KotauInAction subreddit posted:

Yea, RPG.NET is notorious for being an SJW fanatics and banning people for any infraction. You would see posts like "How games are sexist", "Lets talk about misogyny", "We need diversity", "Why does the hobby support rape culture"...etc FOR MONTHS. Mods and SJW would keep the thread alive. If ANYBODY tried to go against the SJW MOLD or even ask something like "Why is X wrong?" the post would be deleted and the user either given a warning or just banned for weeks to months. They have no problem attacking writers/authors that they do not agree with. A lot of people have complained about the site. I have not been there in a long time, but an alternative site I visited was The Rpg Site which last time was more open to discussions without fear of being banned by a mod.
Edit 1: From another reddit post, here (link) is an an example of what a SJW forum thread looks like on RPG.NET

Mors Rattus posted:

Alesha is basically the best, and the MTG design/creative crew are great for making her.

Clanpot Shake posted:

There's loads of stuff written about feminism and sexism online, most of it for free. If you really wanted to know what that whole thing is about you'd go and read some of it instead of derailing discussions with questions that amount to asking the professor to read your Women's Studies 101 reading list books to you instead of reading them yourself.

"I'm just asking questions!" serves only to derail the discussion.

quote:

I'm running a weekly Dungeons & Dragons 5e campaign now after having done a series of one-shots so the players could get to know the classes. Of 4 to 6 players, maybe 5 different character creation sessions in total, they've made....one human.

The kind of game I want to focus on is human-centric. Other races are contributing to the general fantasy landscape. I've told the players that they may have a bit of trouble going into human settlements because human villages would be, for instance, frightened of a half-dragon, or throw stones at a drow, or be very guarded against a mountain dwarf.

I don't mind demi-humans in the party - I think they add lots of interesting flavour to the make-up, but when it's a party of everything-but-human, an entirely mixed bag of various almost-monsters adventuring together, it distinctly clashes with my impression of what a Dungeons & Dragons game should be. I just don't want the majority of the party to be playing the 'weird outsider one'.

As a preface: I came to D&D with 3rd edition and worked my way backwards in editions. When I discovered B/X I kind of fell in love with it (not to say it doesn't have other problems) and discovered that B/X was the kind of thing I always thought of as D&D without knowing it. It made playing a demi-human feel special and different, at least to me. My group is only interested in 3rd edition and beyond, and I'm the one that coxed them into 5e.

I think the races in 5e are very well thought-out, well balanced and well designed. However, when they are well-balanced with the human choice, and interesting-of-themselves, then how can human compete as a selection? Of course humans are going to be a minority in a party of characters.

I've thought of letting human characters start off at a slightly higher level in order to encourage the setting I'm trying to evoke, but I'm concerned players may find this unfair.

Suggestions?

quote:

Random Generation.

You can be a human if you want, otherwise you roll on the race chart and can pick anything from that rarity level or below.

You don't want everyone to make up Noldor, Warforged, Melnibonean Nobles or anything else with a ratio that turns your world into a joke...then don't let them do it.

quote:

quote:

I think there's also an unexamined contrarian element where if you say 'this is a game of samurai' someone is going to want to be a Klingon ninja half-dragon shaman.

Next game don't invite that person at all. When they ask why, say "Oh this campaign doesn't have Drow/Gish/Cybermancers, so I figured you wouldn't want to play". They'll walk (good) or see that you put the collective game over their wants (better).

chaos rhames posted:

Ettin posted:

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

Bedlamdan posted:

There are no jokes on the SA forums

GrizzlyCow posted:

Wait, what's wrong with fail forward?

Effectronica posted:

it's fun to see people dancing around the fact that 40k is fascist

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

No, take it to Games, have a thread that exists for 5 pages before turning completely to poo poo, watch as it all burns down around you, and realize that video game-based grog.txt style threads are doomed to failure on a fundamental level.

quote:

Actually that grog.txt post was from me and I still pretty much stand by it.
But thanks dude that said I clearly live in my basement. As opposed to owning my own paid for home and making pretty decent money.

Inflation is kind of true AND false all at the same time plus perception and age. I am 40. 20 bucks to me is gonna feel different than 20 bucks to someone graduating High School this year. Obviously it goes a lot less further generally, even if I went from 5 bucks an hour at my first job out of the Navy in 96 to 28 or so now. (Gas has practically doubled but it was a 1.40 in 96, down to a buck in 98, about 4.50 or so in mid 00s, now around 2.80.) Hell, snacks at the work vending machine were like 65 cents in 98 and now they are .85-1.00.

poo poo goes up in price and wages go up but generally not remotely to the same level. Plus as one gets older things like savings, home improvement, medical, ect take up more and more money as opposed to most of my paycheck being for stupid nerd crap. (Not even getting into space to store it, and time to properly utilize it all!)

And you know, I am pretty much cheap as poo poo. I don't mind spending money but I want value out of it. Why buy a 4-5 dollar comic book that is maybe 15 minutes of entertainment when that same amount gets me a game on Steam or IOS? (Speaking of a thing that has rapidly outpaced inflation. I was doing some inflation stuff for laughs and giggles in my Game Collection posts: http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/201...ngeons-and.html by my calculations comics should be under 2 bucks as opposed to Secret Wars issue 1 being five dollars. Marvel and DC books were 2 bucks back in the mid-late 90s. Given how comics are kind of in the same niche market as RPGs it is kind of appropriate but to be fair if you do look at inflation hobby gaming has generally kept closer pace with inflation, with 1977 vintage era White Box OD&D being 38 dollars in now money. Iron Kingdoms Unleashed starter box is 45 MSRP, though its cheaper online. More GOODIES in the box but it isn't remotely as complete a game as ODnD was.)

I look at how much crap I have and honestly I don't need or have much use for as much so price will matter. Once you add in all our modern tech and the fact you can get good products both old and new for free or under 10 bucks in a digital only format and it really does make these huge rear end inconvenient loving 60+ dollar coffee table monster RPG corebooks look a lot less attractive to longer term gamers or newbies who compare them to other products that on the surface seem similar.

(Like comparing Games Workshop model kits to what Bandai, Fine Molds, Kobo., Tamiya, ect are doing. GW doesn't come close in either quality or value.)

I mean I am planning on running a play by facebook post campaign because a friend who moved to the rear end end of nowhere W.Va wants me to run something. I ended up choosing Basic Fantasy because the rules are all free PDFs and even Lulu or Amazon printed versions are sub 10 bucks. (5 for core rules in softcover. I spent 10 for spiral bound because it is easy to use and keep open. They are GAME BOOKS. Spiral bound is fantastic for reference work.) Grab some Ravenloft modules from my collection and we have a campaign!

Though it seems like most folks want full color busy rear end massive doorstops of RPG core and expansion books. I am still happy with black and white sub 128 page count ones. poo poo, even for modern games I sometimes would rather just grab a PDF, edit the fluff out, and make a more useful and portable book out of it that fits on my ipad and won't give me a hernia!

Maybe I am just part of the problem because I don't want to spend stupid amounts compared to other forms of entertainment that are easier and cheaper even if hobby games stuff should maybe cost more than it does. I also irritate retro gamers because I don't think spending 100 bucks for a loose N64 Conker is anything other than loving ridiculous. Hell, I got my copy when it was on clearance racks for 10 and only kind of feel it was worth that.

I generally get gas station coffee over Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts because its like a third of the price. I am a cheap bastard and kind of proud of it! Though I bet some of the extenuating reasons I am cheap would make a Therapist slaver in delight...

And since I have so much of this silly nonsense I just don't need to pay 60 bucks for Deathwatch core or whatever Call of Cthulhu 7th is since I am happy with 5th even if it doesn't remotely look as pretty as the newer release will.

The Deleter posted:

SO. loving. CLOSE.

Lightning Lord posted:

The guy's dead so I don't want to be too lovely about him, but truly a sick burn.

Sage Genesis posted:

In a typical game like D&D it would be a poor fit, that's true. But some game could be built around it. In a recent episodic video game called Life Is Strange you play a teen girl who discovers she has the power to rewind time a bit, which basically is just a way to abuse save points except elevated to a core gameplay and story element. You could do the same sort of thing in a pen and paper RPG. It would certainly be a challenge, but the idea that "it doesn't fit D&D so it's cheating and can't fit any game at all" is awful grog.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Plague of Hats posted:

Payndz posted:

The only difference between RPGs and storygames as far as I can see is that RPGs go "When I want to influence events I roll a die if the GM allows it, and on a good roll I succeed" and storygames do the same but generally leave out the "if the GM allows it" part. Apparently that's a difference worth calling down the Inquisition where grogs are concerned?

Helical Nightmares posted:

Not sure if you guys already covered this one.

I hope this is real. It is a thing of beauty.

An Exclusive Interview With the Elf Who Dropped Acid and Jousted a Car

http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/crime/exclusive-interview-elf-dropped-acid-jousted-car/

Preach brother.

Follow up: http://boingboing.net/2015/05/26/portlands-sword-wielding-h.html

DigitalRaven posted:

But what do I know, I've only been a writer & developer for White Wolf and OPP for the past eleven years.

Halloween Jack posted:

I think we've talked about this briefly before, but I really don't think that the RPGsite has a game design ideology. TGD does; I believe you or Rulebook once described their idea of the GM as "someone who just sets up targets for the players to knock down," and Antivehicular 's reference to the GM as the AI in a Roguelike game is a perfect summary of what they seem to want from the GM.

If the crowd at RPGsite approves of the GM playing an angry Old Testament God, it's because they have an authoritarian bent in general. It's essentially a leper colony for people who are incapable of talking about games (or anything in RPGnet's Tangency forum) without throwing temper tantrums and calling people names, which aligns with reactionary attitudes in general. You can see this in their moderation policy, which defines freedom from censorship as the freedom to throw temper tantrums and call people names. Oh, and the leadership of the board literally repeats Neo-Nazi ideology.

Not everyone on RPGsite is a right-winger or on board with Tarnowski's conspiracy theory, and some even openly mock him for it. (TGD's membership seems to me like they conform to Trollman's game design philosophy much more uniformly than RPGsite conforms to Tarnowski's politics.) Some people are there because they unwisely threw a temper tantrum and got banned from RPGnet, and Dragonsfoot feels too much like hanging out at Grandpa's house. But still, if you pick up the online RPG community and shake it, RPGsite is where the dust settles."

Darren MacLennan posted:

Why is it that every turd on the planet thinks that conventions are the place to punch somebody that they've never met? It's not the first time that somebody's threatened the moderation with physical confrontation at a convention, which is apparently the Thunderdome except with less cosplay.

Wikipedia Brown posted:

Haha, probably not the place to demand a long-term group to indulge your otherkin fantasies.

FMguru posted:

Oh man, that's good grog. "Why aren't any of you so-called 'gamemasters' dropping what you're doing and running a 200-session campaign for me, custom-tailored to my (likely weird fetish) tastes? poo poo or get off the pot, you losers" and then gets worse from there.