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Halloween Jack posted:Evil Mastermind deserves applause for saving Wick's smug, rambling, self-aggrandizing review of D&D 3rd edition. Ah yes, the start of my "illustrious" g.txt career. I do wish I had the foresight to save the full MST3k-ified version, though. Seriously, though, everything in Play Dirty is loving terrible. I honestly can't imagine that anyone really played in games like that, "point of pride" or not. e: also Etherwind still owes me $10 for that post.
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Dec 3, 2014 16:31
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I know you had to edit the heckling out of that review, but I'm pretty sure the "every sentence is its own paragraph" is Wick's own style. He is loving terrible about that.
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Dec 3, 2014 16:35
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Halloween Jack posted:Evil Mastermind deserves applause for saving Wick's smug, rambling, self-aggrandizing review of D&D 3rd edition. I love the fact that he first admonishes someone for writing a review of his RPG Orkworld without having even played it and then goes on a rant saying "Well D&D 3e is really bad and dumb, I couldn't even get around to playing it because just reading it made me mad." This just makes me wonder: John Wick and Gareth Skarka (also mentioned in that "review") are both pretty infamous in RPG circles these days even though they apparently started out by doing some pretty okay elfgames. Question is, who among our current generation of RPG designers is going to be the next Wick/Skarka who burns all bridges and turns out to be a huge gaping rear end in a top hat?
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Dec 3, 2014 16:41
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I really like the nested no-win options that Wick's players are presented with. He wants to challenge you, to push you to edge of what you and your character can do - but if you respond to that challenge by trying to up your game and going back to the rulebooks and trying to get an advantage, well now you're a filthy "min-maxxer" and "rules lawyer" and rules lawyer and he has carte blanche to openly gently caress you over because, hey, munchkin. Or, as noted above, if you respond to Wick's taking every kind of character hook as a weapon to be used against you by creating a featureless mysterious loner character, well, he has ways of dealing with "roll-player not ROLE-player" types like you. And on and on. So the only way to succeed in his games is to take his crap and take it and take it and take it until he gets tired (or he senses a full table revolt is in the offing) and lets you win and hooray look at all the adversity you passed through, that's what makes a real hero who has EARNED it! He reminds me of some of the people who produce or defend exploitation movies or comics or whatever, where the female character is luridly abused and kidnapped and raped and terrorized until the final few minutes where she turns the tables and exacts bloody vengeance on her tormentors, and then pointing to that last scene as proof that the movie was actually about the triumph of a Strong Female Character and is really a feminist piece of work.
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Dec 3, 2014 16:54
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Ratpick posted:I love the fact that he first admonishes someone for writing a review of his RPG Orkworld without having even played it and then goes on a rant saying "Well D&D 3e is really bad and dumb, I couldn't even get around to playing it because just reading it made me mad." And in Wick's slight defense: the metaplot turn for 7TH SEA where the setting turns out to actually be about Men In Black fighting an invasion by Cthulhu was perpetrated long after he'd stopped working for the line.
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Dec 3, 2014 17:03
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AmiYumi posted:I just looked up the card: it's Bayushi Kachiko Experienced 2, and it's "Wick's [an] rear end (something?)". Definitely not "hole", but too smudgy for me to make out. Yeah, that's the problem with writing this over the course of a day or two, I wrote that, went "I'm pretty sure 'sucks dick' isn't accurate, but I'll look it up in a moment" and then forgot. Point is: Matt Wilson was really, really unhappy with John Wick.
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Dec 3, 2014 17:40
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19 hours Play Dirty part 9: "Being a hero doesn’t mean you live to see the end of the story. Ask Moses about that." So, this article is themed amongst challenging three player assumptions. He first describes a- - Carter story- - ngh- - where Carter fools a group of superheroes to beating up some bad guys for money but it turns out they were just eliminating the rivals for Hunter Rose!  Episode 7: What's It Worth? Player Assumption #1: They're always doing the right thing. Wick gives us a scenario where the PCs wake up without memories in a space station where everything has been murdered and space spiders have infested everything. They find out they were mercs there to steal spider serum from a research center and who killed everybody and they had amnesia because- well he really doesn't say but I think the spiders had a thing to do it with it? Anyway, the PCs have spiders who have taken over their ship and another kill team on their way after them. So they have to find a way to team up with the spiders and survive! This is a little cheap, because it starts with the players as bad guys in medias res. The bait and switch story was more interesting, even if the presence of Carter tends to occlude anything interesting Wick has to say. Player Assumption #2: The players are the protagonists. This one has the PCs traveling overland and then their guide abandons them in the wilderness without supplies. John Wick posted:How did this happen? The players treated the NPC like... well, like most players treat NPCs: a pile of bantha poo-doo. So, he left ‘em. Alone in the dark. That's a fair scenario, wait don't reach for the rear end in a top hat dial, Wick! John Wick posted:And while they’re out in the woods, the Ranger saved the kingdom, married the king’s daughter and stand in line to inherit the throne. Oh, you had to turn up the rear end in a top hat dial to 11... oh... well... time to rape some PCs, I guess. John told me to!  Player Assumption #3: The world revolves around us. John Wick sez: if you're not willing to die for your cause, you're not a hero, and oh, if you're a hero, you're going to die for your cause. And if you're not a hero you're just game meat. Seriously. John Wick posted:I’ve GM’d for groups who thought having big guns made them heroes. I introduced them to guys with bigger guns. They weren’t heroes. They were Swiss cheese in seconds. On to the next one. Next: "'Your head explodes,' I told him. 'You’re dead.'"
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Dec 3, 2014 17:50
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Didn't he claim that someone sent him a virus that deleted 'ork*.*'? I remember thinking Orkworld was an interesting concept, but then bam! All work erased and undone, oh no!
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Dec 3, 2014 17:54
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Ratpick posted:This just makes me wonder: John Wick and Gareth Skarka (also mentioned in that "review") are both pretty infamous in RPG circles these days even though they apparently started out by doing some pretty okay elfgames. Question is, who among our current generation of RPG designers is going to be the next Wick/Skarka who burns all bridges and turns out to be a huge gaping rear end in a top hat? Who's running the Exalted kickstarter again? quote:I’ve GM’d for groups who thought having big guns made them heroes. I introduced them to guys with bigger guns. They weren’t heroes. They were Swiss cheese in seconds. Every time he talks there should be a window superimposed in the corner of the screen that's just two little kids playing pretend superhero fight. Like one says "I'm Deadpool and I have a cool super gun" and his big brother says "Well I'm SuperDeadpool and I have a better supergun and also I can fly." theironjef fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 17:57
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Ratpick posted:This just makes me wonder: John Wick and Gareth Skarka (also mentioned in that "review") are both pretty infamous in RPG circles these days even though they apparently started out by doing some pretty okay elfgames. Question is, who among our current generation of RPG designers is going to be the next Wick/Skarka who burns all bridges and turns out to be a huge gaping rear end in a top hat? But seriously, I would look for it from people who can generate buzz because they worked for a big company, but screw up their Kickstarter due to lack of experience with new media and marketing. I remember there was some concern over Cook and Cordell's collaboration, but that turned out fine, didn't it?
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Dec 3, 2014 18:02
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I don't know what games were available when he wrote that bit on hit points, but stuffing those means of damage tracking into games that aren't designed with those in mind is dumb. You look hard enough, you can find games like RuneQuest that have some crunchy combat, or Savage Worlds that tracks the 'You've been hit. You've been hit harder. You've been hit dead' style and accounts for it in the rules. Shoehorning it in will upset balance and lead to bad things. P.S. Hunter Rose would just murder his rival and Wick's GMPC. EDIT: I would totally play a game where you are monster's trying to keep the authorities off your monster-frat house while you try to get an education. Sounds like M&OCT Goes to College.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:05
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"Sir, the Wendigo succumbed to his insatiable hunger and ate another freshman home-ec class." "Monster House!!!!"
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Dec 3, 2014 18:10
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Unknown Armies is an actually good game where tracking HP is done in secret by the GM and players are given descriptions of how badly they're being beaten. It's also a game that opens the combat rules with a list of ways to avoid getting into a physical fight in the first place. Dropping that sort of thing into a game where you fight monsters and supervillains is completely asinine, but that's the John Wick Way.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:11
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Till two days ago, I didn't know who John Wick was (though I remember someone, somewhere recommending a book called Play Dirty). Right now all I have in my head is an image of a jaded, unpopular but prideful nerdy kid in the throes of puberty discovering that the universe is apathetic and nobody is special. And like every teenager, he needs to share this discovery with all the poor shmucks who don't get it(which is everyone else, of course). And doing it in the most oblique manner possible, because if you were smart like him, you'd get it, otherwise, you're stupid and deserve to suffer. And because talking at people wasn't working so well normally, he decided that he needed a captive audience. What better way than being a GM? I'd call this picture of a smug 12-year old with pasted on goatee and mustache hilarious, but given that John is probably over 50, it's kinda sad in an "intensely annoying person suffering from a severe mental illness" sort of way. Eide fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 18:18
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Bieeardo posted:I remember thinking Orkworld was an interesting concept 
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Dec 3, 2014 18:21
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quote:I know what you need. Oh, yes. I do. Is he aping Warren Ellis's 'pompous dickhead' style here? Or is Ellis a fan of his? Who came first?
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Dec 3, 2014 18:22
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Eide posted:Right now all I have in my head is an image of a jaded, unpopular but prideful nerdy kid in the throes of puberty discovering that the universe is apathetic and nobody is special. And like every teenager, he needs to share this discovery with all the poor shmucks who don't get it(which is everyone else, of course). And doing it in the most oblique manner possible, because if you were smart like him, you'd get it, otherwise, you're stupid and deserve to suffer. John Wick is the Monsterhearts Witch.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:22
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Clipperton posted:Is he aping Warren Ellis's 'pompous dickhead' style here? Or is Ellis a fan of his? Who came first? Ellis is a better writer, though.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:25
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Of all the people who shamelessly ape Hunter S. Thompson's persona, Ellis is the only one who's good at it. Probably because he knows that Spider Jerusalem being an arrogant angry smuglord isn't always a good thing.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:30
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Mors Rattus posted:Ellis is a better writer, though. I don't know if this is 'damning with faint praise' or not.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:44
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Halloween Jack posted:Avery McDaldno changes their name to Skylar McDudebro and launches a disastrous Kickstarter campaign for Monsterpledge, the game where you defend your fraternity from a police investigation. Kurieg posted:"Sir, the Wendigo succumbed to his insatiable hunger and ate another freshman home-ec class." Brb, making the PbP thread right now. Fake edit: Not really, but poo poo, I'd play the hell out of a game like that.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:46
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FMguru posted:Greg and Sandy did it better almost 20 years beforehand Well, I mean, here's a preview of Play Dirty 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRrXeMoJAAo&t=93s And here's:    To be fair, Wick presents it in a different way which is interesting (maybe not practical, but interesting), but it's not a new idea in the slightest.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:58
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Kurieg posted:"Sir, the Wendigo succumbed to his insatiable hunger and ate another freshman home-ec class." "Do they call you Flounder because you're from Innsmouth?" I just don't know what system you would use for it.
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Dec 3, 2014 19:08
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Clipperton posted:I don't know if this is 'damning with faint praise' or not. I legitimately enjoy most of Ellis' work, and Planetary is my favorite comic ever. Dude's definitely got an ego, though.
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Dec 3, 2014 19:12
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Alien Rope Burn posted:To be fair, Wick presents it in a different way which is interesting (maybe not practical, but interesting), but it's not a new idea in the slightest.
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Dec 3, 2014 19:15
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Tasoth posted:"Do they call you Flounder because you're from Innsmouth?" Monster Hearts, clearly.
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Dec 3, 2014 19:17
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FMguru posted:And on and on. So the only way to succeed in his games is to take his crap and take it and take it and take it until he gets tired (or he senses a full table revolt is in the offing) and lets you win and hooray look at all the adversity you passed through, that's what makes a real hero who has EARNED it! That's it. That's all it took to make me realize that GM sadism-tripping was getting in the way of everyone else having fun. Man, Reverse Dungeon was a trip. It's somewhere down the list of "if I ever break my legs or something and have a bunch of downtime" books I want to review. It even classified the PC monsters by how useful their abilities were to PCs, rather than by raw stats - 3e/3.5 barely remembered to do that!
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Dec 3, 2014 19:19
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I finally got around to listening to System Mastery and I really like it. The first couple episodes were okay. Then I was totally sold on listening to every episode by the conversation in the middle of the Floating Vagabond episode about how humor is actually hard and traditional RPG system design actively fights trying to do interesting things. I like hearing my biases and opinions affirmed!
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Dec 3, 2014 19:30
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
EDIT: Also have you gotten to the chapter that contains the only sensible advise though Wick treats it like a stroke of genius that its still pretty obnoxious? theironjef posted:Who's running the Exalted kickstarter again? MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 19:34
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17 hours Play Dirty part 10: "Suddenly, I feel like the Crypt Keeper." Wick, at the end of chapter 7, said there would be tricks for players. We don't get that. Instead we get some themed articles based on movie conventions. He notes some of these require players who are aware of the trouble they're getting into, and not to just spring TPKs on people. Episode 8: Let's All Go to the Movies! The first is having a time bomb planted in you, much like Escape From New York. He points at it as a way of focusing players, creating a short-term game, and seeing what people do when facing imminent doom. (The fact that the protagonist of the movie walks away alive and smug is dutifully ignored.) He talks about a Cyberpunk game he ran for a year which he ended by setting down an egg timer, and each hour a PC could explode, booby-trapped by the corporation they had worked for. Each hour a character died, they worked out they couldn't survive, but the last character was able to get to the villain in time to go boom. Which, at the least, is pretty Cyberpunk, I have to agree.  The second he brings up is the idea of noir films as a search for self-discovery, bringing in Angel Heart as an example, where the protagonist slowly discovers he made a terrible deal with the devil. John goes to a Marvel Super Heroes game where PCs played Heroes for Hire sorts. If you've gotten this far, you know where this is going; they do jobs for the Kingpin and Doctor Doom, then the Avengers show up to punch them. So it goes. The third film he brings up is Groundhog Day, using an example of a time he wanted to run Over the Edge and people wanted to play AD&D. Well, far be it from Wick to bow to player desires. Instead, he had them trapped in a time loop until one of them suicides and ends up waking in a lab in the Over the Edge setting. So it's not about Groundhog Day, but questioning the nature of reality or something and fuggit movin' on. He also brings up a Chill game where he brought in an Over the Edge scenario where the PCs have amnesia (somehow) and have spooky adventures until a Mysterious Figure lures them in with the promise of answers only to reveal the true masterminds which were the players all along and are given a gun- John Wick posted:Did they pull the trigger? Sorry. I don’t kiss and tell. I considered including an animated gif of somebody flipping the bird here but I think I'll restrain myself, it might look like I'm flipping the reader off. There are a few more examples of adapting movies to different settings (I do like the Scent of a Woman ripoff where you're taking a retired and cursed adventurer out for one last romp). On to the next one. Next: "When Viscicitude came to town (a nasty vamp disease for those who don’t know), I started giving out the ones with the crunchy middle."
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Dec 3, 2014 19:40
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Tasoth posted:"Do they call you Flounder because you're from Innsmouth?" IOU in GURPS 2E supports this.
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Dec 3, 2014 19:45
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MadScientistWorking posted:Also have you gotten to the chapter that contains the only sensible advise though Wick treats it like a stroke of genius that its still pretty obnoxious? You'll have to be more specific! There are a number of interesting ideas, I think! Though some are: A) now old hat due to the articles being about ten years old B) wrapped in a veneer of distracting smugness C) taken one step too far to show off
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Dec 3, 2014 19:47
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I considered including an animated gif of somebody flipping the bird here but I think I'll restrain myself, it might look like I'm flipping the reader off. The book already flips the reader off so it's not an issue.
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Dec 3, 2014 19:49
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I think the very first "Play as monsters" game was, well, "Monsters, Monsters" which came out in 1976, so it's basically something that's been around since the dawn of the hobby, yeah.
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Dec 3, 2014 20:03
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The third film he brings up is Groundhog Day, using an example of a time he wanted to run Over the Edge and people wanted to play AD&D. Well, far be it from Wick to bow to player desires. Instead, he had them trapped in a time loop until one of them suicides and ends up waking in a lab in the Over the Edge setting. So it's not about Groundhog Day, but questioning the nature of reality or something and fuggit movin' on. I remember this being an adventure in Shadis magazine way back in the day, so Wick may have actually published this (it even has the players waking up in Al Amarja), but I don't remember the "wake up" trigger being character suicide, instead it was the looping "simulation" glitching out.
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Dec 3, 2014 20:06
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Plague of Hats posted:I finally got around to listening to System Mastery and I really like it. The first couple episodes were okay. Then I was totally sold on listening to every episode by the conversation in the middle of the Floating Vagabond episode about how humor is actually hard and traditional RPG system design actively fights trying to do interesting things. Thanks! We're still having fun with it. Reading Maid right now, so maybe not so much fun as stomach-turning revulsion.
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Dec 3, 2014 20:58
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Evil Mastermind posted:I remember this being an adventure in Shadis magazine way back in the day, so Wick may have actually published this (it even has the players waking up in Al Amarja), but I don't remember the "wake up" trigger being character suicide, instead it was the looping "simulation" glitching out. This was written up as a half-page adventure seed in the printing of OTE I've got around here. The author was kind enough to tell you to make absolutely certain that none of the players were fantasy-prone or on mind-altering substances when springing it on the PCs.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:11
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hectorgrey posted:Monster Hearts, clearly. Monsterhearts is too concerned with battling your monsteritude and trying to find a place. You'd need something more situated to hijinks because, hey, Burblex the Omniquizical just ate the freshman who has been writing all your essays this semester and the Wolfman is going to make you and your buddies look like chumps if you don't get up there and challenge his kegstand record. Also, the fact that Wick was proud enough of throwing a game based tantrum because his play group was afraid to jump on to any idea he had is kind of infuriating. It just comes across as breaking people's poo poo until you get your way.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:13
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FMguru posted:I really like the nested no-win options that Wick's players are presented with. He wants to challenge you, to push you to edge of what you and your character can do - but if you respond to that challenge by trying to up your game and going back to the rulebooks and trying to get an advantage, well now you're a filthy "min-maxxer" and "rules lawyer" and rules lawyer and he has carte blanche to openly gently caress you over because, hey, munchkin. Or, as noted above, if you respond to Wick's taking every kind of character hook as a weapon to be used against you by creating a featureless mysterious loner character, well, he has ways of dealing with "roll-player not ROLE-player" types like you. And on and on. So the only way to succeed in his games is to take his crap and take it and take it and take it until he gets tired (or he senses a full table revolt is in the offing) and lets you win and hooray look at all the adversity you passed through, that's what makes a real hero who has EARNED it! What it reminds me of is the behavioural pattern of a bully. Anything you can do to try to solve a "problem" is ultimately wrong, because the bully just presented the "problem" as a way to lord over you through emotional abuse. That's not to say that John Wick is a bully though. He just happens to act in a very bully-like manner, and then brags to everyone about how he acted in a bully-like manner, complete with counting his victories in people he's psychologically bullied into having a miserable time. A far better example of what Wick seems to want to accomplish was done by (I think) Ken Hite; he proposed a game where the GM sat down with the players and roleplayed out a psychotherapy session where the PC's latest actions were questioned as if they were the actions of a delusional murderer. Not "why do you think you are a vampire?", but "why was it acceptable for you to kill three guys because one of them didn't defer to your vampire authority?". Notably, Hite's proposal was one step removed from the game you actually played; it was explicitly framed a different game entirely from the one where you played murderous vampires, and there were no consequences to the player characters in the vampire-game. All it did was to present the character's actions in a real-world context, to give the players a perspective of whom they were actually playing. Much like Violence: The Role-Playing Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed rubs your nose in the idolation of violent, psychotic criminals gamers often engage in as escapism. Unlike Wick's examples, however, there's also the knowledge that at the end of the day, you're free to go back to playing a murderous, psychotic vampire criminal and that's OK, as long as you can tell reality and fiction apart.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:15
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LatwPIAT posted:A far better example of what Wick seems to want to accomplish was done by (I think) Ken Hite; he proposed a game where the GM sat down with the players and roleplayed out a psychotherapy session where the PC's latest actions were questioned as if they were the actions of a delusional murderer.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:25
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