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The "lodged in firm and hard" was comedy, but if DoaM is a core concept, i.e. an option a fighter can choose, even if it's a GWF, then I'll probably pick it up.

If the option is languishing in a "sidebar in the DMG" somewhere, then I'll know WotC isn't serious about helping us bad dice rollers to play Fighters.

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The justification is that PCs are the heroes of the narrative, and that each has an individual human to manage a whole lot of bits and pieces. Those pieces need to be enjoyable for them to manage.

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There is that giant, gaping hole in the D&D as process simulation contention, of course, and then there is the "lesser one" of stamina. I've outlined the biomechanics and the biology of it multiple times now. Every martial exchange in real life depletes the actors involved such that they are more potentially susceptible to failure (primarily due to muscle and mental overiding the capacity to concentrate and thus to make the immediate, subconscious permutations required to coordinate a response; mostly the Orient and Decide but also the Act portions of the OODA Loop) in the subsequent exchanges. That is, until they, oh I don't know, "get their second wind"! Which just so happens to be a very real thing in martial endeavors (real both mentally and physically)!

But I guess fantasy worlds don't have OODA Loops, nor vasovagal responses, nor creatures with biology similar to our own and thus aerobic and anaerobic metabolism (and their exchanges, interfaces with other systems, and fallout)...because that would be unrealistic (?) and filled with "narrative contradictions."

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Well, good luck to you! Hopefully you'll enjoy Pathfinder. Though I bet there's a damage on a miss mechanic somewhere in there, too. Then you'll have to play GURPS!

Reene posted:

quote:

IMO, 4e hardly feels like D&D anymore. but that's just my opinion.

You can adequately describe it as "Someone took the Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords and turned it into a single-unit wargame"
It's a heavily gamist system, with absolute gently caress all as far as good systems for narrativism, but It's fun enough and serves it's purpose as a table top dungeon crawling combat game.

In 4e your leveling and class traits are basically picking a ToB Maneuver or Spell every other level, and a feat every level you don't get a power.
These powers can be either used At-will, once every fight (regardless of time between), or once a day.
Everything is clearly typed out and every ability boils down into "Damage + Status" and "Ability Modifier vs. one of 4 flavors of AC"
Status effects are all type-cast like that of a MTG card effect.

Like I said, It's great for what it is, and much more balanced (because it hardly gives you any room for min-maxing or optimization), but it's just not the system for me because it's too simple and I get the same thing out of it as playing one of the many 4e-based video games on the computer.

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The concern I and others have now is that it will show back up. And when it shows up in a core place like the fighter that it will show up in other places in future areas. Basically it is a tumor.

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As someone who is dealing with love ones with cancer and tumors, it most certainly is not.

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Many people do not really understand exactly what Roleplaying is, simply because they have not been a part of a Roleplaying group in an online game before, or in a Dungeons & Dragons pen and paper old school style gaming environment.

I think with Star Citizen offering up such a rich environment for RP with it's attempts at bringing a realistic environment and detailed ships and pilot trappings into it's game, that the boards could use a thread where there is discussion of exactly what "roleplaying" actually is, on the part of players and their interactions with one another.

A great many people assume that when you create a character in Star Citizen, you are automatically engaging in roleplay when you first have the character take a step.

After all, you are dressed in a space outfit, you are walking in a real looking hangar, and no doubt our voices will be different than our real voices In life. We will fly spaceships, which we can't do ourselves. Aren't we roleplaying by default?

This widespread belief neglects to consider what roleplay actually is.

There are several things which make roleplaying a much deeper and more immersive experience than simply "letting the game do all the roleplaying"- and that is all a player is doing in the above approach. There isn't any actual roleplaying happening at all.

Roleplaying, in it's most stripped down and basic essence requires EFFORT on the part of the player to "be" someone other than themselves. That is the single basic requirement of this idea.

So, there is no roleplaying element in letting the game make you look and sound like someone else. That is the computer working- not you. There is no roleplay involved in shooting spaceships, that's just you pointing, aiming and blasting things.

You could take away the spacesuit and avatar and shoot stuff in an arcade game at the local mall's change run game room and it would be the same thing- just less fancy. Neither are roleplaying.

***

Many people think that Roleplaying is some kind of difficult, educated, egg-headed thing that not everyone can be good at. From the outside, people who are roleplaying may seem aloof and distant, responding haughtily in character, or not wanting to be brought out of their in-character guise.

While it's true that there are egotistical bast*rds who play roleplaying games, you can find these in all game genres.

For the most part, people who are roleplaying want to keep in character because it's simply a lot more fun and realistic feeling than not being in character. They aren't looking down their noses at you, they are just involved in a different sort of rich gaming experience that gets screwed up when you are brought out of it abruptly.

The truth is, anyone can roleplay. It has nothing to do with being college educated or particularly gifted in any sense. In Star Citizen, you won't even have to be able to type fast, because we will have speech in game.

Roleplaying only requires the abilty to let loose a bit and try to interact as a fictional character of your own. It's very, very much like playing when you were a kid, with friends. The best way to learn to RP is to watch others doing it closely, and follow the same general approach with a character of your own making.

The one reason to actually do this is that roleplaying makes the gaming world unimaginably more interesting and realistic. It's more fun. More about that later.

Lots of folks get stuck on starting. How do I create a character?

Many don't give themselves credit for having an imagination. They think that because they are lousy artists, or have never acted in a play, that they will suck as a roleplayer. The truth is, most of the very best RPers I've witnessed playing have started their very first character in front of me, and found out that they love the idea, once they get started, and have gone on to rich careers with their characters, never "going back" to regular non-RP play. Roleplaying is an addictive, fun way to play "sandbox" and "entire world" games.

Anyone can roleplay- all it takes is the willingness to try.

It's best to have a basic idea of the character you want to play before you start. Some people want detailed backgrounds, with an idea of the upbringing, parents, history of their character.

For others, just starting with the idea that you are a jaded UEE junior officer, a young and enthusiastic son of a space trader, or an escaped slave who stole a spacehip is enough.

It's good to have a couple of character traits to work with to start. A certain laugh, a saying or two the character likes to use, a strong point, like being thrifty and some character flaws like being terrible at math, a basic distrust of others, or a fear for heights can make a starting character distinctive and give he or she a place to start.

One of the most interesting characters I ever met was a charismatic merchant called Nico Black on a Neverwinter Nights server. The player was new, but he did a great job. The guy was very friendly, but really a fantastic trader who would rob you blind. His character would find out where all the better weapons were owned, and made a fortune getting between people and hammering out sales of stuff he didn't own. On the surface he seemed like a friendly stranger in the land who was just getting to know everyone. He had several distinctive written physical habits- he stroked his chin in thought, he tended to throw out this distinctive smile and always carried a rapier with a jeweled handle he was always fiddling with. Eventually, he turned out to be a very evil, stealthy, assassin type- but no one really "knew" this about him, and he evolved into this secret role. It was interesting seeing him keep his veneer of his early, nicer self, even as he grew worse and worse at heart, and his temper would show through from time to time- breaking through his easy façade of good humor, he would fall into uncontrollable rages late in his career.

In any case, creating a few simple "rules" that define your basic character is all you need at the start. Taking that first step- walking up to another RPer and talking to them, not as yourself, but as your made up gal or guy, is the hardest part of the whole process- once you start that first conversation, others will help you to establish your characters as they answer and talk back to you.

It sometimes feels like that the answers your character responds back with come from somewhere else- not from you.

That's one of the real joys of roleplaying- seeing your character seem to come to life of it's own accord. You get to know them so intimately, that you respond intuitively for them without thinking about it, in an almost magical way.

And none of this happens- there is no roleplaying at all- unless you make the attempt.


***

Why should I roleplay at all where Star Citizen is such a rich game to begin with?

As I've touched on a couple of times before, roleplaying is a wonderful enhancer of feelings of realism. Instead of you just viewing what is happening- caring about your ship being blown up, for instance, but not really being that involved, because you are aware you are also eating pizza and half watching reality tv- you will find yourself 100% immersed when you are roleplaying a character you care about and are watching your friends characters, who you have interacted with in endless ways, being in peril, accomplishing great things, and generally "believing" in all that is going down.

Looking back myself over the past decades in which I've roleplayed in countless games, I find that these memories are not like fair memories of "gaming" at all. The times my comrades and I battled dragons or defended our fortress seem very real. They are hundreds of times more vivid in detail and circumstance because my comrades and I shared the experience with feelings of real care about the events.

A lot of times, telling the stories of past battles to newcomers to a guild or squad, around a campfire or table, especially seems to cement the realism of the events.

Somehow when you are telling those stories through the eyes, mouth and ears of someone other than yourself, surrounded by characters that shared these virtual adventures, the gaming world is enhanced, enchanted, brought to life in ways that are hard to fathom.

In short, roleplaying brings magic to your gaming like nothing else can.

***

And to sum up my thoughts on "what Roleplaying is"-

1. Roleplay is not a passive experience controlled by the computer. The trappings of the game are not active roleplay.

2. Roleplay requires other living beings who are also RPing roles. It is, more than anything else, an interactive endeavor. Npcs cannot really "react" to what you do spontaneously, making attempts to RP alone in SP games much less fullfilling and interesting.

3. Roleplaying requires no special skill- only the simple effort of trying.

***

Responses and thoughts are welcome!

ProfessorCirno posted:

A metaphorical one, of course it is. It's not serious like a real loved one getting sick, obviously not. But the analogy is sound I think.

Rygar;6321009 posted:

Honestly? They made a catastrophic error.

The main problem D&D has right now isn't "Playstyles", it's wildly different games in form and function. 1st edition, 3rd edition, and 4th edition aren't just "Playstyle" differences, there's an entirely different tone and design process behind each of them. I'll just leave it there for fear of edition arguements derailing where I'm going with this.

The problem this causes is that you have virtually irreconcilable groups, each group prefers a game that literally invalidates the others. Their design goal was to put a bunch of stuff into the books and let people argue at the table over which type of game they're going to play, effectively moving the edition wars to the tables.

This should be relatively fine with groups who only play at home, but is devastating to organized play and public game groups. If some Adventurer's League shop has 50% 3rd edition players and 50% 4th edition players, how do they handle the resulting ruckus about mechanics? Whatever ruling is made, half of the playgroup is likely gone. The other choice is to have two playgroups, but then you end up with friction.

Eventually what you have is: Arguements at the table resulting in negative experiences and eventually player attrition or complete collapse of the playgroup due to these problems. Worse, if the shop owner feels it is more hassal than it's worth, or that it is affecting his sales, he likely will just stop supporting Adventurer's League. That in turn reduces the visibility and accessibility of D&D, which is particularly bad because it isn't going to take long before people openly talk about how Pathfinder's organized play doesn't have these problems.

WOTC punted on the problem of differences in editions, opting to force tables to argue about what rules are used and ultimately what kind of game is played. Placing your consumers in uncomfortable positions, or worse confrontational positions, is a *very* bad idea. People will associate negative experiences with the game, and they will tell others about them.

WOTC never should have punted and made the tables decide how the game is played when they knew that they had three distinct and largely incompatible factions of customers.

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Exalted has always pointed out that rape is a viable method to break someone's will. The outrage here is a misunderstanding, imo. Rape is not the point in the game, breaking the victim is the point. That can be done with torture and social-fu as well as rape. Rape is just a tool, a method, and it deserves to be mentioned.

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For many, it wasn't that the charms set forth COULD be used for rape, it was that they HAD TO be used for rape. The people who were upset at the charms had very valid points: Most tables will restrict these charms, why not make them more broad so they do not ALWAYS have to be used for rape?

Those Charms listed seem more like flavor text to me, since they lack any mention of mechanics. It would make sense for someone called the Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears to use methods like rape, but those same Charms could be reflavored to use methods other than rape.

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These requests were ignored throughout nearly the entire discussion. This isn't about crafting a fantasy world in which rape doesn't exist, it is about allowing each table to either choose to incorporate it or not. You know, like good RPG designers do.

So don't use them. It's not like Holden is going to come to your house and beat you senseless if you don't use those Charms.

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Secondly, Exalted needs to stop mentioning rape, because (as mentioned nearly everywhere in this thread) RAPE IS NOT IMPORTANT TO THE GAME. It doesn't "deserve to be mentioned." It is unnecessary. 99% of Exalted games do not involve rape. I can't wait to try and convince my friends to play Exalted (a game I REALLY enjoy) and tell them, "Oh yeah, ignore pages X and Y. Those are rules for rape. The game really is cool though!"

No, rape is not important to the game. Nobody makes that claim but the complainers. However, rape is mentioned. In two charms for a single villain. There is no chapter of 'rape rules', there are no player Charms for rape. Seriously, you and your kind are getting bent out of shape because of a single paragraph in a 300 page or so book.

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Rape should be the default for the LOVER. Sex is what she's all about. That's her entire loving shtick. Hence the name LOVER.

Don't want rape to be the default? Don't use the Lover. Duh.

Jesus loving Christ, it's like common sense goes out the window when a pussy is somehow involved.

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Okay, let me spell out the loving logic for you, since you cannot grasp it over your butthurt.

A: Rape is an effective tactic for breaking someone's will. B: Rape is immoral. C: Villains use immoral tactics. D: Villains prefer effective tactics. E: The Lover is a villain. THEREFUCKINGFORE: The Lover would use rape.

Besides, where's the outrage over people using torture? Killing? Genocide?

There's not, because it doesn't let you white knight and show all the hordes of womens how enlightened you are, amirite?

Newsflash: you're still a geek in a basement.

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The only immaturity here is the complainers blowing things way out of proportion.

A villain called the Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears gets a couple mentions using rape to break victims. Suddenly the whole game is about rape and nothing else.

Grow up, and get over yourselves.

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- Imposing their will on their peers, like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, such that they wilt or naturally subordinate.

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- Free-running and climbing like the freakish athletes and Olympic gymnasts of the world (check youtube for the guy that climbs like a monkey!).

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- Literally shrugging off wounds that would mentally or physically cripple lesser folks, as the elite soldiers of this world do.

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- Having the patience, skill, and strategic acumen to lay in the same position, unnoticed, in the bush for 3 straight days, observing the enemy, and reporting back with a perfect conception of what they saw and extrapolation of what it means (or what is to come).

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- The absurd proprioception, spatial awareness and coordination to pull off the kind of amazing feats in a tangled, melee milieu that hockey players, soccer players, and fighter pilots pull off. Lionel Messi should not be an aberration. He should be the standard for mid-level D&D Fighters.

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- Inspiring their teammates and subordinates to be better than they can be by themselves, such that the whole becomes much greater. Like Messi or Jordan, Captain Winters of "Easy" Company, Erwin Rommel, Bernard Montgomery, George Patton, and Douglas MacArthur should be the normal deal for fantasy Fighters.

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No, the Fighter, as WotC has said, kills the WARLORD and takes his stuff. This will absolutely NOT be open to all classes. That is not how D&D works.

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This will be class or sub-class-based, period. The Bard in 5E doesn't operate this way, either - he's not, by the descriptions, a battle-leader type (even the more fight-y one isn't really a safe frontline combatant), whereas the Warlord was, and the Fighter, who now has his stuff, should be.

ProfessorCirno posted:

Lots and lots of fighter grog.

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Drizzt Do'Urden fans, do you find the books blatantly pro-negro? because this seems clearly evident to me since i read the first book. now being on book 6 of the Legend of Drizzt series, ive come to that absolute conclusion, after reading in the first chapter of The Halfling's Gem, how Drizzt would be even less welcomed in the "southern lands" for being a dark elf....

which really is quite sad, since Drizzt is a badass character, but the pro-black, "anti-racist" undertones really piss me right off.

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Are the books any good apart from that?

I find it uncomfortable when i've gotten into a book only for a new character to come in whose black, and then spend the rest of the book wishing he'd just get killed so i could carry on reading in comfort.

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oh they are great aside from that.

just to make it clear, it is still impossible to compare a drow elf to a ******. even negroes dont have skin as black as a drow. not to mention drow have a reknown of being one of the most intelligent and cunning races in all of Faerun. something negroes couldnt even dream of.

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I'm pretty sure that the books might represent a black trying to rise above the bad reputation of his race, and become a respectable person, which is possible, but highly unlikely that it will happen in real life. I think Salvatore is just trying to cast Drizzt as an "exotic" character with his black skin and whatnot. Also, think about the Night Elves from World of Warcraft, they have purple skin, but they are also clever, agile, and skilled with arms, not at all like blacks.

I will always hate R.A. Slavatore for making Drizzt though, if only because of all the level 10 Night Elf Hunters running around with names like "xxxxxxDrizztxxxx"

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I read most of the Drizzt books back in high school, and my opinion was that Drizzt is white in every aspect except his skin colour. He acts white, speaks like he's white, and thinks intelligently like a white man. There is nothing inherently "negro" about the Drow. They just have dark skin. That's the only similarity between drow and negroes.

The books aren't pro-negro at all. The part about him not being welcome in the southern lands could be a jab at the US south. Salvatore IS from the New England area if I remember right.

I've always considered Drizzt a dark-skinned white man. (elf) Therefore it doesn't bother me if he beds white women in the books. It's more the negative qualities in negroes that makes us dislike their race, and not the actual colour of their skin as the media likes to simplify it.

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I Really Hate Swine posted:

Swine Pseudo-Activism

So first we had Swine Pseudo-artistry, the white-wolf crowd going around trying to subvert gaming (and ultimately destroy all the parts of gaming they didn’t like) by claiming that RPGs have to be “works of art”, sophisticated sensitive and brilliant.

When that tactic failed, eventually they moved on to the Swine Pseudo-intellectualism: seeking to subvert gaming by claiming that RPGs had to be academic exercises, based on “Theories”, that rejected all the “incoherent” games that were merely about having fun, and that demanded that gaming be re-invented to suit the agendas of the self-styled intellectual elite at the Forge.

That has now fallen to pieces for the Swine as well. And I’ve been predicting that its only a matter of time before some creative Swine figure out some new angle that they think will win them that long-desired control, subversion, and destruction of all that’s good about the gaming hobby. I think that we may be seeing some of the Swine currently trying one of these angles out, in the form of Swine Pseudo-activism.

The Swine Pseudo-artists tried to mainly focus their assaults on the aesthetics of the game, on the setting, on things like product (with metaplot, etc), and the “fashion” of the game. When that failed, the Swine Pseudo-intellectuals put their primary focus on assaulting the foundational systems of the game, not just game mechanics but also the baseline mechanical assumptions of what defines an RPG, trying to change those definitions to suit their agenda. They were repulsed.

Now, they are going to try to subvert gaming by attacking neither setting nor system nor underlying definitions, but by attacking the social structures of the hobby; by accusing the hobby of perpetuating crimes against “social justice”, in other words the dominant morality as defined by a group of self-styled paragons of sensitivity in certain highly restricted bubbles of quasi-intellectual feminist-marxist liberalism; ironically, they’re taking something straight out of the Pat Pulling playbook by claiming that RPGs are immoral, these people who claim to love gaming. Strange way to show it.

The case bubble they’re working with is well-chosen by these Swine, starting out with one of the dubious undercurrents of the hobby and bringing up a subject no right-minded person could possibly find any question with: rape. There’s no debate on any side anywhere (except maybe among absolute lunatics) that rape is a terrible thing, so it’ll make a handy little word (as it has for second-wave feminists for decades now) to stretch, redefine and misuse as a bludgeon to try to push through an agenda. No one wants to be painted as being “for” rape.

And the target these people have set their eyes on, or rather the patsy they’re using as bait for bigger fish, is James Desborough, writer of a number of RPG products (in my opinion of questionable worth) like Nymphology, the Slayer’s Guide to Female Gamers; as well as some non-rpg products like “Hentacle”, the hentai tentacle-rape card game.
I want to clarify at this point that I’ve never bought any of those, or any of the other books in that kind of genre (the Book of Erotic Fantasy, etc). I’ve always found them pretty puerile and ridiculous; and I’d certainly agree that this kind of subject matter is of interest mainly to a sophomoric and infantile kind of mind. When I reviewed the “Courtesans” RPG I said as much.

But that’s neither here nor there; the Swine don’t give a gently caress about this guy or his books except as something that gives them the chance to draw attention to a bigger cause or movement, where they can be allowed to use “outrage” over “offensive attitudes” to dictate terms to the entire hobby and control the content of games, even get to censor who is hired to work in the hobby.

They didn’t want Desborough, they wanted Mongoose, and Steve Jackson Games, publishers who had sometime in the distant past hired him to write for them. They are now campaigning to essentially destroy Mongoose, to shut it down as a company, in order to make it the cautionary example to cause the rest of the gaming industry to “fear the mob”. Their agenda? To get to force gaming companies to come to them to let THEM decide what can or cannot see print.

-That, and I quote: “your bog-standard D&D session is a facet of rape culture” where “a bunch of men (and perhaps one or two sexualized women) descend into dark depths to penetrate the underprivileged, poor denizens there with their phallic objects, and use their mysterious, privilege-generated powers to oppress and kill anyone who isn’t like them.”
They didn’t make their opening salvo with this, obviously, because pretty much any regular gamer would find this argument beyond absurd. They’d find it ludicrous, and send these assholes packing. But that’s why they’re starting from something that’s tricky to argue against, and moving toward this kind of bullshit, with which they hope to end up smothering the hobby with once they’ve gained enough influence to not be stopped.

They go on in that thread to talk about the problem of “violence” and how all violence (including any and all combat in RPGs) is a product of “rape culture”, and also secret racism as mentioned above. Their solution? Again, I quote: “make games that are about pure collaborative storytelling, or just existing in a strange way”.

Funny, how by what surely must be sheer coincidence, their proposed end result is exactly the same kind of games that the last batch of Swine wanted!

They go as far as to argue that people who play regular RPGs probably need therapy after each session to help them “understand” how the violence they’re “perpetuating” in the game is “completely unacceptable”, and that the playing of these sorts of RPGs “glorifies criminal behavior” until they stop participating in these RPGs. They presented a way of trying to hide said therapy as part of the gaming session.

They will expand from “rape is bad”, which is an obvious no-brainer that they’ll nevertheless attempt to twist into things that have gently caress all to do with that initial statement, into overall assaults on RPGs in general using things like “social justice” and “minority issues”, simultaneously viciously attacking RPGs while making a total MOCKERY of those real issues, in the same way the pseudo-artist Swines made a mockery of art, and the pseudo-intellectual Swine made a mockery of intellectual pursuits.

They’ll be quite willing to drag the credibility of very real, real world issues like rape, sexism, racism, and homophobia through the absolute muck in order to engage in their pogroms against the hobby that has twice-before rejected their attempts to take it over.

So what do we do?

There are some who think that negotiating with them will make them stop. It won’t, that will only be what encourages them. Others have argued that they have to be reasoned with, argued with in good faith for the “good of the hobby”.

But that’s just it, you can’t argue in good faith with a group that has NO good faith. This is the typical naive error that the Gramscian socialist-types love to see people fall for. If the Swine are not arguing in good faith, but rather want to use the debate as a platform by which to hammer through their agenda for change (whose fairy-tale wishlist includes, as mentioned above, veto power over who gets hired, what gets published, what kind of art an RPG book is allowed to have, a near-total removal of combat from RPGs, control over all art, and mandated officially sanctioned control and quotas over portrayal of women and minorities (including fictional minorities) in all RPG products) then rational debate gets you NOWHERE. On the contrary, it becomes their weapon, to get what they want.

You can see it perfectly in the history of the Forge and their tactics, and remember these are some of the same Swine, just trying a different tactic now (as I said, before it was pseudo-intellectualism, now its pseudo-activism); they ran all over everyone who tried to engage in “rational debate” with them because they understood how to CONTROL LANGUAGE, by allowing THEM to define what a roleplaying game was, by allowing them to decide that the debate would be couched within GNS theory, by letting them manipulate all the preconditions of the debate, they were pissing their pants with glee at all the idiots who thought that trying to reason with them would work. Since, again, their motive was not “Come, let us reason together”, it was to destroy the hobby as we know it and replace it with something completely different that they could be in charge of.

The way I beat the Forge was by playing their own game, better than they did. And that’s how you’ll beat these guys. You don’t reason with them, you beat them by taking all their extremist techniques and turning it back on them; by controlling the language and refusing to give up that ground to the other side, refusing to let them claim the moral high ground while they simultaneously try to redefine the meaning of things like “rape” or “racism” into non-existence just to serve their own nefarious motives, and by making sure you reveal any and all said underlying motives the other side holds. By undermining their facade of both respectability and their (false) moral high ground at every opportunity.

That’s how they’ll be stopped.

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A lot of people would say that we're a little too early to pass judgment, but we're talking about the guy who thought that this was an acceptable character to bring to the table in one of the first videos previewing the system.

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A dwarf in a steel top hat and steel tuxedo called MC Killzalot, the most famous dwarven rapper who's on the skids after a disastrous attempt at a prog rock album. Oh, his class is Fighter.

We've seen previews of the 5E D&D starter set and there's no hope that he was just shuffled into the corner with his D&D Legos while the adults did the work on the project. So gently caress it, 5E D&D is going to flop. And Mike Mearls will have helmed two editions of watching history's biggest TTRPG going down in flames.

Personally, I think that he's going to be for the TTRPG industry what Jack Thompson was for the legal profession and what Ken Penders was for the comics industry. That said, what's his next career move? I don't think that even Paizo would be idiotic enough to hire the equivalent of Rob Liefeld. But then, they hired Mr. Write Feats To Raise Money For His Kitty Cat, so who knows.

Plague of Hats posted:

There you go. Mike Mearls is just loving King Bad At His Job.

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Well since he goes home every night to be breastfed by his mother, does it really matter what is next5 for him? Maybe she will change his diaper a little more often since it needs it frequently as full of poo poo as he is.

Plague of Hats posted:

A dwarf in a steel top hat and steel tuxedo called MC Killzalot, the most famous dwarven rapper who's on the skids after a disastrous attempt at a prog rock album. Oh, his class is Fighter.

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quote:

If they're not restricted by class then there's no compelling reason to have a class system.

Maybe not. But I'd argue that simply prepackaging a combination of abilities in an easily comprehensible way is the main function of a class. Exclusivity is fairly incidental.

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'Restriction' doesn't necessarily mean a blanket prohibition, but there's no way a Wizard should be any good at Fighter maneuvers without some Multiclassing.

Well, fighter/wizard characters have pretty much always been garbage in any version of D&D. I don't know that this is a good thing. Untrained magic use has pretty much always been off the table. Sneak attack/backstab has always been an odd exception rather than a general phenomenon that happens when you catch someone off-guard. Those are definitely the status quo, but I don't know that they have any merit beyond that.

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The disintegration of niche protection is one of the things that made 3.X so unbalanced.

It's what made it so fantastic. The defining experience of 3e is being a player and feeling like you can create the character you want, not the character the designers had in mind. I can't imagine any other consideration being sufficiently important for players to give that up.

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I hate the excuse 'but lovely cliches havenwomen fighters!' First of allx Valaria ( Conan) was not that strong, she was easily overpowered by fit men. She was a skilled and experienced fighter, that's all. Secondly, buff women aren't going to look like Red Sonja, they're going to be built like men.if you want to play Ursa the She-Bear I'll let you have a 14 Str, good luck finding a boyfriend though. I also hate chainmaille bikinis and breast-conforming plate armor. Oh, and how does Tits McStackin use a bow with those flotation devices? Women not only get a STR penalty, they get a SIZ penalty; and if we're playing on Earth different ethnic groups will also have SIZ modifiers. Asians are not as big as Norsemen, generally speaking, and that's a disadvantage in combat. Deal with it. Dont loving fight all the time and it won't be a big deal, I hate modern roleplayers wih their lovely movie and video game expectations. Equality is for slaves.

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I'd rather get #cancer than get #married. You're not allowed to kill women with #radiation.

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#RPG.net is full of #feminist hags and fags, #socialists and hypersensitive #PC retards. http://www.avoiceformen.com/allbulletins/site-mail-onine-gamers-avoid-rpg-net-better-yet-undermine-it/

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I pretty much avoid forums because, despite my desire to discuss things (especially rpgs and fantasy fiction) the conformist liberal toolbags on there constantly accuse me of 'trolling', and though I do occasionally engage people who irritate me just to piss them off I never do it facetiously - I quite seriously loathe egalitarianism political and ideological, I really do think most people are boring and I really don't like movies or music (as a rule). Part of this is the 'Poe Effect', and generally only the dominant cult (Humanism in this case) is allowed to be vehement, whe. someone expresses strong ideological or personal values contrary to the official religion they are presumed to be unserious out of hand. However, I don't think this is so much a mistake as a passive-agressive defense mechanism so they don't have to justify their poorly reasoned beliefs. And most persons have very poorly reasoned beliefs, even if they are correct.

Being contrarian and pretty much the opposite of Liberals and Conservatives both (variations on a theme, voting bullshit is still bullshit), and because artsy types and hack writers tend to be part of the stupid-left (I loathe Communism, but at least they aren't liberals) it's pretty much impossible to discuss these topics without drawing knee jerk dismissmal of a laughably anti-intellectual sort. Liberals are the new reactionaries and heresy hunters, and I have to say they do a better job than the Inquisition ever did.

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[there being a trade off between flexibility and tightness of balance] is wrong on two levels. First the premise is wrong. There's no evidence that any particular class or choice is that much different from another. The available spread of options has always been and remains a real and intriguing choice. Except possibly bards.

However, even if it wasn't, I'd say players would still want that choice. On the micro level, many players dive in to opportunities to spend character creation resources on things that are useless to fighting or even adventuring, simply to detail their character. In 2e, it was some of the chintzier NWPs. In 3e, it expanded to things like Perform and Profession. And, of course, one of the distinctive features of spellcasting is that two different spellcasters with the exact same basic statistics could be radically different in functionality simply by their spell selection; you could have a sage or a hedge wizard who can't even fight and just throws up his hands if anyone attacks him, or you could have someone who's trying to bend reality and take over the world.

I take it as given that players would choose flexibility over balance every time, if given that choice. The only reason we have any balance at all is that it isn't always a dichotomous choice, and because of legacy elements that still carry forward from the game's wargame heritage.

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Like I said, you can't unring the bell. Once you tell players that they can make a tauric halfling blink dog or a rogue/warlock hybrid or a noncombatant aristocrat and so on and so forth, I don't think they'll take no for an answer. Mine certainly wouldn't.

Nor should they.

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Depends on what kind of balance you're talking about. Designing abilities independently from the characters that use them allows them to be very balanced in a broader context.

Even within the extant D&D framework, skills are much more balanced than spells; they have to be. An enormous amount of conceptual space is being funneled into one relatively small piece of skill text, and that skill is going to be usable by most or all characters very frequently, and won't be changed a whole lot by future supplements. So it has to be done right. And most of them were.

Conversely, spells (or, in the broader sense, exception-based mechanical abilities) create new conceptual space with each added spell (exception). They proliferate endlessly and instead of being balanced functionally by examining the practical utility of what they do, they're balanced largely by precedent (the DMG and other sources even say this explicitly), which naturally leads to power creep because precedent is boring, and brings and unreasonable degree of system mastery to the table. In some cases, it leads to blatantly unbalanced abilities that were designed to fill a niche without sufficient regard for their implications in the game world.

It's why 4e, despite having shoehorned characters into such a rigid mechanical framework, is so unbalanced.

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Never say never. It certainly isn't [a universal system] now, but the merits of my thinking exist independently of whatever a company like WotC does. Boundaries, niches, and exceptions are inherently problematic, and consolidated, universal design makes sense. More than anything else, the class-based approach is simply tradition, and like any other sacred cow, I think it's days are numbered. Maybe a large number, but a number nonetheless.