Grognards.txt NEXT: Goodnight, Sweet Wince

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Grognards.txt NEXT: Goodnight, Sweet Wince

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Ettin posted:

* slides grognards.txt back across the table *

drat fool of an Ettin!

I'm no mod, but here're some suggestions I will make while looking very stern:

� Post grog. Even talk about grog! I can't enforce a grog tax, and I think if the thread can't survive without one then we don't deserve the thread. However, if your tangent is twice removed from actual grog, how about you discover the magic of a thread for the very loving purpose of general chat. Don't have actual arguments in the grogs.txt thread you babies.

� My philosophy is that threads like these are best when they're foremost about having a good old laugh at someone being a huge turd snuffler. You can go ahead and think of the thread as a clearing house of sin accounting, but it's not actually doing anyone any more good than a thread full of gems from fanfiction.net. If you can't at least muster a smirk and a "Get a load of this rear end in a top hat" then maybe your post doesn't belong here!

� Don't post RPGPundit or ZakS unless they squat out something :wow:

� Don't forget your SJW Illuminati hand signals, or else you won't be able to raise and lower the SA paywall at your whim.

Now sit a while, and listen to a tale of how to keep icky girls from touching our dice (among other things).

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Greetings, fellow MGTOW. One of my purple pill friends has decided to include a girl in our D&D game. I�ve seen her before and she�s your average SJW lazy leech. I�ve asked him several times to change his mind, but he just keeps to it. Ideas? What I have is I conspire with one of my other red pill friends to kill off her character and get her to have as little fun as possible, so she stops invading our space.

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I�d suggest incorporating things into the story that go against SJW sensibilities but that the rest of you have no issue with. if she�s really your average attention seeking SJW she�ll throw a hissy fit and effectively remove her mask. granted that runs the risk of causing drama for your group but that�s how I�d do it if i were in your position. I�ve always been the type who hates liars and seeks to out them no matter the cost. lol.

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I�d like to, but I�m not going to be the dungeon master. I�m thinking of playing a race where women are kept to a sheerly traditional role and have him constantly rail on her character. I�ll provide updates on the situation.

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If you aren�t the dungeon master and can�t make the story go against things SJW�s believe in then being a race where women are in traditional roles seems like a good idea. You could also use her fake geekness to your advantage by making her look bad. I am sure she loves all those Marvel movies right? If you read comics then talk about stuff the Avengers have done over the years. Ask her about her thoughts of how the Avengers were disassembled and later formed the New Avengers. Ask her which side she was on during Civil War,did she agree with the initiative? During the Initiative did she prefer New Avengers or Mighty Avengers? Which Skrull reveal was the most shocking to her during the Secret Invasion. Did she liked the roster for the Dark Avengers?

Turns out I'm a fake geek because who gives poo poo about any of this.

Bonus lightning content:

Feminism is ruining video games but RPGs are safe because they're too geeky, this was seriously posted 2 months ago posted:

Nah they won't bother with us because even though we are all pretending geekdom is cool now, the people who pretend that still won't touch table top RPG's with the standard 2 silver piece 10 foot pole. Apparently even though they are cool with geeky things now, that's a geeky thing that's too geeky.... Either that or they have to admit to only liking a thing because its now cool to like that thing & they are just sheep.

Of course it helps that we can always just up & make our own system, or adapt someone elses generic system.

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True. And if we confront them with D&D (old or new), Pathfinder or 40K or the old HERO system we'll actually confront them with MATH. And for most SJWs math is even more terrifying than the male gaze...

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Yeah merit is another big reason why tabletop gaming in both RPG & Wargames does not appeal to the geek-sheep (my term for those people who call themselves geeks because its trendy): Tabletop games are active where as watching game of thrones is passive & that's really the difference between actual geeks and the geek-sheep. One actively pursues it because they are interested in it & the other waits for it to come to them (though some people can become interested enough to become active if they wait & see something come to them).

An SJW's are no different. In fact under 2E D&D generally geekdom had a rule about merit called the THAC0 exception: If you couldn't figure out THAC0 in your head, you didn't get to play.

Though i'll be honest, even I wasn't willing to use as much maths as champions wanted me to. Its not that the maths was hard so much as the amount of maths was tedious.... So its not all that shocking that I jumped all over Mutants and Masterminds when it came out: Exactly the same sort of maths, but only about 1/100th the amount of it (which left more room for descriptor & story telling over number crunching).

These days if I want something with to much maths i'll play Eclipse Phase (from Catalyst games)

No wonder this MRA is suggesting Eclipse Phase. He's so far behind the times he thinks Catalyst Games is still publishing it.

Palate cleanser:

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I think the only group that can rightfully contend that 5E is not superior for their needs (or even just adequate) are those who really enjoyed the optmization mini-game aspect of 3rd and 4th edition.* 5E isn't just for newbs, nostalgia grognards and people with a love of AD&D; I've played all editions and enjoyed them all for their strengths while reviling their weaknesses. I love 5E, and expect it will hold up well for a long time, hopefully longer than 3rd or 4th did before those two systems began to demonstrate weaknesses. For me at least 5E is a refinement of prior editions, allowing for a smoother play experience with less prep time for the DM while still giving a range of player options but deliberately designed to deflect optmization as a focus in favor of the more "role play" aspects. For some people, this is all they've wanted out of D&D all along and its nice to have a system which moves in that direction.

That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Feb 4, 2015

# ¿ Feb 4, 2015 13:02

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:56

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

paradoxGentleman posted:

I wish to offer to this thread more than my helpless rage and furious sputtering directed at the assholes ruining this hobby for everyone else. What are some good places to mine for grog?

Training Wheels: RPGSite, Gaming Den. Just, so much grog, constantly. That's kind of why I stopped bothering with them, it got samey and monotonous. You can also just poke around pretty much any sizable community and find some grog sitting around. Or try Googling words that are likely to turn up grog, like "D&D feminism" and maybe throw on "site:reddit.com" or "site:avoiceformen.com" or such what. It's always a lot more fun if you're doing a scavenger hunt with friends in Skype, or just torturing local friends by reading it aloud.

That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Feb 4, 2015

# ¿ Feb 4, 2015 13:41

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdYxlY3jNDw

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Except for the subtle sexism towards boys, it was a semi-interesting video, that says ore about the film maker than it does about adolescent behavior. Since women/girls have been playing in D&D groups since the game came out, I am not sure what the point of this was, other than the subtle sexism towards boys. It is interesting to note there was an obvious feminist message to the video which is boys should change their regular behavior to suit girls. There is no such message for girls to change their behavior to suit boys, which would be a more equality driven message and shows the obvious sociological fallcy of the videos message. It becomes more a message of the boys innocent, natural, and normal behavior is bad and the girls behavior is better. Also they neglected to show all the negative views girls have of boys in favor of the feminist driven message of how boys view girls. This is why in Sociology we accurately view modern feminism as the female superiority movement that it really is, and not about equality as they would claim through propaganda.

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such a brutally painful poo poo video ... this is beyond staged.

"OMG THE GIRLS R LIEK SOOOO GUD AT D&D EVEN THOUGH THEY NEVER PLAYED"

what an insulting video ... this isn't "inclusive" of females, it's patronizing. when are you going to make a video about boys being brought into a sphere that is mostly dominated by women? oh wait you won't do that, because it won't fit your obvious political narrative.

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I don't get it. Women were always big into roleplaying. What is amazing is that anyone younger than 35 is playing a paper and pencil game. That is what is shocking to me. Im surprised they are not checking their twitter every 5 seconds.

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even dungeons and dragons isn't safe from the sjw agenda. hilarious.

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Women hate men today. It's sad.

Ess-jay-dubble-yoooooooooos!!!! :argh:

# ¿ Feb 8, 2015 17:59

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I didn't think much of it at first, but when the "African-themed setting" thread on RPGnet got locked in only two pages, I knew I had to poke my head in.

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I've been thinking of doing an African-themed setting for a Fate Core or FAE campaign, with some influences from the game From Dust. I'd like to take as much as I can from the game and expand it with some ideas of my own, while trying to keep the primitive feeling.

The problem is, I don't really know that much about African cultures. We can easily handle Western, Arabic and Asian fantasy, but African fantasy hasn't really been done yet. What are some essential themes and things in African fantasy?

Also, as a bonus question: How would you do a magic system that works by performing or creating art in Fate or FAE? I'm thinking of dancing, drumming or painting tribals performing minor miracles, like in From Dust.

Oh, we're not off to a great start.

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Cut the OP some slack here, we know what he meant by the origional question and from the discussion so far it doesn't seem the guy is unnuanced.

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I'm not trying to set the game in Africa. I'm going for a fantasy world with a primitive feel, with African influences.
I don't know enough history or geography to set a clear time period or a region, but something with tribes is what I'd like to do. It doesn't have to be realistic or even serious, just something that would be fun to play. The problems of a small tribe would be much more fun to solve after all the western fantasy kingmaker-campaigns.

Hmmmm. "I don't mean 'primitive' in a racist way. Just, they're primitive, and African. But not racist. PS I have no loving idea what I'm talking about." Oh well, hopefully he was educated a little and knows to educate himself. Meanwhile, his thread became an arena for two intellectual heavyweights to toss around college paper citations to prove how not racist they are. Check out how real it gets!

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As for the real world - I'm gay intellectual Buddhist - and I spent two years in a maximum security prison in the deep south. It doesn't get more real than that.

... how is this relevant to the discussion? I don't doubt that you are a real person, an here you seem to put yourself into a prior hierachy of more or less real by stating that 'It doesn't get more real than that.' What do you mean by this?

Back in my shaman days, I had a genuine vision. My ancestors spoke to me. They, like all preliterate peoples, called themselves 'realpeople' and others from outside their tribe 'nonpeople'. Half of the tribe names of Native Americans translate to 'the people'. The point was postmodern ethnology, and seriously , given your arguments, are you going to try to force me to identify with my birth culture? Ignore everything I am, look at my skin and label me 'white'. Yeah, racism, much. My race is human. My people are the realpeople, the Ohsaycanyousea tribe. My color is rainbow. My heroes are Venus and Polaris, and I await the day they return and slay Death itself, so all the beautiful species the notpeople have destroyed will be again.

The bit about my past was showing that I've been the the trenches of the 'race war' or whatever its called now, as opposed to being some isolated intellectual.m

"the 'race war' or whatever its called now"
�A human gay buddhist maxsec shaman of the Ohsaycanyousea tribe who just happens to be """"white"""" like you were racist-ly going to assume I'm sure

# ¿ Feb 8, 2015 18:26

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

TheTatteredKing posted:

What leap of logic makes someone want to model a campaign on a culture they know nothing about

The innocent enough motivation of being just tired of Standard Vaguely Medieval Fantasy.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2015 19:56

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

So, some guy got a slap on the wrist for putting too much IP in his character generators. Like, recently. As in the year 2015.

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Y'know, it's crap like this that almost makes me pine for the days of "She Who Shall Not Be Named"... Almost...

Later...

Harl

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More proof I was right when I said 2e + 3e = 5e! You get the dull gameplay of 3e, but now with the Lorraine Williams' ignorance of 2e!!

Oh well, such a shame that nobody in the OSR or 13th Age took advantage of the marketing opportunity window that existed between 4e and 5e. Not only is there no business sense at the top of the food chain, there's no marketing savvy at the lower rungs of the hobby.

Hey, maybe #Gamergate can be mobilized to kick WotC in the Twitter dick over this stupidity.

This, of course, brings to mind ~~Lorraine Williams~~RPG Voldemort.

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It is ironic how dickish they are about IP rights when their game spent its first several years taking freely from Tolkien, Moorcock, Leiber, etc. They got it all sorted out in a legally kosher way eventually, but their first instinct was to 'borrow' liberally and ask questions later or, better, never.

Start-up hobbyist company plays fast-and-loose with copyright, therefore forty years later we should let it slide.

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I don't know which is sadder. The mistakes WOTC may have made or the sad bitter sense of entitlement of whiny gamers

It always amuses how some people love to throw around "fan entitlement" to defend the actions of huge companies.

If not for the very people Hasbro is pissing in the face of, they wouldn't have an IP to "protect".

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It makes me question on why do we bother with IP at all? I mean it isn't stopping China and they pretty much break every copyright they can. Hell they created a Blizzard theme park and I mean the video game company Blizzard. We can't even touch them, but yet I seen Game Workshop lawyers go after a woman because she made a space marine novel. Not Warhammer 40K space marines, but just generic space marines in battle armor.

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I don't think you have thought this through.

So if the inventor is dead their stuff is free. Nothing bad could come of that.

Lack of transferability combined with expiry on death of the inventor makes IP rather worthless, especially for inventors past a certain age, which means that investors aren't going to finance their inventing so less inventing. Nothing bad could come from less inventing.

IP law. Patent law. Whatever. Just burn it all down, as long as I get my niche-of-a-niche character generator!

# ¿ Feb 9, 2015 15:17

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I guess Desborough got interviewed by some lovely MRA podcast.

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I was there when it was live and participated in the chatroom. Not that anyone here would be surprised, but my supplemental information on the tabletop RPG scene vis-a-vis SocJus cultists did catch some folks off-guard. (Can't blame them; folks tend to ignore what's not in their face or known to be in their interests.) At least one of the Badgers did dig into Fred Hicks' flipping out over Gamergate, so there may be further tabletop RPG talk in future podcasts.

This is Bradford C Walker, grog extraordinaire, whose LJ (yes, really) is currently a neverending alternation between MRA/redpill Youtube videos and gun-nut poo poo.

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In some ways, encouraging these ersatz feminists would be the best way to undo them. Their reach is beginning to exceed their grasp. The more they tighten their grip, the more star systems will slip through their fingers.

If I wanted to make a concentrated effort to destroy the movement, I'd go undercover as one of the most radical and outspoken members they ever had.

I just love this. It's amazing. I want to bronze it.

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If James' is to be believed, his game was pretty innocuous (no slurs, no pro-rape, etc.). So Fred Hicks getting it banned is pretty low if that's true.

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The Streisand Effect is real, and we are wise to make it work for us.

I think that, on our end, the best thing we can do is to show how traditional tabletop role-playing games are the antidote for all this SocJus cultism crap- and not by deliberately crafting games or campaigns attacking them. No, just by doing what we do when we do it, as if nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened. In other words, by treating them as people like we already do- and letting them benefit or suffer from their own behaviors, just as we do.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2015 22:55

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Antivehicular posted:

"I am JACE, the MIND SCULPTOR of standing next to a disinterested cosplayer!"

The Jace, you beta.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2015 00:18

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

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Annoying. Got a few minutes while students work, so thought I'd hammer out some FW layout. Laptop has InDesignCS5, so can't open CC files.

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Only choice would be to load copy of CC on the laptop -- which would run excruciatingly slowly on this older machine. ARGH.

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So, if you were ever curious as to why FW is taking me so bloody long -- stupid poo poo like this accumulates.

You know what? I'm sure there's some sweet spot of hardware that can run IDCS5 but not IDCC. Maybe GMS is that unlucky!

I still don't think that's a meaningful contributing factor to why Far West is as late as it is.

Say, what are those daily KS updates looking like, anyway?

Thursday posted:

This coming weekend, I will be sending along some material that has finished the proofing process. First up will be Chapter VII, which is the equipment chapter, Swords and Sixguns.

Friday posted:

As I mentioned yesterday, some proofed stuff should be on it's way to you this weekend (possibly Sunday -- tomorrow is my son's 20th birthday, so I might be spoken for -- at least for part of the day. Although. I'm not sure how many of his birthday plans involve hanging with his parents... ).

Sunday posted:

Sorry about the silence yesterday -- the birthday activities took up more of the day than I expected, and by the time we'd finished up, it was pretty late for an update.

Getting the proofed stuff in shape is taking me a bit longer than I expected, so I'll send those off to you tomorrow (in the evening -- I've got class to teach during the day).

Monday posted:

I had a bout of insomnia last night, and barely got any sleep -- I had my teaching gig today, and just got back home. Rather than get back to work on Far West today, I'm going to take the rest of the day off, and crash out pretty much right after dinner.

I suspect that in my current state, anything I did today would have to be re-done anyway, so I'll just get a good night's sleep, and get back on the horse first thing in the morning. Thank you for your continued patience.

Far West is a fractal of delays. Each smaller part resembles a larger sum of those parts.

It's hard not to imagine that his plan of Daily Updates Until ~~Dec 17th, 2014~~loving Whenever aren't some spiteful annoyance for anyone who still cares.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2015 00:42

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

The Deleter posted:

The way grogs talk about games, I can't possibly imagine they actually play them. They sit around dreaming up economies ran by wizards and scummy slavery fantasies and quibbling over use of words like "mileau" or "simulation" but I've never seen them talk about games they've actually run or things their players did. Just hypotheticals. If they've ever played with human loving beings I'd be surprised, and I'd be honestly amazed if those people didn't leave partway through session one.

Most such grogs are probably just running their mouths because they're wannabe amateur scholars, when most of that poo poo goes out the window as they actually sit down and play. There's an entire other strain of grog (RPGSite) who definitely do play and talk about actually playing mostly like normal people, but their particular damage is being really angry about how other people play. These guys talk a lot about how other people probably don't even play games, they're just reading books and flinging SJW crusades around.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2015 14:42

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

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Don't forget that a lot of companies don't care about the rules that much. They want to sell adventures or settings -- or just sell stuff at all. In the early days, you had plenty of third party D&D products, often jumping through some hoops to avoid friggin' lawyers (especially in the era of She Who Shall Not Be Named). Now all of a sudden everything is okay, even one-man companies can avoid legal hassles and just publish. Details of the system? Who cares.

The ghost of Lorraine Williams will haunt some of these obtuse motherfuckers for as long as they live.

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Yup: by '84, all the cool kids stopped playing, just leaving us nerds.

There was a distinct uptick in the quality of the gamers that were left playing after '84, I have to say. It was similar to the effect when FPSs and WoW later drained off most of the pure hack and slashers. When people long for the boom times, I shudder.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 10:08

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Welcome back you awful thread! :confuoot:

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Very busy day -- more "lining 'em up and knocking 'em down", goals-wise.

That's not really what this update is about though -- I've been thinking about something, and I wanted to let you in on my thought processes:

If you're not aware, Monte Cook Games came under fire recently for their portrayal of Native American culture in their game The Strange. Long story short -- they're removing a section that they feel they could've handled better, and replacing it with a more thoughtful re-write. (If you care for more details, you can read here: https://plus.google.com/+Montecookgames/posts/DhyFE67jFoZ )

Now, in the past, I've come under fire as well -- for a statement I made about FAR WEST not having any Native Americans in it. Now, to be sure -- that did not mean that I was *removing* them. Only that:

1) The game is a mash-up of Spaghetti Westerns (Note that I said "SPAGHETTI Westerns", not "Westerns") and Wuxia. The reason for this is because I noticed that the two genres are analogous, and wanted to explore that.

2) Spaghetti Westerns seldom featured Native Americans -- most often they were set in border locations, and featured Mexican peasants. (Reasons varied for this -- 1960s desire to do political revolution stories -- another feature echoed in wuxia -- and Spanish and Italian actors more readily able to play Latinos rather than Native Americans)

3) Our world is a FANTASY world -- not the historical West. On top of that, it's a fantasy world based on CHINA, not the American West. This will be more obvious when people see the game itself. It's not even an alt-historical. It's pure fantasy -- like King's Dark Tower "Midworld." Complaining that there are no Native Americans in a fantasy world based on China is a bit like complaining there are no Japanese in a game based on Arthurian myths.

4) In Wuxia, there is no true analogue of the "displaced indigenous culture" in their stories. Given that, and the Spaghetti Western lack of Native Americans, it seemed odd to include such a culture -- since I'm specifically going for a blend of those two specific things. FAR WEST does have ethnic minorities. Absolutely. What we don't have is an analogue to "indigenous displaced people", for the reasons I cite above.

Now, sure -- some of the criticism is founded in people not knowing this stuff (my own fault, really -- both for making the statement, and also for the game being so late that they can't just look and see for themselves).

But as I was thinking about it recently due to the MCG issue, I realized that despite our efforts to show a widely-diverse population in the Far West (as has been evidenced in the art you've seen), we don't have any illustrations which show characters of distinctly Native background. In short -- even if we don't have a "displaced indigenous people" analogue in the game, why shouldn't we have the ethnic minority present anyway?

So I've been thinking of adding a couple of additional illustrations to reflect that -- and perhaps a paragraph in the setting chapter specifically addressing our "wide palette".

Anyway, it's been on my mind, and I wanted to mention it.

Until tomorrow,

Gareth

Clearly this fictional setting is so divorced from reality, heaping our real world baggage on it is just DUMB. Now let me tell you about the version of real-world wild west town Dodge City that I have included in this completely wacky made-up Chinese-American West! Also, it still has black people because I guess they show up sometimes in spaghetti westerns, which is different from the infrequent appearance of Natives because

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Personally, I see no reason to add American Indians, or African-Americans, or Eskimos, etc. to the game setting.If a game master wants to include them that is fine. But there is No way to please all the people all the time. Keep it simple and let the players and game masters decide what to add to the basics rather than trying to anticipate all their wishes. Otherwise you will end up with a core book the size of the entire Rifts series, and a commensurate cost.

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Wait a minute � let's see if I got this straight:

Are you considering adding artwork specifically because you are concerned that a fictional ethnic minority in a fictional setting in a fictional universe might be offended because it is not getting equal time?

If so ... isn't that taking our modern PC anxieties just a little bit too far?

Native Americans: Fictional. To ~~be fair~~provide context, GMS straightens out this bizarre misunderstanding by saying, no, he's concerned about actual factual Native Americans.

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Thanks for the clarification, Gareth.

But I must confess that this leaves me even more confused...

You explained in eloquent, fully rational, and utterly convincing detail how a "displaced indigenous culture"-type ethnic minority does not exist in the setting because it simply has no place in the setting, and that it has no place in the setting -- indeed CAN'T have a place in the setting -- for highly factual real-world reasons.

Something that does not exist in the setting can obviously not be depicted in the artwork either.

With you so far.

But what is it then that you are proposing?

Are you proposing to ensure that EVERY POSSIBLE real-world ethnic minority that in some way IS echoed in the setting is represented in the artwork? In that case, if it is even possible, well, why not. I mean, I'm not exactly sure WHY mind you, but why not.

Or are you proposing to add an element that for very good reasons does not exist in the setting into the artwork ANYWAY, just because people who, as you yourself noted, do not know a rodent's posterior about the actual material are inordinately fond of jumping onto the PC bandwagon to tote their own ignorance as loudly as possible?

Surely this can't be the case?

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My concern was that once you try to be politically correct for one group another will demand equal or more time, and so on. Next someone will want dwarves and gnomes for the steam punk element, and someone else will ask why there are no elves or

The actual real people whose romanticized genocide this game's genre is standing on the shoulders of, well, they're pretty much elves from Valinor or some poo poo.

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Don't worry about it so much. If there is no analogue to "displaced indigenous peoples", then that's how it is.

Stating that, then including artwork of those ethnicities anyway is just pandering. Also it opens the door for comments like "Well clearly they exist in the Far West- there are pictures of them. Why weren't they included?"

Stay true to your original vision,

GOTTA KEEP THAT PURITY

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OTOH, if there are other real-world ethnic minorities that are NOT in any way echoed in the setting, but still ARE depicted in the artwork, then I agree someone might be justified in poerceiving a potential problem.

The solution I would propose in that case is that rather than adding even MORE elements that do not belong in the setting into the artwork, instead remove the existing ones.

To play Far West properly, you require brass cogs, Jet Li, Pancho Villa and nothing else.

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You want to put in something, do it because you want to. Don't do it because of fear that SJWs will attack you because no matter what you (or anyone does) it'll never be enough.

MCG did much more than I feel they should've, but it only made it worse. Never give these leeches an inch. It's your work and again, put in what you want and let the work stand on its own.

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Gareth, after reading your update and then Jussi's I agree with him and took your update the same way. I'm not trying to start an argument, with you or anyone, but this stuff isn't an issue until a small group makes it an issue.

And to be completely honest, you taking more time, after the game's well over three years late, just to add inclusive art into a fantasy world (your words), on the off chance it'll satisfy people who are never satisfied, doesn't sit well with me.

If you're worried that you'll be attacked, well, you will. You know the reasons and 99% are utter crap, so please, do whatever you want but please don't go down the road of pre-caving to bully censorship, because adding art that really doesn't belong in the context of the setting, just because of MCG's plight, would be just that. You've already, on more than one occasion, made it clear what FW is and why, and if you add Native American imagery to the game, you're inviting even more heartache.

Put another way: If MCG hadn't been attacked, would this even be a conversation? I doubt it.

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no problem as long as it fits within your creative vision, Gareth.

It seems to me from the information you provided that there is no, nor can there be, a displaced indigenous ethnic tribe in the setting.

At the same time, any Black people shown in the setting must, by implicit logic, come from somewhere outside of the setting itself. While no analogue to Africa has been explicitly mentioned, it has never been said that there isn't one, somewhere, on some part of the world map not shown.

And slave trade is not the only way that people of a variety of genotypes can travel around a planet.

Thus, an "Africa" can exist in the setting's world, while it seems an aboriginal culture couldn't exist in the setting itself.

So, by the same token, cultures analogous to the native American ones COULD exist � somewhere else.

Individuals from such a culture could find their way into this setting by the same methods that other people not native to it do.

Therefore, one might show characters with Native American attributes in the setting, without in any way implying that they are indigenous to it.

While this line of reasoning might solve the conundrum, I fully agree with everything @ said about "pre-caving to bully censorship" etc. If you could find it in yourself to NOT add Native American imagery to the game FOR THE PRECISE REASON that this will by necessity be interpreted as an attempt to pander to a vocal minority not worth pandering, you would have my full support.

Noooo, don't add a paragraph to the setting chapter! Even mentioning that adds a month to the release ~~date~~delay!

Reminder: This was a for sure done deal and backers would get their proofing PDFs by December 17th or 18th, I can't remember exactly, but specifically in the year 2014.

pre-order page that's still up on RPGNow posted:

THIS IS A PRE-ORDER FOR THE PDF EDITION OF THE FAR WEST CORE RULEBOOK. Pre-order customers will receive the PDF after it is delivered to Kickstarter backers in January, and before the general commercial release.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 19:44

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I liked The Good, The Bad, The Weird, which is pretty much exactly what GMS seems to be going for, except it has even less black or Native American people because it was a two-hour movie made entirely in China, as opposed to a giant alleged book full of setting details where the author just shrugged and blurted out "It's genre fiction!"

~~That's why I refuse to support DC-based RPGs; they abandoned the ~Creative Purity~ of my beloved Egg Fu.~~

I made a joke about what I thought was a long-abandoned racist loving comic character, but he features prominently in recent stuff. What the Christing gently caress, DC? He's pretty much the same, has Chinese names and poo poo associated with him, but he's an alien now so I guess racism is over!

:psyboom:

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 23:24

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

unseenlibrarian posted:

Actually the Good, the Bad, and the Weird was made in Korea, it was just set in China- the producer was calling it a Kimchee Western.

D'oh, now who's the racist? It's me!

# ¿ Apr 1, 2015 00:15

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

"Soldiers and intellectuals." Amazing.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 00:21

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

D&D's jargon is the default, therefore other jargon is obtuse pretension.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 03:41

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Xiahou Dun posted:

Are you actually gonna make me list retarded D&D terms or are you just that shot sighted?

DW doesn't even have AC.

Also that's not what Forward means.

Please ignore Plutonis to maintain a harmonious forum environment.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 05:02

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

Mages in both oWoD and nWoD have Atlantean Soul Shards that give them their powers.
Onyx Path made a Mummy "game" for release to their online fans. If we count Onyx Path's Demon as "existing" we'd have to count Mummy: the Curse as well. I can't be hosed to read either one, but the oWoD version of both of them involved fusing to soul shards.

I genuinely don't know what the story is for nWoD Hunters, because that book is loving unreadable. The oWoD version is about fusing to soul shards.

-Frank

Still clinging to his incredibly idiosyncratic conception of ~vaporware~. He even puts scare quotes around "game" when referring to Mummy. Coherent, well-typed crazy is my favorite.

And then I found the Den's Blades in the Dark thread.

quote:

I'm surprised that Arkane Studios hasn't sued yet and gotten the production shut down. It reads so close to the setting of Dishonored that at first I thought they had licensed it.

Which they haven't. But of course it's a social dystopia industrial fantasy where the rich aristocrats fund their society on maritime "whale" hunting (here called leviathans) that is strongly hinted that is more damaging than beneficial. They even call the city Duskwall instead of Dunwall.

Though instead of playing Corvo, you play Doud.

Edit: Holy poo poo this is a complete plagiarism. I'd call it a palate swap but it doesn't look like it even raises up to that level. One of the stretch goals is literally to have a scenario where you play a gang of assassins bent on assassinating the emperor.

The only "originality" that I see so far is that they haven't invoked The Outsider, and instead of a plague the city is haunted.

quote:

Well we'll find out. I emailed Bethesda & Arkane and let them know they might want a lawyer to look the page over. If it gets to publication then they decided not to litigate.

quote:

Incidentally, I wasn't expecting followup contact from Bethesda so fast, but they contacted me yesterday, asked some follow-up questions, and then thanked me profusely and said that because of the nature of potential legal actions they couldn't comment any further on the subject.

So apparently someone thought it was important enough to wake Legal up on a Sunday to look into.

quote:

Of course there's no lawsuit. And I didn't say there would be. I said that Bethesda's legal team was going to investigate, and that I, as a fan of Dishonored, was legitimately confused as to if this was licensed IP or not. I doubt that anyone has gone over anything in the last... 16 hours or so.

And even in my email I specifically said I was unfamiliar with IP law and that it might be totally legitimate. It didn't seem that way to me but I'm not a lawyer.

I didn't say they would so totally get sued, I just said I was surprised they haven't been sued yet!

quote:

Yeah, after browsing the KS page I am very interested in how this plays out legal-wise because that author has definitely visited the Limbo-of-the-Lost-School-of-Game-Inspirations.

And, of course: bears bears bears bears

quote:

Oh good, it even uses failing forward mechanics. What a clusterfuck of terrible.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 07:14

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

paradoxGentleman posted:

A bunch of people are convinced that "fail forward" means that success and failure have no appreciable difference, not realizing that "forward" refers to the plot of the game not stopping dead on its tracks because the thief didn't manage to unlock the door.

This in general, and the Den's particular flavor of crazy interprets "fail forward" to mean the GM constantly makes up monkey cheese random haha bullshit because that's obviously what these rules encourage. Frank spent a good handful of posts, including a little essay, trying to look clever "deconstructing" fail forward by demonstrating how it results in bears just coming out of loving nowhere all the time. One of his complaints was seriously along the lines of "it requires creativity to improv all the time instead of obeying extensive written rules :qq:

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 08:57

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Sage Genesis posted:

The fact that people looked at Blades in the Dark and saw a Dishonored-ripoff instead of a Thief-homage is sad and ironic. I think it might be a meaningful piece of performance art or something.

I haven't played Dishonored yet (it's still free to PlayStation Plus users!) but did whaling really play a big role in the game, to the point that Blades' leviathan stuff is the same kind of direct ~~ripoff~~homage as Duskwall/Dunwall?

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 10:42

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

DigitalRaven posted:

Frank having a complete and total break from reality over anything and everything Onyx Path is barely grog at this point. He's clearly reporting from an alternate reality. I wonder what he thinks of those bright red flying molluscs that bring him new RPG books.

Now that I think of it, did oMummy even have "soul fusion"? I recall it having you be more traditionally spiritually/physically continuous mummies.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 10:45

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I just read a wiki summary of some of Dishonored's setting, and now I know "someone, somewhere, for some reason, wants to assassinate an imperial ruler" is an incredibly unique piece of IP.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 12:45

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

This was my experience, exactly. Kevin runs Rifts like a narrative/story game; he uses the crunch as benchmarks in his head. He doesn't really grok games like Fate or Cortex Plus, but would love them.

In the con game I participated in, he had a blast running for those of us ignoring our sheets and just RPing and thoroughly describing our actions. He shut the rules-lawyer down and eventually killed his character, after the guy tried to argue a rule Kevin had written. We had paid to be involved in that game, too (charity game) and those of us who knew the rules-lawyer finally had some justice for all of our Palladium games he had killed our joy for and ruined our campaigns.

A medium crunch game like SW would be right up his alley. Just don't expect him to roll out miniatures are chuck dice the way you expect.

As little context as I have, I manage to doubt they tried "talk to the problem player in kind honesty, and failing that part ways." No, the adult thing to do is make the guy pay to play a game where the author himself can poo poo on him.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 07:17

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

To sum up and agree with the last two posts:

1) I'm pretty dubious about what these guys consider a "rules lawyer."

2) Regardless, that's a lovely, childish thing to do.

EDIT: :laffo:

That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Apr 24, 2015

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 12:54

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Nessus posted:

This sounds like a useful sideline for a hobby shop honestly. Or as an added benny if you run a game in the store.

There are at least a few stores in Kansas of all places that just have spare crap for gamers to use, beyond the usual Warhams terrain.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2015 03:28

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Someone points out a DTRPG product with a Heavy Metal-style lady with tits out and apparently visible pubic hair, and that it's not tagged "Adult."

quote:

They are breasts, not boobies, and breasts are not adult material. Breasts are a perfectly natural part of women's bodies that have been needlessly sexualized until even saying the word seems to have become a taboo in many parts.

I was instantly reminded of this comic:

[Giant Sweden Against the World comic where lovely racist author Humon makes perhaps the most bland, least offensive point she's ever made about how American culture is hosed up about breasts.]

quote:

Meh, it shouldn't be a big deal.

Now one might say something about this being sexist and objectifying women, but I would argue that saying that women's bodies shouldn't be seen and need to be protected is also a way of objectifying and infantilizing them as well.

So best to treat it with the shoulder shrug it deserves, IMHO.

quote:

It's French, nothing to see here. Move along.

Insert some likely shitthatiddnthappen.txt about political correctness gone mad.

quote:

Of course you can say boobies, it just seems juvenile to the extreme. Instead of living by some taboo that you try to get around by using slang terms why not use the proper English word, breast? Referring to breasts as boobies is to me to partake in the kind of sexual fetishism of the natural that produce such unforgettable terms as FATAL's 'fuckstick' for penis, the vulgar 'oval office' for vagina etc.

quote:

Boobies is a slang word, and a synonym with a distinctly vulgar streak. I prefer accepted English terms over vulgarities. And finding humor in this kind of vulgarity is, to me, something associated with the juvenile. Security in maturity means readiness to use proper terms over disarmingly vulgar/humorous expressions designed to cope with an inability to handle the subject matter seriously.

quote:

Why does it need to be tagged? I understand that to some cultures the open display of breasts is vulgar/rude, but if you disregard that then why?

quote:

quote:
You know what I like between a nice pair of breasts? Goo. And cheese. Maybe some bacon. *drool* [<- a link to a picture of a KFC double-down]

I may misunderstand your intention, but I will assume that you are saying that breast is less precise than boob? As Max pointed out above the words are synonyms, so there is no real distinction in the technical definition of the term. Boob/boobies may more often be used on humans, yet I will go so far as to claim that if you are in a conversation, written or spoken, then the context of said discussion should make the distinction obvious without resorting to slang terms.

Beep boop I am an adult. BTW what if the titty witch riding the dick dragon is actually empowering? What then? It really makes you think *puts hand on chin, purses lips*

# ¿ May 1, 2015 17:30

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Mors Rattus posted:

This is a thread that will go places.

quote:

The Sabbat are actually worse than ISIS in most regards, in fact the Sabbat is worse than just about any human group. For some reason, players just can't seem to treat the Sabbat (or numerous fictional evil groups) in a serious manner. If comparing them to real world violent groups, which we do take very seriously, can help get ourselves in the right mindset of thinking of the Sabbat as terrible, then all the better.

For some reason players don't take a faction seriously when they create members in late-night horror movie fashion, then play "football" like a GTA kidnapping and destroy supermarkets with elaborately juvenile games of "Cowboys & Indians"!?!!?!!!?!

Anyway, Sean K Reynolds has been rehired by Wizards to help manage lore and stuff on D&D and derivatives. Obviously, this means:

quote:

Anyone they hire that goes against absolutes is a good thing. Unless that lack of absolutes is absolute. Oh wait...

I'm glad a d20 expert is back into the mix. Not only to avoid the excesses of 4e design, but just as importantly of 3e's. Being intimately familiar with the mistakes of the past two generations of D&D is a terrific thing in a hire for 5e.

Good for Wizards landing him. The two sets of books that I purchased went towards something.

But I find it so ironic that I was just mentioning how I didn't like their idea of fixing a balance issue in basic D&D with a feat fix in standard, or a substandard PHB option with a strictly superior option in AU. And his blog mentions the arms race of immunity vs immunity piercing feats escalation.

As well as the disavowal of absolutes. Like the absolute ability to completely negate any chance of an AoO when a swashbuckler runs around attacking 3 things a round. They could have done so much better, like say such attacks are at disadvantage, or he has resistance against such attacks. Literally pertinent in so many ways to the latest AU article they just published yesterday.

Hopefully he brings another voice for rational game design to avoid such absolutes or endless arms races or power glut that 3e and 4e were cursed with. But I see a lot of the issues of 3e and Pathfinder could easily have been fixed through errata yet weren't. Many people believe 3.5 is not much of an improvement over 3e for many classes. And Pathfinder is well known for having many classes like Summoner that are pants-on-head _________ed.

That last part almost makes me feel sorry for the guy.

quote:

Not a fan. Thought his Reaalms and especially his GH work was poor. I wasnt happy to see him laid off, but I was glad he wasnt going o be writing lore/modules. I hope the new gig keeps him from doing the same.

He's better at being a rules lawyer. And writing/presentation of such, e.g. PF Beginner Box, which is fantastic.

Not this guy, though.

# ¿ May 5, 2015 13:54

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Far West!

quote:

Ben -- there will be material coming this week.

I strongly disagree with your characterization of daily updates as "a plodding narrative", but I understand your frustration. At the stage we're at now (which you can see via those same daily updates), the game should be delivered in the month of May.

Literally months of "still working on chapter 12" and then "still working on layout", and "daily" updates turning into "about three or four times a week" updates. At the time he posted this comment, he'd made six updates over 14 days.

Anyway, looking forward to Far West's release on stardate 419586.98.

# ¿ May 5, 2015 14:11

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Well of course. We already made fun of his ridiculous promise when he made it.

# ¿ May 5, 2015 21:13

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

I've often heard the GM advice that players shouldn't die because of a single bad roll, and I know it's common for there to be complaints that PCs died while unable to do anything about it. So what is the acceptable situation for a PC to die? If they can't do anything to save themselves, they lacked agency. If they could and did try to do something to save themselves, and failed a roll, they died from a bad roll. If they could and did try to do something to save themselves, and made the roll and/or didn't save themselves, then they didn't die. If they die from a bad series of rolls.. well, that never really goes down well, because the last one counts as the "single bad roll" from the player's POV (given that the previous rolls are now water under the bridge). So are people saying that PCs should never actually die?

This person joined RPGnet in 2002 and has made over 2200 posts. I assume trolling.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 05:32

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

I don't have much to say here except to agree heartily with the concerns brought up by the OP.

I am a fairly vocal opponent of fail forward, particularly when it is phrased as "success at a cost" or "success imposing hard choices". Take, just as a for instance, Shadowrun 4th Edition. Not exactly your most most progressively designed game, but it does have a "success with consequences" case built into the core mechanic: the "non-critical glitch". The problem to me becomes immediately evident here. Even though non-critical glitches are fairly rare things by the dice, once or twice a session while GMing I would still find myself struggling to come up with a "success at a cost" for a given test that didn't fail by either being a) not really a success or b) not really having a cost. Your basic Perception Test is a classic example of something it's hard to come up with a "Glitch" before. If the fundamentally important thing is "do you see it or do you not" ... well, any resolution where you don't see it is a failure. Any scenario where you see something, but not the thing that is actually there, is a worse failure than a simple uncomplicated failure (more like a critical glitch). We can come up with scenarios like "alright, you spot the ninjas, but your night vision goggles freak out and stop working" and that's in the spirit of a glitch, but what about something like astral perception? In any case, even if the GM does come up with a meaningful success that has a meaningful cost, doing so is going to take a fair bit of time.

And as I mentioned, the non-critical Glitch is statistically speaking a fairly rare result in SR4. The GM only needs to perform this magic trick a few times a session. In something like, I don't know... *World, where "success with a complication" is virtually the most common result of any given die roll, I feel like dozens of times a session even a very skilled GM is going to come up with a result that meaningfully a success, doesn't meaningfully have a cost, takes a long time to think up, or any combination of the three. This is my basic opposition to "fail forward" as I've seen it implemented. Which...I now realize after typing a bunch of stuff is much more the concept of "success at a cost" than strictly speaking the concept of "Fail Forward" so sorry for going a little OT. I find I have lots more to say within the general umbrella of this topic but it's gonna take hours and hundreds of words and a blog post so yeah not here.

Obviously, it's cool to like whatever basic resolution mechanic you like, but this post just reeks of a fear of improvisation that makes me wonder how on Earth he plays a game that doesn't give you a bunch of guidelines exactly like *World does. I mean, loving LOL, "I am a vocal opponent of fail forward PS I guess I might mean something else."

Bonus: This guy's signature is an ad for his blog and Kickstarter. The guy's Kickstarter looks decent enough and seems like it might even deliver on time, though the system is called "DicePunk." The most recent thing on his blog is a six thousand word whinge about his LARP group's drama and falling attendance.

That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 02:16 on May 7, 2015

# ¿ May 7, 2015 02:11

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

What is Dungeon World about? Honest question, I have no idea - I rail against Fail Forward as a GMing philosophy.

# ¿ May 7, 2015 20:39

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

I'm a bit surprised at the tepidness of the 5e defenders. Back when 4e was coming in, 4vengers were out in force to tell us that everyone who didn't immediately embrace 4e was an out-of-touch neckbeard who was going to be cast aside by history and so on and so forth.Saying not-nice things about 4th edition when it came out caused 4rries to pop out of the woodwork and flip the gently caress out. Hell, it got me banned from Dumpshock, a forum that was a fansite for Shadowrun.

Part of it is surely that 4th edition had much better crafted press releases to imply that it was successful and going to take over. More pre-orders than 3e, more opening week sales than 3e, a second printing before books were even on the shelves... that all sounded really good. People like me who said that 4e would not take over were on the run, and the 4rries felt they had a free hand to mock us. It wasn't for over a year that it really sank in that not only could those facts be cherry picked out of a barrel of fail, but that they actually were.

What does 5e have? It was #1 on Amazon... for a few hours... while offering forty percent discount just on Amazon. That's not nothing... but it isn't very much. Part of it is that the last edition very definitely spent a lot of time lying with statistics, so people are more incredulous when WotC makes crafted statements. But 5e's crafted statements don't even sound impressive.

The 5etards just aren't coming out swinging very hard for this one. The insults against non-adopters are tepid and half-assed. Like 5e itself.

-Frank

"5etards" huh?

quote:

As in, 5uckers are way more rare and also individually seem less vociferous than 4rries.

There, that's better!

quote:

But in answer to the question you apparently meant to ask... the thing to remember is that Bull is a poo poo stain who is always wrong about absolutely everything. Everything. So despite the fact that Bull was a quite proud supporter of the "D20 Gives You Cancer" catchphrase back when 3rd edition D&D was big and popular and good and strong, but as soon as 4th edition D&D (the edition that sucked and everyone hated), he jumped onboard.

I was, of course, quite critical of 4th edition D&D. Because it sucked, and I could see that it sucked right away. And in the off-topic board on that forum, I started making my case. Bull took the other side, and when it became clear that he wasn't getting the best of it, he pulled a new rule out of his rear end that people could only say negative things about 4th edition D&D in a special thread that allowed that, while people could say positive or neutral things about it wherever they wanted (including the thread that allowed negative comments).

So on the "no negative comments allowed" thread, Bull started gushing about his plans to make a Rogue with multiclass feats to take Wizard powers. I told him that since the Rogue required Dex and either Cha or Str to function and all Wizard powers required Int to function, and you only get to maximize two stats, that it would be more effective to pick a different combination. This simple fact got Bull so angry that he issued a temporary ban on me from logging in to Dumpshock. Because of the incredibly stupid way Dumpshock's forum code works (banned posters can't log in, and you can't check your messages without logging in), I didn't even find out what the gently caress that was about for a few weeks.

Now this is interesting for a couple of reasons. I mean, most obviously it's that Bull is a spoiled man child who throws temper tantrums at the mildest of provocations and shits all over the rules of his own forum just to bully people who don't agree with him about trivial bullshit. But it's also interesting in that the chargen rules in 4e are so restrictive and stupid that even telling people what they are feels like a prank.

But the reason I brought it up is because it was an example of the simple vehemence of the 4rries. It's really hard to imagine people swinging banhammers around to defend the honor of 5th edition. The drive by trolls we get from the 5e crowd keep driving. We haven't had one solitary Darwinism or Piniped come in here and pugilate for even a couple of posts. All we get is dipshits like Neon-Sequitor come in here and drop a single sarcastic post and then defend it in no way whatsoever after people tear it apart. But 4e was like that all the time and everywhere. Even on explicitly non-D&D forums the 4rries would come out swinging against the non-believers.

-Frank

Yeah, I bet Frank was all "Beep boop, that's not optimal, end of statement" like he always is and his ban was 100% capricious.

# ¿ May 7, 2015 21:02

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

theironjef posted:

Plus I think 5ive Turkeys is really what we need to call the big fans of that edition. 5etards is just terrible.

I would legit love being called a 5ive turkey.

# ¿ May 7, 2015 21:15

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

So, I get the feeling that lately, TTRPGs are moving away from having their mechanics inform their world - inasmuch as they ever did, like Shadowrun and Earthdawn (which is famed for it). Instead they want their games to break the rules of their world, which is touted as being 'good for the hobby' and to follow patterns like John Woo films, in which people do superhuman - but, important, not necessarily INHUMAN - stunts. What I want to know is:

WHY?

Why would you not want your mechanics to inform your world and thus work together and remove the need for willing suspension of disbelief? Why would you not want a world where everyone works on the same set of rules - for certain values of same, certainly. Not that Wizards aren't using different rules than Peasants, but Wizards have more rules than the peasants do, rather than less, and in the superficial they are most certainly using the same rules (breathing, movement, hitpoints, BAB) - it's just the Wizard also gets the rules that tell him how to cast a spell, and that works.

These "High Drama" games where people get to play out being a John Woo protagonist where doves inexplicably fly out of their rear end when they do something marginally interesting are telling people that it's okay to have mechanics that completely destroy verisimilitude. They waste so much page space telling you that you can do the Awesome that they forget to include the Awesome baked into the loving ruleset.

In these games, anyone not a PC is a loving Nodwick. Inexplicable and there only for exposition, or to provide a comparison point/sympathy lever. These people don't have loving lives when they leave the PC's worldview; these games suggest a solipsism so intense that, quite literally, when you're not looking at something it ceases to loving exist.

Whether or not the rules that provide the backdrop for the world make sense or not is, unfortunately, unimportant - it would be nice if they did, but including them at all is better than not having them, so you have a frame of reference for everything loving else. You can argue that the Big Three requirements of publishing an RPG - Core book, Monstrous Manual, and Campaign Setting - are where these things come from, but they're actually supposed to be baked into the rules. Without them the entire loving framework comes tumbling down.

So, why are games moving away from marrying fluff and mechanics, in your opinion? Is it the difficulty of doing so? Do they just not see it as important? Are they literal mouthbreathing paint-chip-eating morons? Or are they just ignorant?

quote:

I think it has to do with a mislead mindset, where they want to get away from the clutter of Old Famous RPG's collecting gallons of rules for decades. However they feel to do so, they must reject having rules as they can, and must go Rules-lite. Despite of course, even a "rules-heavy" game done correctly, would actually have the parse and page count to rival, if not put so many rules lite game products to shame.

Correctly such as not "paying per page/wordcount", so the book can be optimized for small page count, and thusly brevity in various stat lines and rules. As well as only having rules necessary for the stories/genre the game wishes to emulate, and not including in Legacy BS, or REALIZARM (whom most people don't understand very well translating it to rules in a game)

So I'm not so sure people understand this mindset, industry pay standard encourages bloat, and lack of design capability may also lead to them writing overly wordy rules, or rules that ask more questions than it solves.

Although in the Fantasy case, would ye have problem with monsters having different rules for how they're created? Since the idea of Monster roles is a good one, and definitely something fantasy should implement going forward.

Hm, yes, all those writers just adding a few tens of thousands of words to a manuscript, with all the work that entails, including convincing whoever contracted you, so that six months to a year later they can get an extra $50 and buy I dunno a video game they had their eye on a year earlier.

quote:

quote:
would ye have problem with monsters having different rules for how they're created

Only if those rules resulted in something that operates on a ruleset completely different from the PCs, at which point they've broken the world, broken WSoD and broken any trust in the MC. Otherwise, use whatever the gently caress you want to generate your monsters, but they better operate on the same conceptual rulespace as the PCs, even if those rulesets are things they can't access. (Wizard v Peasant sort of divide is fine, Godschlong Solipsism PCs vs Don't-Exist-Unless-Interacted-With NPCs is not)

quote:

For a lot of people, they're just playing a game, like it's monopoly or chess or whatever and the story and world or whatever is barely even a thing. The 4e D&D design team completely rejected the notion that background abilities and emergent stories are needed for even a game like D&D.

But 4e, like all of the other games which say that, are poo poo and do not sell. Because for most people it's not quite the same game as others and the whole "making sense" thing is actually pretty cool, even if they don't want to hear it during a game. More like talking poo poo between sessions and the GM can totally just point out why something worked that way on the day (not "the rules"), and then everyone's happy.

It's actually quite a problem, and the main reason Fighters can't have nice things.

quote:

When you look at a game like Shadowrun, you see that people can quite easily live in this world without being super hosed over - day jobs and lifestyle rules, not to mention the unholy act of signing on with a megacorp that the Neo-Anarchist PCs don't do and hate people who do.

In D&D 3.5, you see rules for making money using Profession (X). The rules are poo poo, but they give us a basis for seeing how crap daily life is in a D&D world.

Now, no game needs to make this the focus of their ruleset - it just has to be there, somewhere, so you have a baseline of comparison. That's part and parcel of putting "the Awesome" into your ruleset - having a "Life sucks then you die" portion for most of the world to be living in. You can even suggest that the PCs are part of that part of the ruleset before they become PCs.

What you can't do is say "The world works like this for everyone but because you are PCs you move on a completely different set of rules, right down to the basic crap of daily life". Because once you put the PCs on a pedestal to the point that the world itself works differently for them, and they're not even interacting with the world in any way that could make sense to the NPCs in the world, then you've got a borked setting.

quote:

"I hate games where doves fly all over the place from nowhere" is the central point. Profession/Upkeep aka NPC lives outside the PC's purview is just the most visible aspect of a design that leaves out details that don't cover anything outside of the PCs. 4E design is the one that does this the worst as it only concerns itself with the combat mechanics which leaves you basically no mechanics for a world to operate off of.

quote:

Verisimilitude is important to me, so I prefer a point where PCs were once 'regular people', but I don't think it's always a problem when it doesn't work that way. Superhero genre, for instance, gets a pass. The PCs are just functioning in a different world and regular people are just background - or at least, they can be. Peter Parker's problems with his boss is a story you can still tell even if you can punch a galaxy eating super-villain. But I digress.

Making PCs 'special' is easier than making all the rules work for all situations. This is the 'exception based design' that 4th edition touted. It is crap. It doesn't work. But from a design perspective, it looks like it could, so people keep doing it.

But having rules that apply to more people opens up more play space. Not everyone wants to play rat-catchers, but having that option is good.

These last few posts go really well together with the "writers pad books with cruft to fleece publishers and consumers out of sub-sub-sub-minimum wage ducats."

quote:

I think the thing to really get upset about is poo poo like the 5e Kraken. It's supposed to be a big kaiju that stomps up rivers and molesters cities and poo poo. In reality, the city guard of a small town can take it out with minimal losses. This is a problem. It's like that because 5e's rules aren't very good and the authors didn't put very much work into their text or their ramifications.

Whether doves fly around is at best a distraction. If the game is supposed to have doves fly around and it does, that's good design. If it's supposed to not have doves fly around but it does, that's bad design. And vice versa. If the fluff matches the results generated by the crunch, that's well done. Whether you like that particular fluff or crunch is irrelevant.

The issue with 4e's "dissociated mechanics" wasn't that the things that happened in the fluff and the crunch were stupid (although of course, they were), it was that there wasn't any fluff explanation at all for why most of the game effects happened. There was never any explanation for why ice got slipperier if higher level characters looked at it.

Now granted a lot of people struggle to describe what exactly is so lovely and terrible about all of this, but it's not like hogarth hasn't had this crap explained to him a couple dozen times already. He's just doing his "intentionally thick rear end in a top hat" routine. It's actually quite tiresome.

-Frank

This is nearly the end of the thread, but it still feels like it goes on forever.

# ¿ May 7, 2015 21:48

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Did Uncle Nintendo tell you that?

# ¿ May 8, 2015 05:44

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I wonder what James Wyatt (a creator of both 4e and 5e) thinks of opinions like that coming from his partner Mearls' shitmouth friends? Or did Wyatt get shuffled off, too?

# ¿ May 8, 2015 07:56

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I'm dubious about your theory, not least because it requires a very specific outcome from a closed settlement, impacting a very particular version of White Wolf's finances that we can't really hope to know. Their release schedule in the wake of the lawsuit wasn't a huge departure from what they'd been doing for over a decade, and that was also during the last industry boom and the nascent CCP merger. The experiments they dabbled with really picked up alongside and after the merger, which was years after the settlement, as the boom was making GBS threads itself and CCP began to cannibalize TG folks for their own doomed purposes. I'd be careful of development lead times here, but even with a full year of nothing but dev (which I doubt) Promethean was 2 years, and Changeling and Scion 3+ years after the settlement. Any clown cars full of money that White Wolf got were long gone by then. Maybe it sustained them in the meantime, but then dev lead times come back around to indicate they had a pretty significant schedule set up before they could have sanely banked on any theoretical Sony money.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 09:31

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

quote:
There is nothing about a game that's improv (and it's not like there's absolutely nothing decided until the moment it happens) that takes away from consistency or the ability to build dramatic turns. As the story starts to come together, pushed by the players from the inciting incident, details start to become clear ahead of time.

You seem to be arguing that because one way works for you and another doesn't, that everyone should have the same experience.

You're simply wrong.

Let's flip this around: have YOU done non-improv properly? The whole "this is the campaign world" *puts down pile of paper so massive it makes the table shake" nine yards?

If not, I'd say you don't know enough about the alternatives to make that call.

I guess all those years of ~~obsessive busywork~~prep I did with poo poo like MERP and Rolemaster were my finest, now long past.

# ¿ May 9, 2015 07:31

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:56

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

paradoxGentleman posted:

Why was the GNS theory abandoned? It's a generalization, sure, but it does convey the type of experience you can expect from certain games.

It was poorly thought out and explained, and Edwards has some weird natural instinct towards trolling. He may have some good basic ideas, but he often bolts on as much jargon and personal bias as he possibly can, which might not have been as colossally bad if he weren't such an unmitigated turd about it. (See "White Wolf gave a generation of gamers literal brain damage, no I'm serious, literally. I'll also go ahead and compare it to sexual assault to cover all my bases.")

When that's your starting point, your idea is not going to go nearly as far as it could.

# ¿ May 9, 2015 09:54

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