, basic language recognition and counting, no comprehension needed) intelligence can be bound, it's possible to map relational algebra operations across a large series of creatures. So long as they have no free will, the benefits of punch card or database operations can be realized with the appropriate undead, elemental, or outsider army. Just significantly slower. Still, the capability of being able to perform these operations makes the modern police state possible.

If an efficient source of these creatures can be found, they can also serve as transcribers of information, taking surveillance intake and turning them into written logs of activities.

The benefit and challenges of Hindsight

Hindsight can show events in the past, at different temporal resolutions. Each resolution, day or week (longer resolutions aren't relevant to this task), is unit per caster level. Usually the judge should be managing casting of this spell, as she can subvert the material costs. It's also relevant because linked power can subvert the hour casting time.

Borrow here the US's process of parallel construction. Any information uncovered through traceless scrying techniques can plausibly be discovered through discoverable information gathering techniques. As the populace (and adventurers) don't know the source of the knowledge (and anything that cannot be reconstructed cannot be acted on publically), the secret should be quite safe for quite some time (barring divine intervention or equivalent information gathering capabilities by the opposition)

The city underground should be studded with a grid of hindsight chambers such that all spaces are covered by at least one of them. These should be as secure as possible, and boring save for the sheer amount of them. Unfortunately, there will need to be around 2000 of them to cover the entire city, and the resulting item is easily epic. Therefore, as the normal unwidened spell will require twice as many listening rooms as there are people, a different approach is necessary.

The first approach must necessarily be subsidised housing. By going to roman style tenements, the city can grow up instead of out. It's also much easier putting listening chambers in the middle of what amounts to an apartment block than it is underground. Have the city focus on towers surrounded by green spaces instead of the normal flat construction. Since wall of stone is simply a good investment for a city to have in a wondrous item, (and since that will allow for good spots for listening devices to be emplaced as well, see: construction of us embassy in moscow). These buildings can be rent reduced to enhance desirability as well.

Adventurers at the gates: Access Control

By Level 13, implantation of a necrotic cyst (internally, of course, to reduce the odds of detection), is a hidden prerequisite of town citizenship. Guards at the gates will have items of detect cyst (as well as the more mundane arcane sight and detect thoughts), and use it to direct non-citizens into an enhanced questioning line. Adventurers will be assigned guides and informed of the rules of the city. There is a one time head tax of 100 gp to purchase a 1 year visa into the city after a (private) search of belongings. It will be made clear that the visa extends to the adventurer and his/her current gear, and that significant changes in equipment may invalidate the visa.

There will be a scrupulously honest inspection of their goods, contrived to go through an occluded conveyor for at least a round. (Most of the inspection process will itself be open to inspection by notoriously touchy adventurers.) For each character purchasing entrance, a gem tracer spell will be linked to their most obviously expensive magical item.

If a person presents previous identification papers (signed by arcane mark), the gem linked to those papers will be found, and the object in question located. If there's an asset mismatch, the visa will be deemed invalid and a new visa (and extra scrutiny) can be purchased. This way, the city has a rough idea as tho the most capable item each adventurer holds and where it is, allowing trivial scrying to be performed to thwart any unauthorized planning. If the adventurer leaves the item behind, it is, at the very least, a handicap.

Adventurers lacking magical items will still be provided the visa, and the gem will be attuned to the visa itself. While not as reliable, this at least provides two-factor document authentication against the user.

Adventurers bringing fake visas in will be relegated to the taxation office until their corpses are ready for reanimation.

Bringing a town together, The portrait of a city

From the perspective of Mr. Mayor, the town will face four vectors of stress. Internal competition, adventurers, resources and external threats. Happily, they can be used against each other.

A note on resources

The things I suggested above are expensive. As a consequence, this city's laws will be extremely lawful evil, simply as a profit making source. Anything that damages the city's capabilities is against the law. Restitution is to provide a higher upside than downside. Thus, murder is bad because it deprives the city of labour. Restitution can be provided by resources in kind to the city on top of resources in kind to the dependents (which would otherwise be a drain on the city.) Theft is bad, see above. Breaking contracts is bad because it encourages people not to live in the city. Etc, etc. Every crime, very specifically, has a monetary value attached to it, to represent the damage it causes to the city. Corruption is one of the nastier crimes, as control fraud can hollow out the city and make it not be as effective. Emphasis on the Lawful aspect of Lawful evil.

Thus, the city needs to be a nice place to live. In one of the city squares, therefore, there are three major institutions: the Joyful Tax office, the corrections office, and the food bank.

The food bank will have (at least one) item which casts Sustain (BoED) on people. Sustain takes care of their hunger and water needs for at base caster level. It targets (at CL 8) 4 people per cast and lasts for 48 hours. It's necessary infrastructure for the city to survive sieges, and can eventually allow farmers to be in more productive positions. It's worthwhile getting an extended version of this put in at CL 10, which causes the spell to effect 5 people for 5 days, instead of 4 people for 48 hours. The charge per use should be 1 GP, as that undercuts the cost of food by 1 sp. (3 sp per day for common meals by 5 days is 1.5 gp. This means that people can spend the extra silver how they wish, likely on fancy banquets for fun. See the philosophy behind soylent meal replacements). With a population of 4000, all of whom are encouraged to make use of this resource (mainly because of the discount), this item will have to service 50 people an hour for 16 hours a day, which is quite reasonable. It will produce an income of 4000 gp per 5 days, and will therefore pay for itself in half a year. More deluxe models can be installed with the profits.

The Joyful taxation office is the cornerstone of the city. The city must require that its taxes are paid in XP, rather than gold. Potable XP is generally found in either Ambrosia (BoED) or Liquid Pain (BoVD), and the city isn't fussed about which it accepts. It issues a currency to represent the potable XP, and people can make money at the joyful taxation office. It contains rooms set up to cast distilled joy and distilled pain on people, as well as an item of restoration to patch people up after pain sessions. Spellcasters are available to hire to generate blissful states. A series of "complimentary" iron maidens of preservation (BoVD) and pain extractors are available on the other side in silenced rooms.

The cornerstone of the taxation office are criminals who are unable to pay off their crimes. They are placed in the pain extractors (as few qualify for distilled joy, though no bias is enforced save for the capability of producing the appropriate resource) until they generate sufficient liquid pain to pay off their debt to society.

The corrections office doesn't maintain cells. Incarceration is wasteful. Instead, it implants necrotic cysts into people and uses necrotic domination to walk them across the street to the tax office, as well as managing minds of the criminals assigned to the maintenance jobs that lucky (or connected) criminals can aspire to.

I would, at this point, encourage a house rule to allow a neutral substance "Distilled concentration" to go along with the good and evil substances, in much the same lines. Again, the emphasis of the city is on self-preservation, rather than evil for evil's sake. Only for those poor souls unable to muster sufficient concentration or joy are forced to go into the maidens. There should be acceptable spells at the conclusion of service to fix most of the mental and physical problems as well, as that is simply preservation of the workforce. For the people who die in the city, they are, of course reanimated (unless they pay the city more than the worth of their corpse) to do the really icky jobs that no one wants to do.

External threats and adventurers.

Dealing with adventurers is tricky, but at the end of the day, so long as you have things to point them at and shiny things to buy them off with, most won't really question the "evil" nature of the town, especially as some areas will be not mentioned in their presence. Given the resource production of the town, most adventurers can be bought off to go attack external threats.

tl;dr: Use necromancy, divination, and mind control to create an almost perfect police state.

ascendance
Feb 19, 2013
Hmm. That post about necrotic cysts and mind control is going to be saved if the players IMC ever make it to Evil Federation Ruled By Aboleths.

Bendigeidfran
Dec 17, 2013

Wait a minute...

Zemyla posted:

tl;dr: Use necromancy, divination, and mind control to create an almost perfect police state.

The sad thing is there are some good ideas in that monument of text. Being an evil thought policeman is cool and interesting. But if nothing ever loving happens because everything's accounted for, that's a long game of sitting with your thumb up your rear end.

And you'd think that in D&D there are still a ton of ways to break it in half. Maybe the Old God you're getting your powers from decides your brains look delicious today. Or dragons attack and well, all your spying on salt peddlers is useless now. Though I get the feeling that all that stuff would get written out of anything this guy runs.

Zemyla
Aug 6, 2008

I'll take her off your hands. Pleasure doing business with you!

Bendigeidfran posted:

The sad thing is there are some good ideas in that monument of text. Being an evil thought policeman is cool and interesting. But if nothing ever loving happens because everything's accounted for, that's a long game of sitting with your thumb up your rear end.

And you'd think that in D&D there are still a ton of ways to break it in half. Maybe the Old God you're getting your powers from decides your brains look delicious today. Or dragons attack and well, all your spying on salt peddlers is useless now. Though I get the feeling that all that stuff would get written out of anything this guy runs.

Good news! He's written about ways to defeat this magical surveillance state.

The simplest way is for one of the triumverate to be loving around with the other two.

EclecticTastes
Sep 17, 2012

"Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

John Wick posted:

Okay, one last time.
I got an email today. It was very sweet. It read, "Mr. Wick, thank you for designing my favorite RPG. It changed how I play games and how I run them. I'm still running a campaign that's been running since you published the game."
It concludes, "Thank you for writing Seven Seas."
Folks...
It's not "Seven Seas."
It's not "Seventh Seas."
It's not "Seven Sea."
It's "SEVENTH. SEA."
Right there on the cover. Like Willy Wonka said, "Black and white, clear as crystal."
This happens to me every day. I get an email from someone complimenting me on the game and getting the drat name wrong. Just wrong.
Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for your praise. I'm inspired that you love the work so many people put into the game.
But please. For my own sanity. Please.
Get the loving name right.

He's like if Curb Your Enthusiasm existed in real life. :allears:

Slimnoid
Sep 6, 2012

Does that mean I don't get the job?

Pundowski posted:

"Queering" D&D is like "queering" basketball, or bridge. It either can't be done, or can only be done by making something so radically different from what is presently called 'basketball' or 'bridge' that it would no longer be recognizable as such.

Zoq-Fot-Pik
Jun 27, 2008

Frungy!

What in the Sam Hill is this guy talkign about.

inklesspen
Oct 17, 2007

Here I am coming, with the good news of me, and you hate it. You can think only of the bell and how much I have it, and you are never the goose. I will run around with my bell as much as I want and you will make despair.
Buglord

Wikipedia posted:

Queering is an interpretive method used in historical or literary study. It is based on the re-appropriated term "queer", used for LGBT issues, but used as a verb. "Queering" means to reevaluate or reinterpret a work with an eye to sexual orientation and/or to gender, by applying queer theory.

Basically, if you were to examine the traditional D&D trope of the drow being evil black-skinned people led by women, and discuss that maybe that's the stereotype surface people have, and why would that stereotype arise; do they feel threatened by women leaders, that could be queering D&D.

MizPiz
May 29, 2013

by Athanatos

Zoq-Fot-Pik posted:

What in the Sam Hill is this guy talkign about.



May not be the what he's saying exactly, but it's basically the point he's trying to make.

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


This is absolutely loving hilarious.

"You know what ruined gaming? Girl cooties."

JackMann
Aug 11, 2010

Secure. Contain. Protect.
Fallen Rib
The struggle is real.

The Bee
Nov 25, 2012

Making his way to the ring . . .
from Deep in the Jungle . . .

The Big Monkey!
The last line is my favorite. Oh no, the game is popular. God help us all.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Asimo posted:

This is absolutely loving hilarious.

"You know what ruined gaming? Girl cooties."

"Look at all those assholes just having fun and socializing! It's not about the +5 knife anymore, Bob! We MUST AWAY!"

Darth Various
Oct 23, 2010

"Females join"

Dun dun DUN!

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Darth Various posted:

"Females join"

Dun dun DUN!

I was going to object (I'm working hard on being unlikeable), but then I read the "Females join" part... Not that the whole poorly drawn thing wasn't bullshit to begin with. DnD wasn't some sort of mystical hobby only for Gygax and his BFFs. If it was, he wouldn't have published for money.

Now, casuals and casualization, I have an axe to grind with them... but mostly about videogames. :argh:

Chill la Chill
Jul 2, 2007

Don't lose your gay


MizPiz posted:



May not be the what he's saying exactly, but it's basically the point he's trying to make.

Haha the best part is when the green and brown dudes ditch the lame cards for blunts and cans.

Big Hubris
Mar 8, 2011


I especially like that they used cards for their terrible propaganda.
E:Holy poo poo. If that's Magic, then the stick figures are drinking energy drinks and chatting with each other over a game of cards. That's what they're complaining about.

Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Dec 1, 2014

MartianAgitator
Apr 30, 2003

Damn Earth! Damn her!
Traditional Games > Grognards.txt: Females join

Orange Fluffy Sheep
Jul 26, 2008

Bad EXP received
How dare they use the social occasion to socialize! :argh:

juggalo baby coffin
Dec 2, 2007

How would the dog wear goggles and even more than that, who makes the goggles?


are they playing magic the gathering or something?

OtspIII
Sep 22, 2002

inklesspen posted:

Basically, if you were to examine the traditional D&D trope of the drow being evil black-skinned people led by women, and discuss that maybe that's the stereotype surface people have, and why would that stereotype arise; do they feel threatened by women leaders, that could be queering D&D.

It's funny, because Pundit and Avery Mcdaldno might actually agree on queering RPGs demanding the creation of something near-unrecognizable. One type of queering that I've heard her talk about is a pretty fundamental re-examination of the assumptions of tabletop RPGs, stripping away the 'a small team of enlightened heroes violently overcome The Enemy and assert the correctness of their world-view by use of force" core that's the basis of the vast majority of tabletop RPGs and replacing it with something more in line with the experiences of queer individuals. In other words, even something like Exalted might have a bunch of iconic queer characters, but if it's ultimately about combat and the use of force (either violent or social, in Exalted's case) then it's still drawing from a tradition of patriarchal colonialism.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

How dare they use the social occasion to socialize! :argh:

The opposite would be a dude joining a book club or something (I'm not very good at stereotyping female social activities) to pick up chicks and skipping on reading books, analysis and talking about books. Well, that's what the author has in mind... and that would lead to sorority members joining in to make fun of the other women and to pick up dudes. Of course, that doesn't happen and women definitely don't join games for attention. They also want some bit of that 'a small team of enlightened heroes violently overcome The Enemy and assert the correctness of their world-view by use of force', 'cos it's fun.

Also, you can overcome the queering conlfict of everything you do being racist/patriarchist/colonialist by rolling for every aspect of the world, thus randomly generating a society... or by not caring.

inklesspen
Oct 17, 2007

Here I am coming, with the good news of me, and you hate it. You can think only of the bell and how much I have it, and you are never the goose. I will run around with my bell as much as I want and you will make despair.
Buglord

OtspIII posted:

It's funny, because Pundit and Avery Mcdaldno might actually agree on queering RPGs demanding the creation of something near-unrecognizable. One type of queering that I've heard her talk about is a pretty fundamental re-examination of the assumptions of tabletop RPGs, stripping away the 'a small team of enlightened heroes violently overcome The Enemy and assert the correctness of their world-view by use of force" core that's the basis of the vast majority of tabletop RPGs and replacing it with something more in line with the experiences of queer individuals. In other words, even something like Exalted might have a bunch of iconic queer characters, but if it's ultimately about combat and the use of force (either violent or social, in Exalted's case) then it's still drawing from a tradition of patriarchal colonialism.

The existence of Fantasy Friends shows it's possible to dramatically reconsider the PCs' priorities while still having a recognizable fantasy world. Likewise, Quinn Murphy's done some great work reexamining the drow.

inklesspen fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Dec 1, 2014

Nancy_Noxious
Apr 10, 2013

by Smythe

JcDent posted:

The opposite would be a dude joining a book club or something (I'm not very good at stereotyping female social activities) to pick up chicks and skipping on reading books, analysis and talking about books. Well, that's what the author has in mind... and that would lead to sorority members joining in to make fun of the other women and to pick up dudes. Of course, that doesn't happen and women definitely don't join games for attention. They also want some bit of that 'a small team of enlightened heroes violently overcome The Enemy and assert the correctness of their world-view by use of force', 'cos it's fun.

Also, you can overcome the queering conlfict of everything you do being racist/patriarchist/colonialist by rolling for every aspect of the world, thus randomly generating a society... or by not caring.

Good lord, I can't tell whether this post is earnest grog or a parody.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Nancy_Noxious posted:

Good lord, I can't tell whether this post is earnest grog or a parody.

I really can't explain in human words why I wrote that. I do believe that the person who made the "this is how hobby goes to poo poo" comic is totally wrong, but... I'm sorry, I'm not really good about gender issues.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord
I hate this drat feat [Crossbow Expert]. Honestly, I have no problem with the way it works mechanically, but it breaks immersion for me. The fastest anyone has ever shot a military-grade crossbow is once every 30 seconds. This feat allows you to conceivably fire eight times in six seconds. You essentially gain the ability to move like Quicksilver in DoFP, but only when reloading crossbows.

I have forbidden this usage of it at my table without crafting a mechanical automatic crossbow.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

quote:

And if you take the Crossbow Expert feat, you can ignore the loading property on crossbows. Don't get the key word "loading" confused with the general term like I've seen people around here do before: The crossbow still needs to be reloaded and requires ammo (I can't believe I've gotten in debates about this before lol)! That means you can fire a crossbow as many times as class features, etc. allow just like a bow as EdgeOfDreams explained, but you still need to provide ammo and have a hand free to reload (although there is nothing written in the rules that specifically states you need a hand free to reload, I think it's so obvious that it doesn't need to be stated, just as it doesn't state that you need a hand free to nock an arrow when firing a bow).

quote:

Ignoring the fact that Mearls and the dev team's off the cuff rulings have frequently been inconsistent and straight up wrong before, I would only allow it if they had a magical or mechanical device that allowed it as you say. I wouldn't just "imagine" it though since such a thing would be quite costly.

Same guy:

quote:

The flexibility lies in the fact that multiple types of characters can take advantage of [Dueling Fighting Style], a sword and shield fighter or a one handed fencer. By denying one of those options you are removing the flexibility. But like you say, that's your choice. Personally I don't like to remove basic options from the game and I don't see that as a way of taking advantage of the type of flexibility you are talking about (bending rules, creating rules, etc.)

Anyway my point was that this is one pretty straight forward RAW and as intended by the devs: You can benefit from a shield. I was just pointing out that this isn't up for interpretation, but a DM can always change things how they want obviously.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord
I have no idea what it is about that feat that makes so many grogs lose their loving minds.

quote:

Why is it that you like so many other people miss-construes the timing of when you load (during the attack) as the method, when it is just the timing. And the feat only means you can load more then once, again having nothing to do with the method which is not mentioned.

The ammo rule states that you draw the ammo from it's container. Again that is simple and straightforward. If both your hands are fully occupied then without slight of hand you aren't going to be grabbing anything such as ammo from any container. If I even have to explain why then i must ask: Do you believe that in D&D 1+1 = 5 because it's not specified anywhere that 1+1 = 2?

**link is made to a question, "how do you load a crossbow if both your hands are full?" Answer is...


What do you do here? Well, double-down, of course.

quote:

Oh so juggling doesn't take a skill check? Oh wait...

You "think" it works that way because you want it to so your intentionally bending you're interpretation to allow for it. That however is not vagueness in wording that is your specific intent.

quote:

The designers response was "you juggle your gear". So if I accept that is valid then I must accept that juggling does not require any skill checks.

I guess that also means I don't need warcaster, since I can just juggle my shield and sword to free up my hands.

Rockman Reserve
Oct 2, 2007

"Carbons? Purge? What are you talking about?!"

I have no idea why I keep clicking on grog threads. They're entertaining but simultaneously horribly depressing and depressingly horrifying.

They're like the personification of :stonklol:

That said...while I think the man couldn't write a decent ruleset to save his life, I kind of like Mearls' tweets. I imagine him muttering "...goddamn nerds" after each one and it makes them so much better.

DrPossum
May 15, 2004

i am not a surgeon

Ryoshi posted:

I have no idea why I keep clicking on grog threads. They're entertaining but simultaneously horribly depressing and depressingly horrifying.

They're like the personification of :stonklol:

That said...while I think the man couldn't write a decent ruleset to save his life, I kind of like Mearls' tweets. I imagine him muttering "...goddamn nerds" after each one and it makes them so much better.

if you want to see the most negative conversation and frothing at the mouth about anything mearls says, imagined or otherwise check out the thread on this forum http://bit.ly/12mNorM. i've never seen people circlejerk more on being outraged other than conservative talk radio

id c/p that whole thing into here if i had the patience

inklesspen
Oct 17, 2007

Here I am coming, with the good news of me, and you hate it. You can think only of the bell and how much I have it, and you are never the goose. I will run around with my bell as much as I want and you will make despair.
Buglord
Re crossbows: someone oughta read Warren Ellis's Crécy. In addition to being hella :britain:, it happens to show exactly why crossbowmen were so dangerous, the Pope banned their use in wars against other Christians. (They knew the reloading thing was a weakness. And, lo and behold, they applied their brains to it and came up with a solution.)

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

inklesspen posted:

Re crossbows: someone oughta read Warren Ellis's Crécy. In addition to being hella :britain:, it happens to show exactly why crossbowmen were so dangerous, the Pope banned their use in wars against other Christians. (They knew the reloading thing was a weakness. And, lo and behold, they applied their brains to it and came up with a solution.)

Wasn't Crecy a bow uber alles battle?

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

dwarf74 posted:

I hate this drat feat [Crossbow Expert]. Honestly, I have no problem with the way it works mechanically, but it breaks immersion for me. The fastest anyone has ever shot a military-grade crossbow is once every 30 seconds. This feat allows you to conceivably fire eight times in six seconds. You essentially gain the ability to move like Quicksilver in DoFP, but only when reloading crossbows.

I have forbidden this usage of it at my table without crafting a mechanical automatic crossbow.

Man I love the posts where a nerd knows one thing about history or physics so it breaks their versimilitude. "Falling damage maxes at 10d6 meaning a fighter above a certain level is simply never going to die for a fall of any height whatsoever? That's fine but no one better fire a crossbow faster than on that episode of Medieval Warfare I saw one time."

inklesspen
Oct 17, 2007

Here I am coming, with the good news of me, and you hate it. You can think only of the bell and how much I have it, and you are never the goose. I will run around with my bell as much as I want and you will make despair.
Buglord

JcDent posted:

Wasn't Crecy a bow uber alles battle?

Yep. Crossbowmen were great but not as great as longbowmen, and there were a couple of key mistakes the French made. (Their crossbowmen were hired mercenaries.) They fought shortly after a rainstorm (bows could easily be unstrung and the strings kept dry, but not so for the crossbows) and screwed up their logistics train (the crossbowmen used shields to duck behind while reloading; these shields were stuck at the back of the train). Then when the crossbows had failed to produce the expected result, the French cavalry attacked their mercenaries while they were trying to retreat.

The thing about crossbows, though, is they didn't require anywhere near as much training as the longbow. That's what made them truly devastating; if you got the logistics right, you could field thousands of poorly-trained conscript soldiers and they would still be a deadly force.

ascendance
Feb 19, 2013
This seems quite self-explanatory. Reminds me of the horror of FATAL.

Laphroaig
Feb 6, 2004

Drinking Smoke
Dinosaur Gum

DrPossum posted:

if you want to see the most negative conversation and frothing at the mouth about anything mearls says, imagined or otherwise check out the thread on this forum http://bit.ly/12mNorM. i've never seen people circlejerk more on being outraged other than conservative talk radio

id c/p that whole thing into here if i had the patience

its us we are the grognards etc

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer

ascendance posted:

This seems quite self-explanatory. Reminds me of the horror of FATAL.



Shit_that_didnt_happen_even_in_a_game.txt

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch

Maxwell Lord posted:

Shit_that_didnt_happen_even_in_a_game.txt

I want to say this but I knew some guys who ran games for years (some of them even once posted on these hallowed forums) that had poo poo of this caliber happen basically every session. It didn't help that one of them studied German culture and literature extensively and so was obsessed with running D&D games that always devolved into explorations of nihilism and the nature of good and evil. There was a campaign where two of the players managed to successfully generate 3.5 characters who were Power Rangers and it took the DM ~3 sessions to notice it.

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Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

El Estrago Bonito posted:

I want to say this but I knew some guys who ran games for years (some of them even once posted on these hallowed forums) that had poo poo of this caliber happen basically every session. It didn't help that one of them studied German culture and literature extensively and so was obsessed with running D&D games that always devolved into explorations of nihilism and the nature of good and evil. There was a campaign where two of the players managed to successfully generate 3.5 characters who were Power Rangers and it took the DM ~3 sessions to notice it.

I feel there is a leap of logic in the above. Why would a game the focuses on the exploration of nihilism and the nature of good and evil lead to making power rangers as PCs and other poo poo of "halfling-hiding-in-whore's rear end" caliber?

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