grognards.TXT: The slayers of all things fun are not just in Atheism, Video Games, Co

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > grognards.TXT: The slayers of all things fun are not just in Atheism, Video Games, Co

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."

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 18:30

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:48

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Ewen Cluney posted:

Champions: "A game designed by a man who likes math even more than he likes superheroes.")

You ever want to get into the real poo poo of math guys designing games, find yourself a copy of Don't Look Back. It's some lovely horror genre book from the 90s, and it has weapon damage represented as multiplying the result of your skill check by the weapon's modifier, which is a decimal. So like you get 4 on your roll and multiply that by a pistol's damage of .6 to get how much you deal.

Oh and skill resolution is adding your stat (which ranges from -3 to 3) to your skill number (which starts at zero and goes to 2) and your skill difficulty (which all start around -2 and drop from there). Then you determine the absolute value of your result, add 3 to it, roll that many dice, and take either the top or bottom three depending on if you had a negative or positive score before determining absolute value, then compare that final result to a success chart. Woooo!

# ¿ Dec 30, 2014 00:49

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Halloween Jack posted:

Do the designers explain anywhere in the text why they did that? Does it contribute to some notions of realism, like in Phoenix Command, or is it something they did to get the exact probability curve they want? (JAGS has you roll 4d6-4, or 4d6 drop 6s, which I believe they did to add a bell curve to a D20 roll.)

Lord no. The book just sells itself as an "interactive storytelling experience" and so on. Clearly a freshman effort at game design. That ruleset sure has stuck in my brain though, I'll give them that.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2014 01:06

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Plague of Hats posted:

That is a piece of the promotional "art" from the Far West website that's meant to entice consumers and ~~buzzword-loving suckers~~transmedia enthusiasts.

Some kinda trans enthusiast anyway.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Dec 31, 2014 18:47

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

I need a primer on Zak S and why everyone hates him and he is crazy. Generally the grog about him is so trenched in lingo that I can't figure out what the issue is. Something something elfgames transtrash desborough tradgames badwrong.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 18:27

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Okay sure but how is he being wrong about roleplaying games?

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 19:03

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Plague of Hats posted:

Here's his permaban on RPGnet, which doesn't involve direct quotes but is a good rundown of why he shits up any thread that doesn't agree with him enough. It links to a thread where he is in fine form.

With his overuse.

Of the enter key.

And baldly claiming his anecdotes trump other anecdotes, and also trump research that he simply doesn't like. Screeching over and over "the needle doesn't move." He slags on trans or gay or really any people who disagree with him or criticize the parts of popular culture he likes, making GBS threads up their stuff with the usual brilliant counter "don't presume to speak for everyone" and then immediately proceeds to do so himself. He will totally bust out "my black friend" or "my girlfriend is okay with it" in arguments.

He actually got a little (publicly) worse after his ban, when he harrumphed off to the Den and created a giant thread of his dumb un-design vs everyone else. He fixates on these little points in an argument, making GBS threads up dozens of pages with strident demands that particular people answer bizarre questionnaires in strictly yes/no fashion. He alienated everyone there right quick and finally left his smoking ruin of 100+ pages (after like just a week) of circular idiocy for less discerning pastures.

Someone once said "maybe featuring D&D with Porn Stars in Maxim isn't really very progressive for either feminism or gaming", and this resulted in him dropping into dozens of unrelated threads to call the lady a sex-hating prude.

The thing that really makes him a villain is his plausibly deniable harassment. He compiles lists of names to distribute to his private circles of thousands of followers, posts messages to them like a link to some dude's blog with a one word message of "Destroy", but he never says explicitly "I want you to harass this person" so it's not his fault when these people end up doxxed or just flooded off Twitter/G+/whatever by the incessant hounding of dozens of idiots. That's definitely not enabling harassment, meanwhile quoting him in grogs.txt and laughing at him is definitely harassment.

I or someone else might provide more links if you really want, but right now I'm on my tablet.

Nope, all set now. Sometimes the grog celebrities seem to only get reference to by their relation to the other grog celebrities, and as a passing reader, it's easy to get lost in the field of Zak, Tarnowski, Desborough, etc.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2015 01:57

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Are those really old Gygax charts in existence because they were written at a time where he could reasonably expect his readers wouldn't be able to find a bag of poyhedrals and may have to make due with sheep teeth or dropping wax into tea?

# ¿ Jan 7, 2015 17:25

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

All you have to do to make this thread start eating itself like the Ouroboros is say "Dice math" in three consecutive posts. You don't even need to be looking in a mirror.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2015 23:48

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Sage Genesis posted:

What the everloving gently caress? Leaving aside the questionable decision to use Naruto as a source/reference for D&D, why the hell would anyone think Sasuke casts magic spells? He's got supernatural ninja-powers, sure, but not everything supernatural is a magic spell. Yoda doesn't cast spells. Spider-Man doesn't cast spells. Sasuke doesn't cast spells.

Is this some grog deformity I wasn't previously aware of? To view all of fiction through a D&D lens with grogged up windows?

Sasuke can bite his hand and create a big runey circle on the ground that summons a giant snake, that might count as spells. I think the reason though is because in the late parts of the series he can lightning up his sword a bunch, which is just some ninja shenanigans.

Honestly that guy should just be angry at the 3e Ninja Spy prestige class from OA. That guy couldn't make shadow clones or grow bugs in his skin or use his byakugan or whatever the hell.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2015 19:42

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Hell yeah, less than a day til another slapfight in here with the same dramatis personae. Don't get this thread shut down guys, what will Mandy Morbid theorize about on her blog without us?

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 04:43

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

ProfessorCirno posted:

Hmmmm what's a genre where you care a lot about your character and get really into playing them and death matters a ton and you take it REALLY serious and never do things like mock your own dumb deaths? Oh I know roguelikes.

I never played ante for Magic because I was loving poor.

I never played ante for magic because I never met anyone that did, ever. Even when we were all having MTG slumber parties and playing ludicrous kid versions of the game (no attacking for 12 turns!) everyone thought that the ante mechanic was atrocious.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 22:21

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Also if the party has a fighter he can hang around in shops til he hears about mustard prices, then go fight the mustard.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2015 23:42

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Littlefinger posted:

Also note how they expect their players to try to play a regular D&D game, start "looking for adventure", only for them to go all on the players at the first opportunity.

They did not seek player buy-in, went with 'hey guys, I had an awesome idea about playing the mustard mafia in a historical setting, is everyone on board?', but instead started fantasizing about being an insufferable grog DM to teach them a lesson about verisimilitude or something.

That can't be the first time in that campaign where the smuggening hit, either. He only mentions a thief and that magic exists. What dopey sarcasm must he have visited on a guy trying to play a druid or an elf, I wonder. How on Earth did they miss the memo that it was a game of Moutard et Mademoiselles?

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 01:08

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Asimo posted:

I'm pretty sure 4e didn't even have martial controllers anyway, didn't it? (Partly because the whole role was invented so wizards could be Special). So the whole argument is dumb from the ground floor. I think the only example was that one Essentials ranger-variant that wasn't really good and mostly did archer tricks.

It never did, and there was even a developer blog post once to the tune of "look, parity between roles and power sources just isn't that important guys." I think the Seeker would have been really easy to flavor as a martial controller though.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 23:00

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:48

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Asimo posted:

The irony is the PHB3 psychic classes were still probably the only sensible way to do that power source in D&D. The only one that really felt tacked on was the Ardent.

Also the 4e Monk was fun as hell to play.

Yeah, the Ardent was a little bit iffy, but honestly I liked the idea of someone with what basically amounted to effective, infectious emotions as a psychic. It just needed a bit of source reference to make it feel less like something completely out of the blue. Otherwise the book had two new redundancies. The Runepriest in particular is so close to the regular Cleric that it really feels like they could have made it a variety of Cleric instead, and again, the Seeker would be fine as a Martial Controller. Just replace all their zones and stuff with nets and gas arrows and boom it's Green Arrow.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 23:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > grognards.TXT: The slayers of all things fun are not just in Atheism, Video Games, Co