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dwarf74 posted:The site didn't used to be that bad. ENWorld in 2012: grog posted:First, thanks for answering. I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm just wary of one minority group trying to get more than what the majority gets. Of course that was nothing compared to ENWorld in 2011: Grog at its worst posted:These are the villains in a tentative campaign which I am thinking of running. The entire fiasco was terrible - especially the behaviour of Morrus who threatened to shut down Circvs Maximus when people objected to the way he handled that fiasco on there.
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Feb 9, 2015 14:44
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unseenlibrarian posted:I've seen him slammed for being the guy who kept the Gamergate thread on the Escapist forums open -and- for being a terrible SJW out to destroy games, and apparently part of the reason he left the Escapist was getting overruled on everything by Macris, who is legit terrible. Tito was the person at the Escapist who when it was pointed out that those Gamergate interviews were terrible actually did something about them. Like renaming the article from "Game designers talk about #Gamergate" to "Male game designers talk about #Gamergate" when it was pointed out that the first article had all been female and declared as such. Huge difference. He also removed the RogueStar interview from the Gamergate article. He seems to basically have been as decent as it's possible to be while at The Escapist.
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Feb 28, 2015 20:02
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Jimbozig posted:GNS was awesome for outlining the three top priorities of most gamers. 1) make cool stories in-the-moment 2) have a fun competition 3) imagine being in a fictional world. GNS to me makes the most sense when you look at it the following way. 1: Narrativist is the experience White Wolf games promise. We want to play narrativist games. Unfortunately the so-called Storyteller system is like a clarinetist; it simultaneously sucks and blows. We need to make games that actually do what we want them to. 2: D&D is actually pretty cool and you jackasses should all shut up about "Roleplaying not Roll-playing". Here's why it's pretty cool. 3: There are other things out there. We'll call them all "Simulationist" and put them in the same box because we don't understand them. And then I'll call it incoherent because I don't understand where it's coming from.
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May 11, 2015 00:51
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I'm thinking you could make it either Chronomancy or Precognition. If you're playing a high combat RPG (say D&D from Dragonlance onwards) then you can use this spell to prepare for boss fights - allowing more complex and tactically interesting bosses as the players get their clocks cleaned by bullshit gimmicks on the first try but can at least learn what those bullshit gimmicks are. But then I suppose he has the same rant about the spell Raise Dead...
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May 24, 2015 12:22
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paradoxGentleman posted:That is an interesting way to look at it. Do you think that 4e still mantains the inter-encounter tension? I still need to check it out, but from what I can gather it would seem so. More than 3.X had, less than oD&D had. And to raise it massively hack the resting rules so that resting isn't just sleeping for 8 hours overnight.
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May 26, 2015 13:46
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Shadeoses posted:I've read so much and I still can't grasp what storygaming is supposed to be, or what it is in opposition to. It sounds like a stupid distinction to make, let alone get worked up about, and I will continue to play games which involve rolling dice and pretending to be an elf/robot/scrunt. The term Storygames was created to describe My Life With Master - and covers other related games which take only a handful of sessions to play out and the character by the end is left in a position where playing the same game again but slightly harder would make no sense. Trad RPGs are under this definition more like 70s (or even 90s) Sitcoms where you can see the same stories and jokes over and over again. (Seriously, what's the conceptual difference between a 1st level fighter and a 20th level one?) There is a meaningful difference there - or was at least when the term was created. Story-games are games with natural plot arcs, character development, and end points. It's been just a little buried however.
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May 29, 2015 13:23
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Shadeoses posted:How many games don't have any character development or plot arcs? Wouldn't that be up to the GM and players? I mean that sounds really boring, like that Modron Cube dungeon from Planescape. I don't know if you've ever read MLWM - but the rules in that game (the game the term "Story-games" was invented for) are almost entirely geared towards plot-arcs and character development. You almost never have no character development going on over an old school sitcom either (even The Simpsons characters have changed a little over time). But they are something that happens because both players and writers are human rather than something anywhere near the point.
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May 29, 2015 14:44
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Shadeoses posted:I'm going through a character arc in D&D5E right now. Of course you are. The point is that the rules of D&D have very little to do with that. They certainly don't encourage it. The rules of MLWM and other Story-games are set up to encourage and tighten it.
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May 29, 2015 14:54
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Shadeoses posted:So it's basically that a system has rules that focus on things other than dungeon crawling? Games with a specific subset of focusses. GURPS and Fudge, for example, have focusses other than dungeon crawling but really aren't Story-Games. Nothing by White Wolf is a Story-Game - although if you ignore the actual rules and just look at what they promise then the Storyteller and Storytelling systems claim to be one. If we take the five act structure (or even the three act structure but preferably not) there is a climax - a point of no return in the middle of act three. In My Life With Master the climax is always the same - one of the minions snaps and tries to kill the Master. This is irrevocable narratively - and is also reflected in the mechanics as you use a completely different set of mechanics for the fight with the Master than you do in the earlier game (or if you aren't trying to kill the Master). And no, it's not a mini-game. In Grey Ranks, a huge climax is when (or if) you sacrifice the things you've decided you hold dear to stay alive - and the game itself is finite. Fiasco's basically mechanics wrapped round the five act structure (with the Tilt being the Climax). Most of the *World family of games (with the notable exception of Dungeon World) are on the borderline; probably the clearest is Monsterhearts where you after the mid-season can either change skins, irrevocably changing how you interact with the world, or take Growing Up Moves or a couple of other choices that mean you've actually overcome (or possibly even worsened) some of your damage. All this means that when the GM runs a storygame by the book, a narrative structure and story will come out of the rules as long as you have a decent act 1 setup. And in exactly the opposite to the dire warnings about "Playing the GM's Story", story games allow GMs to let go - the rules themselves provide pacing and twists and prevent the whole thing bogging down in a meandering mess with almost no resolution unless someone (either player or GM) takes things by the scruff of the neck. (Their short term nature also allows a much stronger sense of uncertainty; TPKs are far far more frequent in three-session games than they are in anything short of Tomb of Horrors because you don't have about ten levels ahead of you). Anyway, that's some of the original theory expanded. Of course Story-Game generally means in practice "What that group of people over there do" and people ranting about story-games seldom leads to anything good.
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May 29, 2015 16:20
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FMguru posted:Pretty much everything monks could do in early versions of D&D were taken from David Carradine's character in the Kung Fu TV series. Apparently, someone at Gygax's table wanted to play "the guy from Kung Fu" and Gygax said "sure" and whipped up some rules for him, so the class is just a random agglomeration of half-remembered things from a TV show. The other thing about the AD&D Thief is that Gygax' approach to designing the class appears to have been to take a thief, and give it some random abilities and that's why its power level is awful. (The self-heal catches its hp back up with a thief of the same XP for example). The 3.0 monk was a bad case of Cargo-Cult design, looking at the abilities and not even noticing that it was balanced against the rogues. So whereas the rogue went from 8 thief skills to 8 + Int Modifier skill points/level, the Monk went from 6 Thief Skills to 4+Int modifier skill points/level.
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Aug 15, 2015 23:11
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ProfessorCirno posted:The 3.x DCs were built around whatever the devs thought would be most "realistic." At no point in time throughout the entire development of 3.x did they really pay attention to how any of their mechanics actually worked together. I'm going to have to disagree with you there and call Cargo Cult Design again. They did check in some ways how the mechanics worked together. A first level 1E thief with 15 dexterity has a 25% chance of opening a lock. That's our target number. The 3.0 version again should have a 15 dexterity (didn't you read the Standard Array?). And unless they are going all out we expect them to put three ranks into Open Lock. Voila! 25% chance of opening a (DC 20) simple lock and that's all 1st level PCs should be presented with. It matches the AD&D chance! It must be right. And it also matches for 15 Dex. Now, let's look at 6th level. 47% for 1E. It's not realistic that different locks have the same DC. Over five levels they should have put four ranks in (levelling up should offer choices). Which means a 45% chance of opening simple locks. And we've not taken all the modifiers into account. +2 for Masterwork Thieves Tools. +1 for gloves of Dexterity +2. A Dexterity bump at 4th level for another +1. We've suddenly got a 65% chance of our average thief opening the lock which is way off. What do we do? Harder locks! Because realism. Make our average lock right for a 6th level character and the 65% chance of opening that lock suddenly drops to 40%. Aid Other is trivial - which will bring the percentages up but first level characters couldn't afford to scatter their SP, and not all those locks will be average - sometimes you just want a lock. At 6th level the chances are also the same as in AD&D! See! The numbers are like those of AD&D! Which is what we're trying to do. Put AD&D on a leaner, cleaner engine with more scope for detail and realism. And those DC 40 locks? Lolth sometimes needs to lock things if you're going into the Demonweb Pits. Bring a +10 skill boosting item and you'll be fine. You should be able to easily afford it by the time this isn't suicide. And the scary thing about that is that I wasn't actually checking my numbers for what I thought the 3.0 designers intended with character creation. I was just putting in numbers and they worked out almost exactly where I expected.
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Aug 16, 2015 14:16
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Halloween Jack posted:It's so weird to me that the people who want ability scores to determine everything usually also want to roll 3d6-down-the-line. And then play a game like AD&D where being lucky enough to roll high scores means you get to play special classes with even more stuff. That second part is perception rather than reality. In practice what the high-stat classes did was soaked your high scores and gave you some flashy toys while taking away basic abilities. Monks? A monk is basically a thief with some flashy stuff thrown in that doesn't actually do much. And the AD&D thief is crap already. Paladins? For the game AD&D was designed to be, a code of honour was a crippling disadvantage. But more than that you've got a 17 in Charisma - and can only use it for Lawful Good hirelings. The main advantage being a Paladin gives over a fighter is a group buff with the magic circle against evil. Rangers? No hirelings. This is very bad for old school low level dungeon crawling. Druids? The key problem of being a Druid is the armour penalty. You can't wear heavy armour. Which means the Druid both loses a lot of survivability compared to the Cleric, and is locked out both from the best bits of the loot table the Cleric gets access to and from being a front line melee fighter. (Without Weapon Specialisation the Cleric is almost as good a fighter as the fighter). Gygax knew quite a lot about game design and game balance. He just thought it made for a better game to make most of it non-obvious. And most of the flashy looking subclasses are traps (especially the Monk).
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Aug 22, 2015 14:53
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I'm just amused by the irony in the arguments of people like Effectronica and Raggi. "In the name of Free Speech no one is allowed to say they are offended by things. Because Free Speech!" "Corporations are inherently amoral and will do what's best for them. Therefore no one should try to persuade them it's in their own interests to do the right thing. Because Free Speech!" (Or the other version you sometimes see: "You can't stop giving money to people doing things you don't like! Because the Free Market!")
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Sep 2, 2015 00:23
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is true. Fighters had a special CON bonus, had multiple attacks per round with no penalties, had weapon specializations for even more attacks and damage, and rather importantly had access to all of their fighting-supremacy-powers without regard to the stats they had. Even if you rolled 3d6-down-the-line (which you shouldn't) they still had good saves and they still had weapon spec and they could still use all possible magic weapons/armor dropped and so on and so forth. The other thing 3.X completely screwed up was the saving throws. 3.X had three saving throws with the wizard picking the best Save-or-Lose (normally from Fort and Will - but there were a few Ref ones and even oddities like Black Tentacles). TSR D&D had five saving throws based on what you were trying to do to the target and in a gamist way. The boundaries varied round the margins (is Hold Person/Paralysis a save-or-lose spell, or is it for all practical purposes a slightly delayed save-or-die as the paralysed target gets their throat cut?) and in at least one variant staves used the normal save vs spell chart. The five saves were: Save vs Hit Point damage and non-combat stuff like Detect Thoughts (save vs Spell) Save vs non-magical effects like acid flasks (save vs Breath Weapon). About as easy as save vs Spell, easier for the martial classes and harder for the magical ones with their minor counterspells Save vs spell-in-a-can (save vs Rod or Wand). Always very slightly easier to save against than Save vs Spell. Save or Lose But Survive normally either as almost invulnerable or able to run away (Petrification or Polymorph) Save or Die (Death or Poison). So wizards would load up on spells like Fireball that complemented the fighter's ability to hurt things for choice rather than on spells that were much less likely to succeed and didn't do half damage on a miss. The other way saving throws got messed up, of course, is it became easier rather than harder to save as you levelled up. (In the Pathfinder campaign I'm playing in, everyone gets a half hit dice bonus to saving throws. It really helps keep spellcasters under control - although I'm currently coasting with my Summoner and still the strongest party member. And with the saving throws getting easier rather than harder as you level up wizards are only gods out of combat. Finally there's the way the loot/magic item rules changed...
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Sep 13, 2015 23:35
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chaos rhames posted:What was wrong with kots? The best thing you can do to fix that adventure is drop a bomb on the Keep itself and never look back. Seriously, it's OK until you reach the keep about a quarter of the way in (not outstanding, but good enough to work with). After that point there are (IIRC - I counted once) 17 combats in a row in pretty blandly static environments with little splicing them together other than "You go deeper into the keep and find another fight". Of those 17 fights from memory at least a dozen were little more than filler with no plot relevance and no potential subplots.
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Sep 20, 2015 11:49
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remusclaw posted:I'm not much of a fan of classes all together. They constrain the brain more than they do the concept. No they don't. It's simply that classes have been cargo-cult design for the overwhelming majority of the history of RPGs. I'm serious when I say that the first new genuinely class based RPG I am aware of after oD&D in 1974 was Apocalypse World in 2010. What a genuinely class based game does is allows different players at the same gaming table to be playing what are essentially different games at the same time. In oD&D (this was gone by 3.0 of course) a fighter and a wizard have very different play experiences. Different paces of play. They don't even share the same loot. What one can do is completely different from what the other can do. And even moreso in Apocalypse World. If the party is a Hardholder, an Angel, a Brainer, and a Skinner their experiences and place in the world is so different that they might as well be playing four separate games with different motivations, different victory conditions (that may or may not have anything to do with each other) and otherwise a completely different experience. This is extremely different from e.g. Cyberpunk 2020 where your class was basically a couple of special abilities. (There's one other use of class based games - the one found in e.g. Feng Shui 2 where classes are essentially part-made pregens, allowing you to start playing in minutes). Halloween Jack posted:I had this, just...exasperating argument with some people who want a fighter who is balanced with the wizard and able to do stuff like fight dragons, but who is a "mundane fighter" that doesn't do anything that could be called anime, or wuxia, or comic-book-superhero, or anything else not in keeping with the style of how they remember pulp sword-and-sorcery. (As opposed to what it was actually like...) I'm not sure who it causes brain damage to. You're as mired in D&D assumptions as they are. There's a simple way of making the fighter realistic and able to keep up with the wizard. The single most unrealistic part of D&D is hit points. Every attack from the fighter should be Save or Die. I mean people don't survive being stabbed by an expert fighter with a sword even once. Dragons? Eyes or down its throat (use a bow). A balanced mundane fighter should be terrifying - their lack of extra abilities to get to the combat are made up for by the fact that every attack's a potential killer. (Also fighters should get amazing saving throws - and free perception checks to see through illusionary defences like Mirror Image or even Invisibility).
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Sep 24, 2015 21:31
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Halloween Jack posted:I was actually accustomed to games where one-hit-kills were common before I played D&D, and have no problem with this per se. There are reasons to eschew save-or-die mechanics altogether, of course. Of course there are. It's just the only way to get a mundane fighter alongside a post-1e D&D wizard. I don't think the goal is a good one - but if you want it that's how to do it 
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Sep 25, 2015 20:50
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moths posted:This is the description text of the Chessex Pound-O-Dice: My story with the fishbowl singles: Was trying out 5e and I forgot my dice one week so decided to get a few new d20s. Picked up the first three to roll them before buying. The roll on 3d20 totalled 5. Picked up the second three and rolled a cold 60 on 3d20. Bought the second three of course (I'd only been intending to buy one). They didn't roll quite as well in play as they did on that test - but well enough that when my DM was setting DC 20 skill checks in 5e because he didn't like my illusions I was still frequently passing them and even passed a DC25 with Disadvantage (I also had Advantage from a feat and pointed out to the DM that disadvantage doesn't stack). My d6s I was banned from GMing Feng Shui with after two mooks hit an Old Master in the head in the same session also come from fishbowl singles. And scrolling back, Dragonlance is a terrible adventure.
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Oct 11, 2015 22:11
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mycot posted:Blue Rose is honest "Good Guy Kingdom versus Bad Guy Kingdom" stuff, which is either to your taste or not. The only difference is that this time the good guy-ness includes gay people, and that's where the shittiness is. It has nothing to do with people's taste in games or whatever. And the point about the deer is that Blue Rose actually follows through on what just about everyone must have asked. "Why don't those stupid Paladins at least use Detect Evil on the monarch and the senior Paladins once in a while?"
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Oct 11, 2015 22:59
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Halloween Jack posted:Magic itself is profitable enough to be considered one of Hasbro's Major Brands, isn't it? But D&D must be a small fraction of that. From memory (i.e. don't ask me to prove this) Magic is about $200 million per year, D&D aims for $20 million (although the initial 4e goal was $50 million and that's what it fell short of). Paizo in total is around $11 million, and DDI on its own at the end of 2014 was $6 million.
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Oct 15, 2015 23:41
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