ProfessorCirno posted:

The comments overall are amazing, because almost every single one ignores what Urquhart says and goes "ACTUALLY I BET IT WAS 4e, IF HE PLAYED 5e HE'D KNOW HE'D KNOW."

Mormon Star Wars posted:

Same here, I had to pass on the latest Dark Ages Vampire Kickstarter, because the developer David Hill Jr has gone Full Mcintosh. I'm honestly now afraid he's going to destroy the Masquerade setting from within because he's taken such a hardline stance against GG and begun to retweet everything Jon Mcintosh actually says..

I'm like "Dude, you write a game where players can portray Vampires belonging to a political group that literally views humans as Cattle.." And he's silent... but now is all Anti-Violence and Anti Sexuality.

ocrumsprug posted:

It's just the continuation of Pathfinder's marketing strategy.

Mormon Star Wars posted:

LuiCypher posted:

I like how blame is placed on 4e fracturing the base and not, uh, Pathfinder basically lifting 3.5e's rules for the low, low price of free and deliberately engaging in edition warring to drive their sales.

ProfessorCirno posted:

The comments overall are amazing, because almost every single one ignores what Urquhart says and goes "ACTUALLY I BET IT WAS 4e, IF HE PLAYED 5e HE'D KNOW HE'D KNOW."

quote:

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons with the red box, I started playing regularly in high school with AD&D (and the Unearthed Arcana rules). We didn’t even venture in to second edition. Our DM ruled that verbotten. The 5th edition is truer to the heart of D&D than anything in years and honestly far more true than 3.x was. This entire post smacks of some one who’s hooked up with a new lover and is now passive agressively dissing an ex. They clearly aren’t following how the game has developed and the fact that you can get the base rules for FREE with everything you need to play (so a DM can splash out on the books and let the players function with some simple free mechanics) is just further proof of how WotC are trying to adapt to a changing market. I have to say I’m very disappointed with Obsidian but really Bioware were the big D&D makers, Obsidian came along took their hard work and made expansions that were ALMOST completed and only really worked after the community patched it (ie. Knights of the old Repubic 2, Neverwinter Nights 2 and so on.)

quote:

Right. An open, two-year test program of near-half-a-million players is certainly no way to be community-driven. Like that big new post-release customer survey they just released. Lost it’s way, for sure. Such a shame!

LuiCypher posted:

I like how blame is placed on 4e fracturing the base and not, uh, Pathfinder basically lifting 3.5e's rules for the low, low price of free and deliberately engaging in edition warring to drive their sales.

Libertad! posted:

This is a conjecture I've really only ever heard on Something Awful Trad Games. What is this statement based upon?

Libertad! posted:

This is a conjecture I've really only ever heard on Something Awful Trad Games. What is this statement based upon?

quote:

What you have to realize - in case you've just crawled out of a womb and haven't heard - is that Pathfinder is based directly on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 and its tie-in system, d20. So that's what they're getting "more than 10 years" of development. Of course, they didn't develop it for ten years. Wizards of the Coast did.

But wait. Hang on. Hold up a second.

Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition was released in 2000. Pathfinder was released in 2009. So. They're counting development time before release, maybe? In 2003, it was revised as Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 . Now, one thing to understand is that Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 did develop many new ideas. None of which Pathfinder is legally allowed to use.

So yes, it was being developed, but very little of that development can ever be used in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game . Mostly, they're just revising 3.5, a game which was, if you count 1999-2003, roughly four years in development.

I realize this might sound a little nitpicky, but what I'm demonstrating from the outset is that Pathfinder is developing a mythology. Not a mythology of elves and dragons. It's about developing a mythology of being the true bastard heir to the Dungeons & Dragons empire, unjustly cast off of its throne.

quote:

They give a dedication to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, even though Gygax expressed an emphatic distaste for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 and the Open Gaming License that makes Pathfinder possible at all. In fact, Gary predicted that the OGL could be used to rob Dungeons & Dragons of its IP, rather prophetically.

But that's another part of the Pathfinder mythos: that it's a continuation of what Gygax started, that it owes everything to him. And perhaps it does. But pretending Pathfinder is a continuation of the old brown box is purest fabrication.

Monte Cook posted:

For almost three years, a team of us worked on developing a new rules set that built upon the foundation of the 25 years prior. Released in 2000, 3rd Edition started a new era. A few years later, a different set of designers made updates to the game in the form of 3.5.

...

Today, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game carries on that same tradition as the next step in the progression. Now, that might seem inappropriate, controversial, or even a little blasphemous, but it's still true. The Pathfinder RPG uses the foundations of the game's long history to offer something new and fresh. It's loyal to its roots, even if those roots are, in a fashion, borrowed.

Monte Cook, again posted:

The game's designer, Jason Bulmahn, did an amazing job creating innovative new mechanics for the game, but he started with the premise that he already had a pretty good game to build upon. He didn't wipe the slate clean and start over. Jason had no desire to alienate the countless fans who had invested equally countless hours playing the game for the last 35 years.

Monte Cook, again posted:

The Pathfinder RPG offers cool new options for characters. Rogues have talents. Sorcerers have bloodline powers. It fixes a few areas that proved troublesome over the last few years. Spells that turn you into something else are restructured. Grappling is simplified and rebalanced. But it's also still the game that you love, and have loved for so long, even if it was called by a different name.

I trust the gang at Paizo to bear the game's torch well. They respect the game's past as much as its future. They understand its traditions.

quote:

"It doesn't matter what the house is made of. You're in the house. Everyone else is following a blood trail. Are you examining the panelling to determine what the makeup is?"

Part of the role of the DM is keeping players on task. Occasionally that means pinging a recalcitrant player upside the head.

quote:

I typically will allow the annoying questions and answer them in detail then when the annoying player attempts to comment on a conversation happening in the next room. "Sorry you're not there yet because you're still studying the wood in the previous room" and move on with the other payers for a few minutes before allowing the annoyance to intervene. This usually will keep them on task in the future.

quote:

The age old question: "You come upon a bridge over a stream." "HOW DEEP IS IT!??!?!?!?" "You are now at the bottom of a 15ft deep stream."

quote:

"what's the house made of?"

"Wood."

"What kind of wood?"

"Its a special kind of wood made from the wailing forest. Due to the strange nature of the wood it lets out a lengthy moaning sound when someone asks inane questions that add nothing to the situation...Oh wait what's that sound?"

quote:

"You place your hand on the wall to inspect the wood. It turns out it's made from the jackholevore tree, a tree that is possessed by an evil spirit that eats people that ask stupid questions. The spirit now possesses the entire house."

quote:

The wood is Annoyyew, the iron/steel alloy is Redundantine, The leather is donkey leather, and the rope is rear end-hair fiber from the town fool who asks too many pointless questions. You don't even know what's in that loving burrito you ate during the break and you're asking me about the Annoyyew? You're a dragonborn barbarian for godssake, are you wondering if it's EDIBLE??? If you eat the whole loving doorframe, I'll let it count as a pound of food. Who else in the party wants to eat this loving dungeon? You know what? Annoyyew is known to few carpenter-sages for occasionally being wraith-haunted. Roll for initiative. Roll low.

quote:

 You're a dragonborn barbarian for godssake, are you wondering if it's EDIBLE??? If you eat the whole loving doorframe, I'll let it count as a pound of food. Who else in the party wants to eat this loving dungeon? 

dwarf74 posted:

I may be terrible, but I thought this bit was legitimately funny...

quote:

Wow...
Another year has come and gone and the old Bongo Blog keeps on trucking...
Once again I am amazed and so grateful for all of the support that everyone has given in maintaining the interest to it.
I would especially like to think Rebel Minis for their dedication to the "Bongolesia" setting for their "Modern Havok" rules. A big thumbs up and here's hoping for more shenanigans as many of his figures grace my tables...
Some of you have asked me "How do I do it?" and the answer is..."I really couldn't do it without you."
And I am being honest.
Over the last six years, I've received praise and flak because of this site. I've grown a thick skin, because of some of the mis-aligned arrows that has been sent my way because of it. I've been accused of being a racist, bigot, prejudiced, and "just mean spirited".
But those that know me also know that I am none of those.
One only has to look at the dark history of many countries in Africa, (even today) and realize that "If Bongolesia was truly like any of those places, it wouldn't have lasted six months on the net, let alone six years"...
Mel Brooks once said "I beat Hitler if I can make him a laughingstock." I try to do the same thing using Idi Amin as "P'hat Daddee B'wonah". Sure his excellency is a scheming scoundrel and has a dark side. But if I can make him a bit of a buffoon, with constant schemes of richness, and power, destined to fail, then perhaps then in a way we have beat that man. And it is with your help that we win...every time...
And for that...I am grateful.
Thank you everyone for another year at the helm of foolishness and fun...

Someone that types just like he talks, I'm sure posted:

I totally agree with and support everything you have said in the thread. I mean it sucks when someone is so blatant about misleading and altering the rules to meet their own gaming needs i.e. cheating. I mean we all make minor mistakes from time to time but generally have our stuff together. There are specific players; primarily one in particular that has warped the game to their own ends that has as a result of his/her own. I can recall instances from other players venting that the gamer to which I so disdainfully refer to as denying them simple casual game occurrences to which most of our community usually affords one another, such as forgetting something, or accidentally conducting the assault phase out of order, which we all do from time to time. Then said greasy player either adamantly denies them something so small in a "friendly" non competitive game.

Then to play a cop out of a "new codex" or "new rules" and not having materials to play the game...seriously?! It would be one thing if this was a rare occurrence or even less so a first time, but nay! It has been an epidemic of misleading and neglecting the respectful proclivities that we all give each other in our community, save for this lone individual, the interloper. Most likely anyone reading this knows to whom I refer, and I don't shy away from saying what is really on everyone's mind. I mean really! this same person constantly cannot play a game without incident or post game problems where he/she cheated deliberately and then plays the apologetic innocence card of "oh I did not know" or "sorry I will correct it in the future" yet it never happens!

The end.

Tendales posted:

But nay!

Tekopo posted:

Bongolesia

This dude thinks he's funny, I think? posted:

International business in Bongolesia has picked up some with the development of the Kareem-Abdul-Jabbar Petrochemical Complex run by PETROCO, and the recent relocation of Perverticus Industries to Bongolesia.

He is not funny posted:

a currency system, (The "Bling-Bling")

DEFINITELY NOT RACIST posted:

The People and The Country as a whole

Bongolesia is set up to be a third world African Hell-Hole that the goverment has tricked the people (mostly) into believing that it's the best thing going since sliced bread. The people are generally uneducated and guillable, but also scheming and have perfected many ways to seperate a person from their money. Greed is paramount in Bongolesia as everything "has a price", and it's been a long unspoken tradition of The Bongolesian people to "Get what you can, when you can, and the mostest that you can, in the quickest that you can"...
This is reflected on the National Seal which has the National Motto (in latin) as:"Nos don't volo a succurro manus manus ; Nos iustus volo a manus manus - sicco." ("We don't want a helping hand, We just want a hand-out...")
The Bongolesian people are shown to be mostly greedy, wanting, and always "needy". They never seem to have enough, and are always out to get "more more more". Due to European Influence in the early 20th Century and UN and International Aid Programs, the concept of begging, and "getting something for nothing" has taken on a whole new level of meaning with the people of Bongolesia.
(This is meant as a satire and an ironice look at the failed programs in Africa over the last 40 years.)

Idiot posted:

And that's why it's a flaw. You can get a flaw for being short, being discriminated against is a disadvantage. People often offset those by learning other skills and social merits.
Not everything in a role playing game is an exalted gift. The world of darkness just recognizes there are problems. I think just out right ignoring it or just letting it be something not brought up in polite conversation is much worse.
I get you don't want the veil to be lifted or some other bigoted bull poo poo. The fact of the matter is it's in the game as a social aspect that can get you into trouble. Just like being an openly gay person in Alabama at the moment trying to get a marriage liscense since it was OK'd at a federal level is bringing some people true hell at a social level.
WoD explores that in a game.
If you think all games are children's toys and taboo subjects need to be left out .. You know there's D&D communities and what not out there.

Fucker posted:

I take offense to the fact that you think people are trying to interject intolerance into Werewolf. Werewolf is ALREADY intolerant. It's an intolerant setting. I know there has been this massive, massive push the last ten years for things like trans*, LGBT rights, etc but as I said in the other thread... garou are not humans and they do not give a flying gently caress about those kinds of human notions. All they know is that while their cubs are dying some rear end in a top hat is on the Ellen show crying about how unfair life has treated him, that his name is now Susan and he/she wants you to respect his/her life choices.

Garou do not care, outside of a small handful minority in the tribes closest to humanity. And that has nothing to do with player bigotry.

quote:

I typically will allow the annoying questions and answer them in detail then when the annoying player attempts to comment on a conversation happening in the next room. "Sorry you're not there yet because you're still studying the wood in the previous room" and move on with the other payers for a few minutes before allowing the annoyance to intervene. This usually will keep them on task in the future.

The age old question: "You come upon a bridge over a stream." "HOW DEEP IS IT!??!?!?!?" "You are now at the bottom of a 15ft deep stream."

Sean K Reynolds posted:

So ... the GSL is now public (wizards.com/d20). And it's very sad to see.

First, let me point out the obvious: the GSL doesn't affect what you decide to write for your home campaign at all. AT ALL. What it does affect is the ability for third-party publishers to write 4e-compatible materials. As restrictive as the GSL is, there are going to be fewer people publishing for 4e. Which means you, as a player/DM, will have fewer choices when it comes to ready-to-use material. But if you're the sort of player/DM that never bought non-Wizards stuff anyway, it doesn't affect you at all, so you might as well ignore the rest of this blog post.

But if you ARE the sort of person who likes to see what other creative minds are doing with 4e, read on.

In short: wow, this is really, really restrictive. It looks like they really don't want people making third-party 4e products (and from what I've heard, this is true ... the people in charge think the OGL was a big mistake). Lemme take look at it section-by-section and point out any weirdness that comes to mind.

1. You have to write in for permission first, and if your contact info changes you have to update them else the license is forfeit. And they get to decide whether or not to approve you, so if you PO someone at Wizards for whatever reason ("he stole my wife!") you're outta luck.
2. Wizards can update the license any time they want, one-sidedly, with no warning and no announcement. If you don't like the new terms of the license (and who knows, they could be something really crazy like demanding a 50% royalty on each product), your only option is to stop selling licensed books ... except the license says that if you continue to publish after an update, it means you automatically accept the terms of that update.
4.1. You can't redefine any term in 4e. This used to be in the d20 STL but you could ignore it if you didn't use the d20STL ... now there's no avoiding it. So you can't make 4e-ish products like you could make 3e-ish products. Under this license there would be no Mutants & Masterminds, or True20, or Blue Rose, and so on.
5.5a. A licensed product cannot include a website ... does that mean I can't sell a ZIP file containing a PDF and a readme.html file with contact info for my company?
What is an "interactive product"? Does a PDF with embedded videos or sounds count?
What is a "miniature"? Do printable tokens count? What about fold-up "paper minis"?
What is a "character creator"? Does a random history generator with no game stats ("lower-class human brewer from the northlands, blond hair, brown eyes, tall, fat, scar under his left eye from a barfight") count?
5.5b. Similar to my last question, can I give advice (a process) of how to create the backstory of a character?
5.5d. If I can't refer to artwork in a core rulebook, does this mean I can't say "this character looks like the evil brother of the guy at the start PH Chapter 10"? If my adventure has a displacer beast encounter, can I not have an illustration of a displacer beast because that "refers to" the core artwork of what a displacer beast looks like?
5.5f. As others have pointed out, this means you can't incorporate GSL content into another product unless that product also follows the GSL. So you couldn't sell a box set of generic minis that also contained a GSL adventure, even if that adventure doesn't use those minis.
6.1. So you can convert a 3e/OGL product to 4e/GSL, but once you do so you have to stop producing print copies of the OGL version and stop selling downloadable copies of the OGL version. Basically, you burn that bridge behind you, you can't sell a similar product to the 3e market and the 4e market. Which means that if you convert the Most Popular OGL PDF Ever to 4e and it sells zero copies of its 4e incarnation, you're screwed, you can't go back and sell the old version ever again.
6.2. The funny repercussion of this is that it doesn't merely refer to titles of _your_ GSL books ... if Green Ronin publishes a GSL "Complete Book of Halflings," no other company using the GSL can publish an OGL "Complete Book of Halflings." And as the definition of "same or similar title" is really vague, they might not be able to publish _any_ OGL book called "The Complete Book of (whatever)" because Wizards' lawyers could decide the name is "similar" to the Green Ronin GSL book. (This hyperbole really depends on whether the definition of "licensed product" in section 3 refers to _all_ products published under the GSL or just products from that particular publisher.)
7. This is pretty much a continuation of the "decency clause" that was in the revised d20 STL.
7a. Which could mean that a product describing a torture chamber from the Inqusition is not allowed.
7b. Which could mean that you can't say the villain in your adventure is a rapist or a child molester. You can say he's a murderer or a druglord, though.
7c. Because you can't present one nationality as superior to another, you can't have a scenario where the Americans are the "good guys" in World War 2, coming to help defeat the evil German Nazis, even if it takes place in an alternate dimension or due to a time travel accident.
This also means you can't depict jihadist Muslim terrorists as inferior to anyone else or in a way that promotes disrespect (they're a political and religious group). Same for Fred Phelps's church. Or the KKK. Or the pro-slavery Confederate States of America. Or any nutty Christian who decides to bomb an abortion clinic. This section is pretty much the "don't say anything that could get Wizards sued" clause, except by policing GSL products so much they opened the door to make themselves liable in the first place (the OGL precludes all responsibility because there is no supervision or oversight).

*sigh*

ProfessorCirno posted:

The GSL, it should be noted, was still leagues better then the vast majority of other gaming licenses in the industry, which almost all fall under "NEVER USE MY poo poo, BUY THE BOOKS AND DO NOTHING ELSE."

And yeah, the dude who made his money by leeching from Wizards after being let go is going to complain that you can't do the same to 4e, what a surprise.

quote:

Within two months of Wizards of the Coast's August 2007 announcement of D&D fourth edition, Bulmahn began working on a new edition of the d20 system that updated and polished the rules, and that he referred to as "a small side project"

When Paizo decided not to wait any longer to see how Wizards of the Coast would allow third-party publishers to support their new game, Paizo turned Bulmahn's side project into a complete RPG to give them their own set of core rules for the d20 game system; Paizo thus announced the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game on March 18, 2008.

Apple Mummy posted:

The Dongion is back online. Ettin should re-title his tumblr post "That Time Zak Smith Is Still Running A Harassment Blog."

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

But the Dongion isn't even funny. It doesn't tell jokes.

A Pile of poo poo That Only Vaguely Resembles a Person posted:

I don't really give a rat's rear end about privilege. Again, if I wanted to hear pissing and moaning from SJW's about the unfairness of the universe, I'd go... let's see.... yeah, just about anywhere else but a page for a game based on homicidal rampaging Werewolves. I'd like to go one week on these pages where I see more threads like "What sorts of places would you put a caern of Stamina?" than "What sort of progressive direction do modern garou have on transgender roles?"

Groggin' about the word Powergamer posted:

Don't take this personally, but my own feeling is that the reason its become a pejorative in common usage is two-fold:

1. People conflate it with classic munchkinism. They aren't really the same thing (since usually a powergamer has to actually be using the system as compared to either just flat out cheating or otherwise seeking most advantage at all cost), but from a distance they can look similar;

2. People who are heavily into roleplaying or storytelling styles are more likely to be tolerant of the pathologies within their own styles than those outside of it, and there was a period during the growth of roleplaying where there was a surge of those styles dominating the discourse.

quote:

Dongion

Ettin posted:

For the record, I'm taking "Don't post RPGPundit or ZakS unless they squat out something " as a condition for grognards.txt staying around, and Zak's side-blog isn't enough.

paradoxGentleman posted:

I'm sure it's just a matter of time before something comes up, but if you insist we'll stop.
Please just answer my question: why is it important that we do not talk about him here? Shouldn't we, you know, make an effort to make sure that people know what a danger to the industry he is? I wasn't even aware of his existance before the last thread, let alone all the damage he's done.