Opinion Haver posted:

This isn't particularly grognardy but the sheer rage is wonderful. Also, 'Paizils'?

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Although I be a simple D12 I put forward the following scripture to elucidate what I believe to be the intended words of the Most Holy Prophet D20ragon
For His words, while holy are intended for a world not our own, a utopian society free of dissent and disharmony such that Henderson came about

While it is our struggle to create a world where His teachings may be universal and free of translation, to do so They must be so translated.

While the Great D20 is God Above, the Deity of All He cannot encompass all, this is evident by the creation of the Most Holy Gygax among others
Thus I propose there exist lower Gods. Not demigods as other theologians have theorised but truly divine beings
PunPun the God of RAW, enforcing the scriptures be followed from the Holy Tome selected by the person, holding them accountable for their chosen text, even should they adopt one of the other major Sects of the Great D20 such as 4e or the original texts of the 1st edition. While maligned he serves a vital role in the cosmology. Lawful
Ruby Knight Windicator the God of Power, showing the power of minmaxing, how the pursuit of a single purpose grants power beyond dreams
Batman Wizard, God of preparation. Players and DMs alike are shown the shining example of preparing for the situation with this arcane divinity.
Drake Maximumus Percival Charleston. God of Equality. While reviled by many the divine version of the DMPC is the link between players and DMs showing that all must gain entertainment not just one side of the table
There are many more, as many as the Greek Pantheon of old, including gods of house rules, storytelling, Henderson etc. but my time is sorely lacking to fully elucidate this expansion of the Holy Prophet's words

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Grabby: You’ve never been able to keep your hands to yourself, unable to keep from copping a quick feel when the opportunity presents itself. You gain a +1 bonus to melee touch attacks against characters you’re sexually attracted to.

Lewd Thoughts: You often have sexual fantasies about the attractive people around you, finding it easier to imagine them naked rather than focus on what they’re currently doing. You gain a +2 bonus to Will saves against compulsion effects from characters that you’re sexually attracted to.

Symbolic Weaponry: You can’t ignore the phallic nature of spears and similar weapons, and get a thrill of titillation when you drive such weapons home. You gain a +1 bonus to confirm critical hits when using any type of lance or spear.

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The writing sucked rear end though. I don't understand why it, and Krynn, were so popular.
Still don't.

I even watched the cartoon movie just because it had Keifer Sutherland as Raistlin, and it just solidified my hate for Hickman's work and the setting in general.

it is basically Hobbit and LotR all rolled into one. they quest for this THING, fight the dragon, have a gandalf figure, hobbits (Tas is Bilbo).

the movie with Lucy, etc sucked due to bad editing and CGI. where the Hobbit movies are being made as 3 though it would fit 1, DoAT should have been longer.

another thing is that you didnt have "Gods" and at the time was the Jack Chick era, so that kind of helped for a novel standpoint.

and if you read the novel, just like Drizzt, you have to run through them.

Dragonlance is a good world, but cheap LotR ripoff. just throw away the moons nonsense so you don't have to track it and DRAGON MEN.

yup, you got dragon men running around everywhere. and you know who doesnt like dragons in D&D?

it isnt a bad world, just a bad story made from a home game.

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Uhg! I am learning to hate the term "Uninteresting"! Every time I hear it lately it seems like the person involved wants to ignore ANY sense of realism in favor of "I wanna..." And if I can't I'm gonna cry and whine incessantly! O.M.G! Ok, Rant ends. If your player wants to drop stuff to "Quickdraw" his melta pistol or whatever, do what real "Trained" troops do in real life! Put the droppable item on a sling! In the case of a basic weapon always "ready" because you just reach down and grab it! I wouldn't even charge the character for the sling since they are included on any military grade weapon. This could also work with an Auspex if you placed it on a cross body harness similar to the original Tricorders in Star trek. Ready is an action that applies to retrieving ANY item from a readily accessible belt pouch or harness (Rummaging through your pack takes a bit more time ).

Quickdraw is a talent that allows you to "Ready" a one handed or basic weapon as a free action. I'm sorry boys and girls, not every Acolyte is a western gunslinger! In my experience, people who constantly want to change equipment to "item x" that's perfectly suited to this situation instantly also typically fall into the "chaotic everywhere" type of player! (A player who always wants to do everything at once. Old D&D meme). You want to ready your weapons instantly? buy the talent! Don't want to break your precious widget when you drop it? Put it on a sling! (Also prevents losing it!)



Anyway, The ready action is specifically intended to limit the number of things a character can be doing in a given turn. So yes, I think it's necessary!

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I'm still waiting to meet a real nerd girl that isn't awful looking (they also tend to have Charisma as their dump stat).

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As for among D&D players, I think the appeal of DL was that it was one of the few D&D adventures/stories that actually played in JPRG style.

i think you are greatly confused as Dragonlance came before what is known as "JRPG style". SSi video games had people becoming world saving heroes. the only reason i would think you mention J (Japanese) would be arcade games that went beyond Pac-Man and such to have a long plot in it more than SAVE THE WORLD!

again, this goes back to LotR more than any sort of JRPG, and the Hobbit animated film came out right as AD&D came out, and Dragonlance came out in 1984.

quite literally it is a giant rip-off of LotR.

Lonely Mountain and Smaug can be seen in the movie as the fight with Verminaard.

Lord Soth is pretty much the Witch-king of Angmar

Tasslehoff is Bilbo Baggins

Tanis is Aragorn and Legolas combined

Flint is Gimli down to the not caring for horses

Darken Wood is Mirkwood

Forestmaker is Shadowfax

Paladine's avatar Fizban is a Gandalf stand in.

Lauarana is Arwyn

the Speaker of the Sun is Elrond.

Silvanesti and Qualinesti elves split is as tho Mirkwood and Rivendell Elf houses.

Raist is as Saurumon

Sturm is your Boromir

the draconians created as the evil army are the Urk-Hai

Takhisi is Sauron

Fewmaster Toade is effectively Gollum

do i need to go on from just DoAT?

for the most part, LotR is the blood of Dragonlance more than ANY setting of D&D ever was or will be again, save for the use of terms like Ent, Hobbit, Nazgul in OD&D.

so when you have the Hobbit in 1977 through to Return of the King in 1980 and then Dragonlance coming out in 1984.. you can clearly see signs that we all know now of just downright ripping off something else and making a few changes to make it your own. Mario from Donkey Kong could not in ANY way have contributed to the popularity of Dragonlance.

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Yeah, it sounds like it should have 'An RPG for losers who have never/will never been on a date' somewhere on the cover.

Or 'The RPG product most likely used by the prosecution as evidence of the defendant's mental state'.

Of course, given that its anime-based, that goes without saying....

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The issue itself is a choice between two views of sneak attack:

1) The rogue is an anatomy expert. They know the anatomy of all creatures, from dragons to beholders to rust monsters, bulettes to giant spiders, stirges to purple worms to hooked horrors. They know a vulnerable spot on that creature (or that such a creature has no vulnerable spot), and how to strike that spot to cause the maximum damage.

2) The rouge is a quick sneaky bastard. They know how to exploit the tactics of creatures, their movement, their positioning, their emotions. They can dodge in and strike swiftly and deeply when and where you're not expecting it, or knock you off balance to get in a deeper hit, or aggravate you into an out of position defense so they can strike harder, or toss dirt in your eyes to do so, or get an extra stab in before you know where that sneak has jumped to. They do whatever it takes to play dirty in a fight when they can.

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It creates a large disconnect when you suddenly say "Oh, yeah, you are just like Riddick, except when there's zombies around. Then your normally badass character can barely hurt them.

WakbothsDaughter on therpgsite posted:

I can't stand when people expect you to hang out with pr give a poo poo about their boyfriend/girlfriend in general. You're the one getting your dick sucked, not me, please don't bring your ball and chain along. I will not be part of your pathetic attempts to pander to them for attention. This is twice as true as rpgs, which I like to take pretty seriously ('it's just a game!' cries the casual -well Harry Potter is just a book, that doesn't stop you from wanking to it every 36 seconds) and I find the combination of disinterested newb and the sissification that happens to people around their meat of the moment both interfere, and then they get all pissy because you didn't play like a tool to help them get a rimjob. The worst is when it's Ilsa the Feminazi She-Wolf or the snarky Humanists, who I will go out of my way to irritate and ensure they will never darken my doorway again.

There are some exexceptions, Jolly and Barbara Blackburn, but 99% of the time it's just someone bringing their flesh vibrator along because they're too cowed to say, "no, you're illiterate and have no business interrupting when adults are speaking."

If you bring your bf/gf to my game, tell themto sit down and shut up. They're not playing.

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So I wanted to see what the SA goons were saying about the "+1" fiasco where Ettin called for supporting a public statement that was a PROVEN LIE falsely accusing a game designer of making rape threats. But when I went to "grognards.txt" for the first time in like a month, they were behind a paywall; the thing is, as I recall, the last time I went there, a month back, they were also behind a paywall.

Now, I only check there very occasionally, usually when I think that there might be something they're strategizing there before launching it as attacks/policy on RPGnet, G+, or here; but now that I think about I think the last time that I actually tried to get on and there wasn't a paywall was like, sometime around June.

I suppose its possible that I've just been having really bad (or good?) odds and hitting the paywall every time I check while just before or just after it goes down for a couple of weeks, only to very quickly go back up again (even that is weird, it seems like in the old days it was almost never down in the 'paywall', and when it was it was only for a few days). But is that it? Or have they just decided its better for them to get to hide their worst filth behind a paywall permanently?

RPGPundit

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It's just Lowtax needing more money for Xanax, weeping he hadn't sold his website back when it was worth six zeros.

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Apparently they put it up and down from time to time, I suppose so lurkers are incentivised to pay, which while hilarious in and of itself, isn't half as funny as the pitiable attempted shaming tactic that is grogs.txt being completely silenced after they'd forked over the membership fees.

Good work on the James Desborough debacle by the way.

If you think RPG.net is bad, you haven't see SA. It's same moderation cranked up to the 11.

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Pardon the ignorance, but what is SA?

Somethingawful.com

It was a bastard culture/atrocity tourism/ironic humor website back in the 90s and had a bit of popularity that put it in the same lofty ranks as Fark (think Reddit but with exponentially fewer forum folks). It's nowhere near as popular now, and the forums are a walled garden for people who pay $10. Using the forum search feature costs another $10, having a user avatar is another $10, having a custom title is $15, etc., so ultimately to "totally" use the forums costs $90, and when you're banned, which you can be for infractions like incorrect spelling, asking too simple a computer support question in the computer support forum, liking or disliking the wrong RPG and saying you do in the RPG forum, not moving lockstep with the leftists who moderate the place, etc., you lose all of that $90.

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I remember the days when SA used to be cool, though admittedly maybe it was because I was 10 at the time.

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Paul's last name isn't Ettin. It's [REDACTED]. Just noticed that you used everyone else's full names, and didn't want confusion from people assuming Paul's last name is Ettin.

Huh, where did that come from, out of curiosity?

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I think it was one of his blogs or twitter or something when he's slagging on RPG.net and bragging how he's been promoted to MOD that "Orwellian clusterfuck of a forum"

My Aspero - Bot does not compute why you'd wish to be a mod on a forum you obviously spite.

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Well, he's an obvious troll who gets his joys on trolling online internet sites. SA proved that beyond a doubt. So I'm guessing for him, it's just a way to get his preferred entertainment in.

Yes, some people do care that much about what happens on the internet. I suppose it gives him a sense of self worth that he misses in real life. Then again, that's pretty common among the most strident pseudoactivists. I don't see many of them at PRIDE parades I go to at any rate.

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How is this clown still getting away with this? It's a clearcut case of copyright infringement, so why haven't the IP owners started legal action to shut him down? Surely they'd win.

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Intellectual property litigation is a lengthy and expensive process, and - depending on the jurisdiction - may entail significant travel on the part of the plaintiff and/or the plaintiff's representative in order to make the necessary court appearances. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that it's typically quite safe to blithely ignore cease-and-desist letters sent on behalf of individual plaintiffs, as making good on that threat and actually suing the recipient for intellectual property infringement is far beyond a typical private individual's means.

Wouldn't this come under a class action suit? I mean, the guy's surely pissed of enough people that they can band together against him. It kinda makes a mockery of the idea of IP protection if it's too expensive to stop an individual from doing it.

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My laymans understanding is that a class action lawsuit is a bunch of people going after someone for the same offense. IE, a company screws up a batch of food, and people get sick - no matter how many people are effected, it's all basically the same event.

In this case, even though Shipman's issues are all copyright and trademark infringements, they're not the same event - they're dozens or hundreds of separate events that just happen to be legally similar charges.

And there isn't a way to lump them all together? I mean, I really do sympathise with everyone who is affected by his shenannigans, but at the end of the day if nobody is willing to step up and do something about it to shut him down then he'll continue to laugh it all off. People posting about his continuing antics here and elsewhere would only reinforce everyone's sense of helplessness about him, and if the true publishers of T&T won't take legal action then in practical terms they're just saying "yep, we're letting him get away with it".

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This has also been discussed at length and it isn't a case of "won't" it's a case of "cannot afford to".

Then what's the point of continuing to bring this stuff to anyone's attention? If nobody is willing or able to do anything about it then how does it help anyone? One can't really say it's building a case against the guy because the case isn't going anywhere.

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It helps guide consumers to purchase legitimate products from legitimate sources, rather than buying bootleg reproductions from an unlicensed vendor, for starters.

That only helps people who read this first, and I doubt that many people unfamiliar with all this will bother to check the publisher's reputation beforehand.

The only way this will stop is if this rear end in a top hat is shut down, and somebody needs to step up and do that - that's what the law is for, after all (and in a clearcut case like this, I'm sure they'd get back their legal fees). And frankly, that's the legitimate publishers' job - if they say they can't do it then they have to take responsibility for failing to protect everyone else from his antics ("they can't afford it" doesn't really fly - he's probably taking a significant amount of their probably already small sales away from them, and even if they shut down or went bankrupt then he'd still continue to publish anyway). I guarantee you that unless that happens he will continue to laugh it off and do whatever he likes, and threads like this will only breed more bitterness and resentment.

(and sorry if I'm coming across as an armchair critic... I have no oar in this myself, but this sort of thing just really pisses me off).

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Well. the original thread on this topic resulted in the closure of multiple web storefronts (on Amazon, eBay, etc) owned by Shipman, as well as multiple web sites (of his) for violating the terms of service laid out by his hosts. So it does have a further impact, as well.

Obviously not enough to stop him, which is the desired outcome.

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And, yes, you really do come off as an armchair critic, both blaming the victims and giving legal advice when you (I don't think) have any legal expertise.

I'm not "blaming the victims" at all, neither am I giving legal advice. I'm just saying that since nothing seems to be having any practical effect (since despite all the attempts to 'shut him down' and spread the word about him Shipman is obviously still cheerfully continuing to publish stuff and do whatever he likes, even to the point of openly screwing over consumers) and since nobody seems willing or able to actually do anything concrete about this, then there doesn't seem to be an awful lot of point in continuing to raise the subject.

The practical result of all of this is that this douchebag has now become part of the T&T experience - people will have to accept the risk that he will steal their stuff or that what they've bought isn't a legitimate product. They may not know about it beforehand, and that is unfortunate - but as long as he's allowed to continue to get away with it, he'll continue with this behaviour.

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Threads in the past have definitely raised attention to what he has done in the past and resulting in things being removed from sale from places like Noble Knight Games and Amazon. He may not be getting sued or shut down permanently, but it's this kind of publicity that closes off potential publishing avenues for him.

And yet he's still around, and he finds other avenues through which to publish. He's clearly not getting the message, so is this really all that effective a strategy?

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You're letting perfect be the enemy of good.

Is it really "good" though? Maybe his income from this has been reduced over time but it's not enough to stop him from carrying on is it? Nobody will do anything, he'll carry on, and there'll be more complaints about his behaviour.... and nobody will do anything, he'll carry on, and there'll be more complaints... and so on.

But OK, I've said my piece. I can but hope he sees sense, but I doubt it very much.

GMS posted:

There is [progress] -- I had a few non-FW-related fires that needed putting out, but I'm still chugging away. I haven't updated progress because I feel it's more important for me to DO the work, rather than talk about it. My plan is to get this out before Christmas.

GMS posted:

I've have family obligations which require my attention. I will deliver as soon after Christmas Day as possible.

GMS Consulting posted:

Expertise

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Solutions

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The consulting contract entitles authors or publishers to conference calls (phone or Skype), emails, etc., answering whatever questions you have; whatever advice you require, full marketing and/or business plans, etc — in short, you get one of the creators of the electronic publishing market “on staff”, to pick his brain, as much as you want, specific to your needs, for the entire period of the contract.

Consultation contracts are available on hourly, per diem, or by-project basis. Email gms@adamantentertainment.com with an overview of your needs, and we can discuss the options available.

Plague of Hats posted:

grognards.txt will decide when the paywall goes up or down!

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Like I said in the original thread this came from; the only people this place is specifically unfriendly toward is thin-skinned "sensitive" people. Unless you're suggesting that Homosexuals or Women are more "sensitive" than straight men, more delicate, and will break easier from any kind of rough conversation, I don't think there's anything specifically unwelcoming to them. I certainly think that a homosexual mainstream gamer who digs, say, Traveller, would feel more welcome here than a 100% straight heterosexual who loves universalis and thinks that the Forge is like the modern version of Beat Poets.

As for why we don't have too many women; well, the actual demographic for mainstream RPGs tends to be male. When you're specifically dealing with real RPGs, it wouldn't be surprising that you'd have less female gamers. Any woman who was tough enough and didn't expect special treatment or that moderation would be done on her behalf would be more than welcome to post here.

I guess it is possible that women are more "delicate", or believe that you need social control. Or, more likely, that's what they've been conditioned to think. In either case, I really don't care if we get women here or not. Any who want to come here and play by the same rules as everyone else is more than welcome; but I'm certainly not going to change anything to bring them in.

Gizmoduck_5000 posted:

Wackboth's Daughter

Moderator One Horse Town posted:

Nah, Pundit's attracting attention again. I expect we'll get the odd drive-by troll for a day or two.

Sacrosanct posted:

I just saw that. Yeah, I imagine there are a bunch of pissed off ettinites looking to stir poo poo up

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In a game world with illusion spells, polymorph, and druids, it stands to reason that a king jealously guarding state secrets would tell his guards to not even let animals through the gates.

Also, NPCs and even monsters like ogres, gaining fighter levels is something Mearls said was something that can and should be used to beef them up. In Return of the King, how do you think they got that plate armor on those trolls? Or did you think they were born with plate proficiency, and knowing how to wield those huge warhammers.

This is the only question I will respond to, the rest is kind of blah, I don't want to talk about magic here. Magic obeys different rules than fighters who should obey the laws of physics, or a reasonable approximation thereof. They always did, AFAIK. If this mechanic is meant to be supernatural, call it such, be honest about it, and put it in a class that has supernatural or magical abilities. There are plenty more. Fighter is not it.

Actually, if a Paladin had an ability that let them never miss attacks, for a short period, that would be both cool and believable. Gods can allow all sorts of normally-impossible things to happen. This is D&D, after all.

I like playing Fighters because it's like Indiana Jones, just a regular guy with a whip and a machete trying to steal that idol. There's some whacky magic in the world, sure, and he can also do some cool feats with his whip, but that doesn't mean he can never miss with it. Never missing attack rolls (every attack is a natural 20) is something only 2e deities had. And maybe some 4e stuff, but I don't really care about that.

I don't want fake stuff in the core PHB fighter, and I don't really care if it bothers some people. There will be other classes and mechanics that let you do all sorts of cool stuff. But you have to call those things magical, or supernatural if you want them. You can't slide in "I can't miss, ever" through the backdoor of "abstraction". No, the word abstract doesn't allow you to un-tag the magic descriptor from obviously magical effects such as this.

It's Magic Missile-as-a-cantrip++ for fighters. Actually, better, since it can potentially do more damage too (i.e. it stacks with your current attack routine, and doesn't cost you any additional actions).

A No Action Magic Missile++ on a miss, that's what this is. Imagine we were playing 4e, and 1st level fighters could pick this as their at-will. I mean, the wizard would feel petty lame, doing his 1 HP of damage with his unerring missiles, wouldn't he. A fighter would give nothing up to have it. In fact, it's more like "At-will : No Action : On a miss, do Str mod damage, using 2H", so it would still be triggerable using any other attack combo the fighter did.

I want it gone for many reasons, not just believability. The ability to never not do damage will create a monster the size of Pun Pun. I look out for exploits like this in the games I write, and this is a glaringly obvious one that no QA person or manager would approve. The QA person would ask : hey, the animation here shows the sword swung wide, so how come the enemy HP went down anyway and you killed him? I'm flagging it as a bug. No QA person would let a mechanic like this ship. You're asking us to ignore that we just "saw" the fighter miss the enemy with his sword, and yet the enemy died anyway, despite the sword not connecting with them.

Note that the term hit, miss, and damage are not defined in the rules, so they use the english definition.

The english meaning of "I hit a foe with my sword and the sword damages them" is clear, for the same reason "I miss a foe with my sword and the sword damages them" is complete, unadulterated, hogwash. This mechanic forces everyone at the game table, who wants coherent use of english descriptions of game events, to accept contradictions on a round-by-round basis. More egregious than already exist with the fact that AC should be two stats instead of one (dodge + DR), and HP should be defined as pure health, and not scale linearly by character level but very slowly (people can get tougher).

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That's right. Someone pops in to be a shithead? Blame Ettin!

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I haven't really been reading anything of Exalted beyond the main rulebooks and having skimmed one or two of the sourcebooks. It was blatantly obvious to me that it was a pretentious piece-of-crap game that did nothing for me.

I'd always thought of it as the ridiculous power-gamer game for artsy-fartsy White-Wolf fans who were secretly sick to death of having to play effete sophisticates and really secretly wanted to just powergame, but felt too embarrassed to do so. You know, the way those "art" films on Bravo are actually just a way for self-styled sophisticates to watch porn and not think they're doing anything unsavoury.

Only now, a recent thread has tuned me into the fact that Exalted may also be porn. Apparently, its chalk full of setting stuff describing rape, bestiality, BDSM, and all other sorts of sexually "edgy" stuff (ie. everything but vanilla heterosexuality is described in a relatively positive light).

So I guess I've found the other side of the equation: really just part of the pretentiousness of the setting, but I should have known that most WW-fans are the type of people who, if they gave into their basest instincts, would not be playing D&D powergaming so much as they'd be playing a D&D powergaming campaign where everyone was furries having BDSM rape-orgies or something like that.

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Now, it seems to me from what I understand of the rules, that the player is not only "saying what he does", he is, AFTER rolling, on certain results getting to pick what retroactively happens, from a list that the GM cannot alter and must present as-is.

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That's not quite how I had read or heard it being described anywhere else up to now. So you'll have to pardon my confusion. I thought, and do correct me if I'm wrong, that the standard format for most "moves" was:"

6-: you fail. The GM simply tells you the predetermined result (and note that the GM doesn't get to decide anything that isn't purely and totally descriptive).
7-9: you're somewhere in between, in some nebulous zone of uncertainty.. The GM must read to you two or three different options (*he has no choice what they are) and you get to pick which one you want, most of them let you do what you want but edit the result of what you attempted so that there was some 'downside' or 'complication' as well.
10+: you succeed at what you wanted.

From what I understood, at no point in any of those three processes does the GM really have any choice at all. The Player has a choice in terms of initiating the move in the first place, and if he gets a 7-9 result, in terms of choosing which option he wants (but again, I would presume only from the list the game designer provided for him).

Is that not an accurate depiction?

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Because your game is based on Apocalypse World, a Storygame, and it was written by someone who's part of a group of people that strongly believe that rules should not be changed by GMs in play.

You're almost getting me to believe this whole babe-in-the-woods thing, though I'm having some very serious difficultly processing the possibility that you might have done a clone/hack of a Storygame without actually knowing what that is, or any Storygame Theory, or being aware of much less part of the discussion and general culture of that movement. It seems like a pretty freaking amazing set of circumstances that would depend on either astounding levels of freak chance or very intense willful ignorance. It would be like if someone "invented" their own version of a french haute cuisine dish copied from a Cordon Bleu manual while at the same time claiming to have no idea whatsoever about "what France is".

So you didn't hang out on the Forge and do not now hang out on Storygames? Because you do realize that if you do, and you've written on there about narrativism or about the need to control the GM, or interacted in threads where others have done the same, it would be very easy for that to come to light?

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drat it. Now I'm going to have to go read this loving thing. There's just too much conflicting and contradictory statements and information being bandied about.

RPGPundit

Halloween Jack posted:

And a groggy New Year!

Y-y-you mean we're not all Red_Mage?

John Tarnowski makes a shocking discovery about a game he doesn't read or play!

Meanwhile, he tries to understand Dungeon World!


Uh, Mr. LaTorra, are you a member of the Communist party or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?

Mr. LaTorra, the committee has carefully gone over this game. It's a very interesting example of uh, storygames, but it's not at all pertinent to this inquiry. Therefore we do not care to have you read the game. Now I'll repeat the original question. Uh, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party of any forum?

Is it possible that the international commie-lib hipster storygame conspiracy is just the product of one man's assumptions about books he hasn't read?

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Ok. I've now read Dungeon World, and am ready to come to a final ruling.

There's no question whatsoever that DW is up to its arse in Storygaming pretentiousness: it borrows their jargon in many places and their style of creating jargon in others. The verbiage it uses is undoubtedly inspired by the Forge, not regular RPGs. But how pretentious you sound doesn't affect whether or not you're an RPG, or else Vampire and Nobilis wouldn't be RPGs, but they are. So what matters is how those terms are applied.

The only thing that matters is whether this setting falls within or outside the Landmarks of regular RPG play. I think it is very tricky, because its very clearly an intentional attempt to really really straddle the margin, as part of a storygames effort to infiltrate RPGs. What I've been trying to work out in all this time is whether its a Storygame that puts on a veneer of RPG-like play, or whether its an RPG that is loaded to the gills with Storygame concepts.

And I find myself forced to conclude that its probably the latter.

A) The text of the book certainly talks about creating a world, and that this world has things in it, and that the world itself (those parts that are known and defined of it) are not supposed to be malleable except "in game" (or I guess they'd say "in the fiction"). It is, in other words, an attempt at emulative. Whether it does it badly or not is another story.

B) It certainly has players playing their characters, and while some of the nature of the text works against Immersion, other parts seem to try to encourage players to immerse in their characters. Certainly, using concepts and details from Storygames means the game is working against its own goal here, you could even call it "incoherent" in that sense if one wished to hoist them with their own petard, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that Immersion is a) possible and b) not just possible as a reading against-the-grain of the game (because of course immersion would be theoretically possible in any number of storygames, or monopoly, or hungry hungry hippos, but in all of these would be counter to the stated nature of the game).

C) It has a GM. And while some of the mechanics do try to limit the game more than you'd see in OSR D&D, the way the game is written (plus the statements the author has made on this very forum) confirm that the GM is not in fact a hostage to either the players or the rules. He can change the rules or add new ones. He could, in fact, make a new "GM Move" called "Rocks fall, everyone dies".

D) There are a couple of areas that hint at players getting to decide things about the world inasmuch as the DM wants them to. There is also the infamous "choose whether you fired extra shots after you roll" thing. But I find myself forced to agree that while some of these details come very very close to playing with the boundaries, it is still within the limits (albeit the absolute limits) of the landmarks. There's no egregious case in the game where a player can choose to radically alter the reality of the setting suspending all emulation, and with no justification.

E) The final and big question, the one that matters above all else: does this game put Story over Emulation/Immersion (what some term versimilitude)? When push comes to shove, will the sense of being a real world with real people win out over trying to make the best story, or will trying to make the best story win out over creating a virtual world?
And to my surprise, the answer clearly seems to be that for all of its talk of "the Fiction" and of storytelling and that the game is about "seeing what happens", etc. etc., there is in fact nothing in Dungeon World that seems to let the group put the story above and beyond the emulation. You can absolutely be shot in the head by a goblin at 1st level and die, without being part of any bigger story.
Now, you might argue that this is in fact the "story" that DW is trying to tell, that its a Storygame about a group of people playing Dungeons and Dragons, and not actually a real game of "dungeons and dragons". But if the abstraction has become so flawless that in fact you can collapse it completely and with the same rules you are really just playing (a really weird version of) "dungeons and dragons", then does it matter from our point of view?

In a way, its like the Storygamers have become too clever for their own good. Its like if you send in a deep-cover agent to infiltrate the enemy, and you want him to be perfect so you brainwash him so intensely he completely forgets who he used to be, only the result is he ends up really working for the other side!
It also creates the irony that Storygames have, with Dungeon World, come full circle: the Forge/Storygames movement came out of a furious rejection of White Wolf's games that were full of pretentious jargon about "storytelling" and delusions of sophistication but didn't actually mechanically back that up; they then spent an entire decade creating games no one wanted to play that tried to really be about "creating story", only to end up with Dungeon World, probably the most popular game to have come out of the whole Forge/Storygame movement, be a game that's full of pretentious jargon about telling a story that doesn't actually back it up.

Dungeon World isn't a storygame; its like if the Soviet Union declared the "ultimate victory of communism" by calling elections and opening a Moscow Disneyland. Its the Boris Yeltsin to Ron Edwards' Lenin.

And here I was, Cold Warrior that I am, thinking that this game was some kind of trick, when its really about the utter collapse of Storygaming as a threat. In fact, if anything, Dungeon World proves their failure.
It addresses the question "What does a Storygame have to do to be a mainstream success?" with the answer "it has to become an RPG".

Not that there won't still be Storygaming Swine making games that are still really Storygames, sure; or trying to infiltrate storygame concepts and mechanics into regular RPGs by trick or by force. That will probably go on for a long time. But I think DW proves to me that as a separate movement, Storygames is spent. Their biggest fanatics, the ones who despise RPGs to the point where no surrender is possible, will have moved on; many of them have already into making Pseudo-Activism their new method. If being the soviets (complete with the red star of the "Indie Press Revolution") and seeking to remake the hobby through "Theory" didn't work for them, they'll try to become the Taliban, or the Tipper Gore Moral Defense League, or whatever you want to call it, and seek to remake the hobby that way.

So in any case, I find myself to my own amusement obliged to say sure, Dungeon World is in fact an RPG. Post about it in the main forum of theRPGsite if you like. Why on earth would I want to suppress the capstone on the grave of Forge Theory, the testament of the Storygame Swine selling themselves out and crossing back over the Landmarks into the Regular RPG hobby after realizing there's no market for the 'revolution' they were pushing?

quote:

quote:

Dungeon World relies heavily on buy-in to what it calls 'the conversation.' Everyone playing at the table is there first and foremost to collaborate to create a coherent fiction, and you bring the moves into it when the fiction dictates and it would make sense to do so. Typically, the conversation isn't going to create a situation where Guy Who Never Picked A Lock Before even gets to roll Defy Danger to jimmy the gates of heaven open.

Just because they give a name to it doesn't mean it's legit.
A game system that only runs well when the players are being 100% cooperative isn't any better then a simple freeform without any rules, since the premise is the same. And what I did knowingly could have been done out of ignorance by any other player, not everyone is good at storytelling and narrative, which is why not everyone wants to be GM.
Dungeon Wolrd could have been just as well a "guide to freeform rpg", without any pretense of being a legit gaming system.

And I'm comparing it to FATE because it's pretty clear with the whole cooperative storytelling and narrative focus that it's what they were going for, exactly what FATE does, so no, I'm not comparing cherries and strawberries, I'm comparing two games with the same goal.

And I insist that Dungeon World is inspired by 3.5 and not older editions. It's pretty clear by the mechanics they borrowed. And creative bankruptcy is inexcusable even in a "retro clone", you have to put your own spin on the original material in order to make it worthwile.

Halloween Jack posted:

quote:

I went to EDH night at my LGS yesterday. I'm a woman.
Here's a list of things that made me feel like I didn't belong there:
1) A player went on a tirade about how the EDH rules committee and EDH players generally are "pussies," "little pussies," or even "pussy bitches" because the rules are structured such that it's very hard for generals to be permanently exiled.
A hasty, "No offense to any of the females here," doesn't help much when you've used "pussy" pejoratively six or seven times in a row.
2) A player insisted that they should "let the lady" (me) go first. "We're all gentlemen here, right?" In turn, I insisted that, "I have no use for gentlemen. Please roll the die." This swayed him, but not so much that he didn't bring the topic of "the lady" going first back up when we started the second game.
He also called me a "lady" throughout. Some people might be okay with this. I had asked him not to. I prefer to be treated like a fellow Magic player, not like a lady.
3) I was dressed up because I had been conducting job interviews earlier that day. I also narrowly rode my Edric deck to victory. A player suggested that I have a sort of "tough woman act," going on. I think he meant it as a compliment, but I wasn't acting.
4) A player asked my partner how long he'd been playing and then added, "I assume you introduced her to Magic?" He didn't. He didn't even get me back into the game from a hiatus. When we explained that I had learned the game as a child, the other player was slow to understand that my partner had not been the one to teach me in elementary school.
5) One player helpfully used his tablet to keep track of life totals in a four player game. His background was Bayonetta's rear end. Another player used that Steve Argyle Chandra-and-Liliana-in-Leeeesbians playmat. The active sexualization of women did not wake me feel very welcome.
These are only things that happened on one night. There are even some things I know I'm forgetting. I'm not going to quit Magic, or EDH, or even attending that store. But, if you're wondering, here are some reasons why more women might not play Magic.
EDITED: Some wording. EDITED: A clarification: I like everyone I'm writing about. They are all nice guys who are fun to play with. I would like to continue to play with them. I would like to play with them much better if this sort of bullshit didn't happen, though.

quote:

Saying "pussy" is sexist? Cmon... When someone calls someone a dick, I dont run around calling them sexist. Pussy can easily mean a cat too...
Pictures of girls? Stay away from the magazine isle..
Getting mad cause of a terrible attempt at chivalry?
All in all, this seemed like some harmless dudes being polite and your jumping all over them. They are not being rude or discriminating against you. And I think you should get some tougher skin cause this is hilariously tame. No way should the world have to censor itself to your likeing.
Get over yourself and stop looking for things to be sexist...

quote:

Rusty, I am glad you play M:TG, the more the merrier imho. however that being said this post makes you sound like a spoiled entitled little girl who can't take compliments and is offended by other people choices for words and art. There is no positive comments at all in your post only negatives, if that's is all you seen at your LGS then for your peace of mind and everyone else as well don't go back.

quote:

Okay so here's the deal, you're acting badly, and you should feel bad.
Ever call someone a dick for being well... A dick? Of course you have. That's not sexist its not sexism. Get over yourself.
The guy was trying to be nice after all society teaches us (going to use this term to mean guys here. Just want to make sure you can follow) ladies first. That's not sexist either. That's a societal expectation. Sure he pushed too long but that's not sexism either.
You got mad that someone who doesn't know you thought it was an act because you showed up in a certain way? That's not sexism honey, it happened to me too and im about as much of a guy as it gets. When you show up to a casual environment dressed outside the norm it says you are trying to elicit a certain response. Its not on him it's not on you, it merely is.
Maybe he's trying to make conversation? Or see if your partner was your boyfriend without being blunt about it. Get over yourself.
Guess what? This one is important, its their poo poo. They can do what they want, have whatever they want as their backgrounds/playmats. If you dont like it that sucks. That's the nifty thing about it being theirs. By the way liking women isn't sexism or being sexist. If they like the aesthetic value and it causes no harm to you, then they've done nothing wrong.
Basically you wanted brownie points for no reason. Congrats. You're a cancer in the community.

Plague of Hats posted:

I'm starting to feel like Christmas Eve is "rerun Plague of Hats' posts" day!

quote:

DECK OF CHRISTMAS THINGS

Star (KD) - Gain Favor of a Good-aligned supernatural being (Deva, Solar, etc.)
Moon (QD) - Females gain +1 WIS, Males +1 STR (can exceed maximums)
Star (JD) - Automatically know the path to the next place, thing or locale
Comet (2D) - Gain knowledge of an ambush or trap ahead
Throne (KH) - Automatic save versus next peril or death
Key (QH) - Acquire deed to small fortress and land in northern climes
Knight (JH) - Next Melee is at 8th level fighter ability
Wisdom (KC) - Next save versus spells at +3
Menorah (QC) - Undying continual light spell on any 1 object
Skull (JC) - automatic save versus next attack by undead, or resist 1 level drain from same
Hooves (2C) - Summon a flying reindeer once anually to carry you wherever you wish to go
North Pole (KS) - Immunity to cold for one day
Euryale (QS) - Fully cure/heal all injuries, insanities, etc.
Rogue (JS) - largest type of Bag of Holding
Balance (2S) - Gain 5000 XP
Miser (J) - Donate treasure to feed/clothe poor in next town or village, or lose 10000 XP
Toymaker (J/TM) - Gain a +1 weapon (NSA)
Vizier (AD) - Gain +1 INT (can exceed maximum)
Idiot (AC) - Wander around next town, singing, demanding drink from passers-by
Fates (AH) - Next night slept, visited by three Ghosts. If attacked, all normal abilities apply; if not gain +1 WIS at end of night
The Gift (AS) - Gain 1 Level

Plague of Hats posted:

grognards.txt will decide when the paywall goes up or down!

cross ofth carpenter posted:

On Forums on 3.5, usually the topic of fighters and spellcasters (more narrowly wizards) with the most people saying that fighters are low tier
and don't do as well while magic-users dominate etc.

I think that is debatable and a good case could be made for fighters
and more narrowly against wizards but balancing the perceived power
some magic-users may have.

Now some aspects of this that are not considered are that
wizards in particular, perhaps due to their ego and power are
usually semi-antisocial and most likely to be feared and distrusted
by the community and society.

Whereas fighters, provided they have the same religion
as the community and are not a source of disorder are
likely to have the support and faith of the community
and society.

In addition wizards are physically not as strong,
which does have a major impact on survivability,
particularly in the levels to 10.

Another factor is the pyramid shaped scarcity of wizards by level.

The number of wizards of a given level is largely shaped like a
pyramid so that the higher the level, the less number of
wizards of that level exist so a 10th lvl wizard might exist
in a medium sized town but a 15th lvl wizard might only
exist in a much larger area and likely very few of them
would exist what to say of anything beyond that.

The scarcity of wizards is governed by another factor,
since the wizard is a knowledge based class and as
everyone knows in the D&D world of the middle ages
knowledge and learning were restricted to a few, the
wizard will most likely need an aristocratic background to
be able to acquire that knowledge and learning and
advance. Not something available to most people, but
only a select few individuals of aristocratic background.

Now different rule systems regard magic and spell casting
may exist, but it is not the case that a wizard is
able to use all of his spells at one, and the need
for scarce use of his prepared spells in a day
further limits his ability to be the dominant force
all the time or even most of the time.

That is why I think a good case can be made
for fighters and also the other non-magical
classes and against over-appraisal of
spell-casters which seems to be the case.

TwoSix posted:

Your argument in the opening post is primarily about world-building constraints. It's certainly easy to justify in the campaign world why wizards aren't the be-all and end-all class, because it's easy to tack on fictional constraints to NPC wizards.

In a 3.5 game where the players evaluate the rules with an eye towards effective tactics, and the social contract doesn't preclude acting in the most efficient manner to dispatch encounters, the spellcasters will dominate play from the mid-single digit levels onward.

cross ofth carpenter posted:

Well I still think that considering spellcasters
to completely dominate the game ignores
certain things. For example the way that the power of
classes is calculated is probably faulty in some ways.

A theoretical and hypotethical 18th lvl wizard or above
might be very powerful but the likelihood of one even
existing are pretty slim not to mention the tendency
of wizards towards isolation and becoming anti-social.

Most wizards who might exist if they are able and
above average are probably level 10. Certainly
not the dominating god that they are presumed to
be.

Another factor which in the psychology of wizards
is ignored is their tendency to go mad with delusions
of power and grandeur which is a very common trait
among them, particularly as it is reinforced by their
tendency towards isolation and becoming anti-social.

Their lack of contact with reality might lead them to
exaggerate their own powers.

TwoSix posted:

I'm not very comfortable with the argument that high-level wizards are balanced because high-level wizards don't actually exist.

Dandu posted:

Where in the Nine Hells are you getting this from? Not all wizards are Raistlin Majere, you know.

You might as well say that all high level fighters are ax crazy, mass murdering psychopaths who seek to conquer the world in a manner which would shame Genghis Khan and make Hitler weep. Or do you think it healthy to be a member of a profession that involves killing people for a living, and which requires you to kill a great deal of people to reach high levels?

cross ofth carpenter posted:

While all wizards might not be the archetypical wizard
who has delusions of power and grandeur,
I would they their class as a whole has a tendency towards
such a thing.

Particularly as they gain in level and therefore
believe that they can bend reality to their will
and see other people as instruments created
to fulfill their purposes and goals.

Not to mention the tendency towards isolation
particularly from society which manifests itself
in the wizard profession as a result of the nature of
the class itself (requiring much study in a library or so)
and also from the general mistrust towards magic-users
which does to some extent exist in the society of a D&D
world.

Not to mention that this distrust by society is further
reinforced by the tendency to see wizards as holding
the common man (considered to be most members of society) in contempt and being skeptical of and not adhering to the religion of the society.

Dandu posted:

A wizard's ability to impact the campaign setting is vastly superior to that of a fighter's. A fighter has two things he can do as a fighter: hit things or shoot things. Sure, he could try to raise an army, but that requires Charisma. He could try to lead an army, but that requires Int and Wis. As a fighter, your Strength, Dex, and Con scores are going to take priority over your mental stats - at least if you plan on fighting.

Meanwhile, the fighter's class abilities enable him to hit things better.

cross ofth carpenter posted:

Power which is the basic question between classes in the
D&D world depend on a lot of things.

For example, in the D&D world of the middle ages,
the basic form/structure of government is monarchy.

There is usually one religion to which conformity is
expected to be an accepted member of society.
Non-conformity means expulsion and banishment.

Wealth, aristocratic titles, barons and so forth are
another form of power.

Similarly common law (not the English), and the traditions
of the community are another.

In this world of feudalism and a knight owing
fealty to his lord.

Now a fighter and wizard exist within this world.

Now all classes have a social rank, and
fighters also do not necessarily think, plan
and fight alone.

Unless a wizard is considered to be one of the preceding
powers mentions such as a wealthy baron.

Although a wizard in this world could also be
considered to be a new force such as innovation
and an innovator for example Johannes Gutenberg
the inventor of the printing press or a force
which disturbs this feudal balance through some
innovation ushering in a new age.

Danbu posted:

A wizard could revolutionize the world, or, if high enough level, simply blast it to bits.

If you would like a demonstration, I could provide one.

n00bdragon posted:

@cross ofth carpenter , can you please stop using line breaks willy nilly? Just type normally in the text box and the message board will break when appropriate for you. Your posts are very hard to read.

cross ofth carpenter posted:

Well It seems pretty much like dogma so I will leave it there, although I will say that whether a class is powerful or weak or dominates the game depends on the DM and how powerful he allows the class to become. I don't think there is anything absolute about it, but since such a suggestion is received with so much hostility I don't think there is any point in arguing. I think that whether a class breaks the game or not depends on whether the DM allows it to, not something inherent in the game. But since any questioning of that assertion regarding fighters and spellcasters is received with so much hostility I will not bother making any more posts in the thread and simply consider this matter resolved or dropped.

ProfessorCirno posted:

So what fun should D&D support by default?

The fun of doing max damage against every enemy or the fun of having versimilitude?

Plague of Hats posted:

Anyway, here's some more recent Dungeon World groggery:

quote:

quote:

Do you have any criticisms about Dungeon World besides accusing the creators of unoriginal plagiarism and whining that you didn't enjoy playing it? Because if not I think this thread is done.

I'm sorry, are you a mod? Because otherwise I wouldn't say it's up to you to decide when the thread is done.

Anyway, all i see is unwillingness to discuss the flaws with this system, not one objective point has been made to counter my arguments. Like the fact that this system basically doesn't have a system.
I mean seriously, if all it takes to create a gaming system nowdays is putting together a bunch of terminology to cover the overuse of "common sense" and "ask your GM/players" and some tables to give a semblance of logic to the result of the rolls, anyone can do it and the rest is purely pr work, trying to get people to enojoy the idea above the execution and feel involved and invested enough to defend the resulting "thing" as if it was their own child.

I don't see any merit in Dungeon World. There is no lore or setting other then the most generic fantasy crap one can imagine, there are no mechanics more complex or inspired then what anyone could come up with in an afternoon and the artwork in the book is scattered all over the place. Like, why is there a goblin drawn in the bard's section of the manual instead of being next to the, oh I don't know, goblin paragraph? Has this been done by amatures on their free time?

Try tackling these issues if you want material to discuss, I'd be delighted to see how the hell can anyone defend this disaster.

quote:

The "plain language" of the Constitution was under tremendous debate within a short period of it being signed, when many of the signatories and drafters were still alive. You might as well say we can have the perfect society by living according to Wheaton's Law:"Don't be a dick." Well, that's a good principle, I concur. What does it MEAN?

...

I find it interesting: I have the exact same argument, just with different examples, over on RPG.net, every time someone brings up rules-light RPGs and proclaims, contrary to all experience, that all you need are "reasonable" players and the game won't devolve into screaming arguments about how far a drunken halfling can jump if he's got a broken ankle and is trying to carry a solid gold statue.

WakbothsDaughter on https://www.therpgsite.com posted:

A quick note on me, since this is all of the 3rd post I've made here and I am by nature a lurker (partly because of anger management problems) but I am an ex-Muslim, generally interested in religious high culture and mythology but leaning strongly towards atheism and materialism (in the matter and money sense). My literary background starts with Conan, it was how I learned to read English (thus my questionable grammar). I ended up here because I foundthe RPG.net wonking funny and usually pretty accurate, like the Pundit I hate fashionable atheism and pseudo-sceptics who make arguments so bad they make religion look good.

But this isn't about RPG.net, it's about the rpg community in general. I'm pretty young and have limited experience in playing. I started with old D&D (Moldvay and then 1e) and, though I didn't know there were alternatives, the style he ran was very Grog: no world leveling to you, a lot of sandbox exploration, a lot of running away and trying to get rich without offending the wrong barons. My own style is similar, but with an added emphasis on religion and economics, and system wise I am starting to want to play some of the BRP stuff I've got.

As I understand it, there was a time when sword & sorcery, hexcrawling and politicking were the norm for rpgs in general, whether Traveller or Runequest. To my mind this involves the most literal roleplaying, no meta-narrative rammed up your butt, no magical hero points to save you from bad decisions, and a general derision for people who cried about getting crippled by an arrow in RuneQuest (next time I say take cover, TAKE COVER!)

Now practically every Youtube channel, forum, blog and hobby shop game is filled with GMs who think that running a game is railroading your players into some novella you're too poor a writer to have published, and players who are the whiniest, laziest bastiches all trying to be more speshul than the last guy (they're special alright, like Goodwill employees). They get visibly angry if you suggest you actually enjoy deadly combat, permanent consequences, gold for XP and Vancian magic. And God forbid your game/setting isn't egalitarian to the liking of their Humanazi standards (much less your personal views!) I once had one of them (a man, mind you) practically lose his mind at a hobbyshop in Portland because I gave human females a STR penalty and discouraged them from taking the Fighter class for historical/cultural reasons. Does this idiot even know what 'historical' means? I gave him the example of me - 4'10" and under a buck - as a clear example of why such penalties were credible. I wonder what he'd think if I told him that we also give Asians a lower SIZ roll than Scottsmen in BRP games. He probably would have had an aneurysm.

I don't think these people are interested in RPGs so much as group therapy, so they can use fantasy to pat themselves on the back and handwave away the fact that reality doesn't agree with their neurotic fixations.

quote:

quote:

You realize how absurd it sounds when you tell people they aren't immersed in their characters when they just told you they are, right? You realize it sounds kinda patronizing and one-true-way-y?

Do you realize how absurd it is to tell me that you can immerse in your character while interacting with rules your character has absolutely no association with? That's like saying that you're totally in my house while you're out in the backyard. It's literally not possible--it's not a question of feel or "you can do this thing and I can't." It's a contradiction, so there's no possibility for you to be able to do it.

Being immersed in your character cannot happen while you, the player, are interacting with meta-mechanics. You can only be immersed in your character while you are interacting with mechanics your character can interact with. You cannot alter the setting while being immersed in your character because your character cannot do that (barring games with unusual settings or conceits, of course). You cannot be immersed in your character while you're making your character fail at something they want to succeed in to fuel up special benefits for later because your character wouldn't do that and cannot make the connection between failure now and success later.

These things are opposites.

quote:

quote:

Immersion is a state of mind. How can you possibly verify whether or not someone experiences a specific state of mind? You can't just throw your own personal definitions of experiences at people to invalidate what they're telling you they experience. Well, I mean, you CAN, but you come off as silly and patronizing, so... maybe don't? Maybe just take people at their word when tell you they're immersed?

I mean, imagine if someone said "I have fun playing game X" and I jumped in with "that's not possible, game X is not a fun-producing game, that's a contradiction." I would sound ridiculous and dickish to boot, right?

It's a lot more like someone saying, "I went to McDonalds and they made me a Whopper." No, no they didn't. It is literally impossible. They do not serve that. They could have made a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, which is a lot like a Whopper, but it's not actually a Whopper.

There are many kinds of immersion. Immersing in the setting or the story is very different than immersing in the character, but it is very easy for people to miss that fact and classify all immersion into a single lump and say "I'm immersed, so this doesn't harm immersion." No, it doesn't harm some subsets of immersion, but it is an obstacle for others. If you're flying a plane, a spike strip is no obstacle for you but if I'm on the ground it is. I might be able to avoid it or get a certain kind of tire that's more resistant to punctures or something, but it is undeniably an obstacle.

I really should have just let this go. I've never been anything but frustrated talking about character immersion here. What was I thinking?

Sorry, "Hooray for meta-mechanics! They are always good no matter what! People who don't like them just don't understand. FATE, X World, and Cortex Plus are the best games ever made." Better?

quote:

quote:

I'm still waiting for you to write an RPG, Shad.

why? there is no new RPG to be written, only gimmicks on existing ideas. and RPG is either a giant MTP like storyteller games, or some dice rolling competition like 4th; or something in between.

or worse Weis's SAGA system nonsense where you use cards instead of dice and the cards tell you what you do and the player doesn't even really get a choice in the matter.

i pretty much said before what i would do. take the good stuff from AD&D and put it back to OD&D simplicity.

Gizmoduck_5000 posted:

Wakboth's Daughter Insanity

The Traveller posted:

A bit too coherent. I'm guessing this is one of ettin's buddies rearranging the deckchairs.

quote:

As for the OGL it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It saved D&D from Hasbro.

quote:

look, everybody, sjw goons throwing a tantrum.

Throw, goons, throw.

quote:

What does SJW mean?

quote:

"social justice warrior". Personally, I prefer to use the term Pseudoactivist. The former is far too flattering, and doesn't the capture the fundamental quality of these guys, as opposed to some real-life activists out there, which is that the Pseudoactivists are faking it, far more interested in appearances and being seen than anything important.

RPGPundit

Vienna Circlejerk posted:

Yes, noted Social Justice Warrior headquarters SOMETHINGAWFUL DOT COM, at the forefront of political correctness with radical notions such as "roleplaying rape is creepy."

TGD's Shadzar on James Wyatt posted:

He goes on like a proper Christian to say you should only follow his religion and all others should just conform to it in some way with his unified cosmology. You know, like those missionaries whose main goal in times past (and probably now too) was not to teach new things to people and underdeveloped countries like better hygiene and such for the sake of health, but only to convert them to Christianity.

so DDN will be James World and every one else just gets the privilege of playing in it, where he mixes everything up and destroys all previous settings from Planescape (who needs it anyway) to Ravenloft, to Krynn, to Athas. all worlds ar the same, only the names have changed to protect the innocent. those settings and cultures in them and uniqueness's that he sends off to death camps.

no matter what your pantheon contains, it is just the local name of some deity (Zeus/Jupiter) that is pretty much identical in every way across D&D, and thus all races are the same making all halflings become kender. All the worlds are only mirror shards that reflect each other with slight changes but are jsut really shadows of the ONETRUE D&D world.

Sick



so where are these modules to allow people to play what they want, is everything only offers ONE options to pick from? are the "core" books going to be bloated with multi-setting crap to tell how this dwarf from that setting is now treated as the dwarf found in FR, the dark elves are now all drow (oh wait, they already did this), and that warforged actually existed all along on FR as the sundering strives to FIX what the Spellplague caused to FR? because you know, when jsut a gleam in Gygax/Arnesons shared eye and before Hellcow could even write a thing about them, warforged alwayts existed in Blackmoor (maybe) and Oerth (golem anyone? not whatever warforged baggage carries with it from eBerron).

You Gone Too Far

James is just one grey hair away from becoming Jack Chick at this point.

quote:

Simulation, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing. Additional abstraction can make it feel 'gamey'. I imagine that there isn't really that much difference between stabbing someone with a knife, a spear, a sword, or shooting them with a bullet - in all cases the physiological damage is going to be similar - so you could probably make them all the same and be more simulationist rather than less. In this case, even though reinforcing differences in weapons might actually be less simulationist, it actually makes the world feel 'more real'. Even if these differences are 'imaginary', positing them to exist helps create the illusion that these things are really different from each other.

But there really is a thing called 'gun porn'. It's not 'porn', but people are really interested in differences between weapons. There are the same things with cars (gearheads) and computers. For people that care about these differences, reflecting differences between them is important - if you posit that Yugo has the same performance characteristics as a Lamborghini, you will offend people that know and care about the performance of these vehicles.

While interest in medieval weaponry is NOT necessary to enjoy RPGs, the group that likes weaponry overlaps with the group that plays RPGs significantly enough that further abstraction is probably not worthwhile. If you have a sense of what you hope to gain, you might consider it, but ultimately, I don't think that 'wargaming' is reinforced by different weapon values.

quote:

3e did have more use variety (and has the least bad weapon list), but it also shrank that horrible list of lovely weapons that shadzar posted (even accounting for his randomly repeating various sword types, and including ones that the even the 1e and 2e PHs never bothered with).

But... there is still a fair amount of poo poo that no one bothers to use in the 3e weapon list unless special versions pop up.

On the other hand, I believe 4e has the shortest and simultaneously worst weapon list, because there is exactly zero reason to use anything that isn't the best, and the 4e weapon list can be unmistakenly ranked from best to worst no matter what the criteria is.