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quote:I still have all my 1st and 2nd edition book, which are all the core and source books. I also have DMZ and about 60 minis to boot. I haven't needed to change my game for a long time. When 3rd came out it made it easier for anyone to play and I didn't like that. I spent a good long time making a matrix deck and a custom character generator in BASIC to have it all slated as obsolete because FASA closed down and someone else couldn't just reprint and add to the world that was already established. I applaud Jordan for getting his stuff back and giving it some love, and I play MWO, MWT and I plan on buying whatever Shadowrun PC game comes out, but I already have all my books on my shelf I plan on buying... unless I find a Universal Brotherhood for a good price. quote:It's really weird for me to read that. Why is it a bad thing for a game to be more accessible? That means there's more players, and that's a win for everyone. quote:Because it took me and my group a long time to understand and run the matrix and foci correctly, and after years of playing and finally understanding the rules they threw them out the window. I had a lot invested in the system and it made sense at that point. Everyone that I played with were in the same boat too. No one in my area changed from 2nd to 3rd, and a lot of hardcore Shadowrun players at the time felt the same way. Only new players bought 3rd. It created a big divide. We had a pretty big FASA supporter in our area at Challenge Games, Forest Brown was a developer for a lot of FASA products and even had a hand in making Axis and Allies. I enjoyed the fact that people were playing Shadowrun 3rd, but they wouldn't play second because of the mechanical differences. I don't think a game has to be made easier for it to be accessible. quote:But if the rules are so crappy (read "complex and hard to understand" there) that it takes your group a long time to master them, isn't it a fantastic thing that they were later streamlined? The newer rules don't remove the joy you guys got from your 1st & 2nd ed Shadowun games, of course, and I get that having your system mastery of the old rules no longer apply would be annoying. But accessible rules that are also fun help bring in new players, and new players keep a game alive. quote:My point exactly!
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Apr 2, 2013 02:40
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Really if there's anything to remember about g.txt it's that in the first thread we posted Old Geezer as grog, and now he's just this guy who's sometimes pretty cool and just enjoys his old games and has fun. We still post him, but usually on the opposite end of the spectrum. Edit: God dammit, fine. quote:Personally, I would prefer it if they drop the "expected to level every X sessions" it's the first step on the road of entitlement and I would much rather have it nipped in the bud, I think that player advancement rate should have it's own subsection in the DMG with all the different methods of earning XP. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Apr 2, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 09:39
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quote:As BI showed, racism is a rather touchy and ugly subject but can help immersion quite a lot. Granted, it was a pseudo historical setting, so the racism displayed was a product of its age, but this also applies to fantasy settings. My son plays the new Bioshock Infinite and I love the world in the clouds. I my opinion multiculturalism has ruined America like it has ruined the Roman Empire. The Bioshock world is wonderful and full of hard hitting themes. If all races were meant to be equal than we would all be the same... In my games race and culture matter as does the person's gender.
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Apr 5, 2013 01:42
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Oh, goodness, yes. Protect the newbies! They are dumb as rocks and don't realize how much more dangerous than the XBox tabletop roleplaying can be! Don't let them have an experience they might not forget! Heavens!quote:Newbies need a system with (i) less complexity in player options, and hence in PC build, but (ii) more survivability than an experienced player typically needs in a starting PC. Those needs are not served by the system Mearls is proposing, because his system is based on the level paradigm, where low complexity is anchored to low level, which is in turn anchored to low hit points, which means the a newbie's first experience is likely to be having his/her PC die. This unthinkable system you describe worked just fine from 1973 to 2008. We were all newbies once, and many of us had extremely positive first experiences despite the risks engendered by early D&D. You can believe what you want, but stop stating it as fact. I'm annoyed enough that this thread has been hijacked -- with a mod's support, no less -- just because someone had the audacity to make a factual observation about "your" edition. Fourth edition is a lemon popsicle, and anyone who likes it is an untied left shoe. quote:@Warbringer made the additional observation that, in practice, many GMs of new and/or young players allow rerolls, fudge dice etc. And my suggestion would be a way of formalising that while shifting power over the PC from the GM to the player, and hence giving the newbie a truer taste of what RPGing is about. "A truer taste," my butt.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:06
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quote:Mabye. But I've read a lot of posts in which people talk about fudging dice for new players, because no one wants their first experience of the dice being rolled to result in the death of their first PC. Why have a DM at all? Why not just play a video game? Fudging behind the screen is the /soul/ of the game, at any level, and I believe with /great/ fervor that anyone who does not understand that is not playing /any/ edition of D&D. quote:I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I think my post criticising the equation of OSR/gritty levels with simple/newbie levels was made before KM joined the thread, or VinylTap, I think. I'm not blaming you for the hijack, I'm just annoyed by it. And by your attitude. They are conspiring to raise my blood pressure. quote:I don't know anything about XBoxes, but I've personally never encountered much danger from tabletop RPGing, other than the standard risks of excessive fat consumption! quote:I take it that these are insults? Are they? Feel free to take offense; it is no less than I expect.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:09
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A little background: I begin nearly all of my campaigns at 1st level. If I could, I'd start every campaign with my PCs armed with broken-off axe handles and armored in some rubbed-on dirt, except that I'd be /lynched/. I love 1st level. I eat, sleep, and breathe 1st level. What I don't like about Mearls' proposal is that there's an artificial break at 3rd level at which it is "okay" to start play if you're a whiny, powergaming little snot.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:16
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I've done my bout with "Narrative control" before, and to me (and no one has ever given me a good answer otherwise) "narrative control" is synonymous with "I do what I want regardless of how much sense it makes." First off, its primary function is to neuter DM control of his game as rule-arbiter (referee) and shielding yourself in the "Almighty Letter of the Rules" to justify never losing, or even the illusion of letting your character be in danger. Can't use your favorite tripping attack because you're facing an arthropod? BOOM! Rules says I can trip anything! The bad guys are running away? BOOM! I use my "get over here" power and they all run back; bloody, bruised, and out of arrows, for one more final waacking. How Intelligent was that NPC wizard again? Didn't put any ranks in diplomacy? BOOM! Skill challenge rules says I can use any other skills. Is the king impressed by my ability to climb the pillars yet? Oh noes! A rust monster? Relax, it will eat your +3 sword and poop out a +2 weapon instead. Anyone got any old items they don't want? We can recycle them and make your +4 gear stronger. Erhmahgad! A Raksasha! The epitome of evil! Immune to all but the most powerful spells and magical weapons, but weak against a blessed crossbow bolt. Oh, we don't have any? That's ok. We'll just make it vulnerable to all weapons and spells, but we'll give it like +2 to saves to show how good it is at resisting magic! We wouldn't want anyone not to be able to fight this thing. Ok Bob, magic missile it to death! We used to call that rules lawyering. Or munchkinism. Now, we call it "Narrative Control". The logical extension of the battle between player and DM for narrative control ends up with DM, no longer rule arbiter (and increasingly less important as world-builder thanks to WotC's consolidation of fluff to being their cosmology for every setting, their PHB deities killing and eating long established ones, and the character builder slowly destroying any will to homebrew classes, races, or items) the DM becomes one thing: monster-runner. And even that job is becoming a monotonous since monster design has been reduced to a handful of small, meaningless powers and a flurry of ineffectual attacks due to poor monster math and a dread fear monster make kill our pwescious hewos. Here is a room, there are 5 orcs. Players, have fun slaughtering them because they are a balanced encounter only designed to chip away 20% of your resources before dying. I'm going to go have a sandwich, call me when you're done. Blech! No thank you. It didn't sell well enough the first time to keep D&D afloat, so I think its time to jettison these player entitlement notions to the dustbin with alignment languages and % strength. Good riddance!
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Apr 5, 2013 05:24
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quote:That's really beside the point. What I was driving at was narrative control is not a player entitlement issue; it's more about allowing /greater/ story involvement - the opposite of some other poster's claims about 4e's story focus, and certainly counter to your assertions upthread. I like narrative control - and therefore want it in my game - because I feel it engenders the roleplaying I want to see in my D&D games. 4e delivers on that, and in the context of this discussion Next currently doesn't, and no amount of "Tactical Module" will change that. See, here is where I find this argument ends up circular. Control of what? the Players, assuming they are the protagonists of their own story (and the NPCs don't rule over them for gold and glory) already control the narrative. Their actions control the scene setting and pacing. Once the PCs leave the Tomb of Horrors, the DM doesn't continue to run that module. Barring certain circumstances (such as APs) the adventure IS the PCs story and they control it via their actions. So the PCs already control the narrative. What this involves is the evolution of the rules trumping the DM's calling. Here is question: A fighter tries to tumble under a giant's legs while wearing in plate mail. Can he do it? The 1e DM says no. The 2e DM says yes, but sets a difficulty which makes success very difficult. The 3e DM says yes, but uses the armor's armor check penalty and tumble rules to determine its success. The 4e DM says yes, as you have the "tumble in armor" power, its automatically successful for you every time. I don't like the 1e DM any more than the 4e DM. My heart is somewhere between the 2e and 3e DM. The first is DM fiat at its extreme, the 4e is player entitlement.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:28
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quote:But narrative control isn't an ingame thing. It's a metagame thing. It's about who gets to determine the content of the shared fiction. Different rules can distribute this power in different ways among the participants. 4e does it differently from (say) 3E, or 2nd ed AD&D, and gives more of that power to the players. Call me old fashioned, but where I come from Metagame is a BAD thing. Metagame is the opposite of verisimilitude, as one requires you to think about the action on stage and the other the wires that control the puppets. Which is why this argument ends up circular. The PCs control the grand narrative (its their story). They often control the driving narrative (their choices influence the direction of the story) and increasingly they want to control the minutiae of the refereeing as well. The latter is illustrated in the concept that the player doesn't want to bull rush the giant; he has a high degree of failure because of size and strength. He wants the power that lets him do it regardless of size, strength, shape, or any other logical factors of resistance AND do his regular damage to boot. You call it narrative control, I call it player entitlement. They want the benefit of pushing the giant around the board, but don't want the obvious chance of failure a bull rush system (with its checks against strength entail). Oh, and I the DM have to justify why my giant is being chased around the board 5 feet at a time by a 6' dude in armor and a shield. (cue the Benny Hill theme.) quote:That has no real bearing on the ingame question of whether or not the PCs achieve their goals. It's perfectly possible to have a game with a high degree of player narrative control yet a high degree of PC failure (I've GMed a Rolemaster game that had this feature; I think quite a bit of Burning Wheel could go this way too. Having no experience with BW, I can't comment on that. I did in 4e PCs with little to fear in the way of death. Assuming the challenge was "appropriate" I don't think I ever saw a group fail unless the d20 was exceptionally cruel of all members. Foes did too little damage, PCs had too much hp. quote:But only once per encounter. That is, the mechanism of limitation is different. So provided you need to trip twice per encounter, you'll still be in danger, and might even lose. So by artificially limiting a PCs actions in hand to what is on his power sheet vs. giving them usable combat actions at will, you automatically doomed said group rather than give that fighter the 1 in 20 shot of saving them? quote:There's no battle; at least not at my table. There's a distribution of roles. Nor is there one at mine. But my players assume that since I am the GM, my ruling is law at my table and I could (in theory) throw the PHB in the trash and the game could keep running. Your DM is bound by the letter and spirit of the rules, mine IS the rules.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:46
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My reason for using editions was that the expectation of the feel the rule-sets attempt to give in the game. 1e was based around a permissive DM, 2e emphasized the "yes, and..." notion (the example is right of the Complete Fighter's Handbook, btw), 3e gave solid and detailed rules for everything, and 4e demands plot cards to do cool things*. * Yeah, yeah, page 42. Page 42 is suggestions for DM fiat and really no different than our 2e DM pulling rules out of his backside, except the page has a chart to determine what a "fair" rule would be. Page 42 actually defeats attempts to define "player narrativism" since, by definition, its the rules for DM rules adjudication and essentially defines the "mother may I" play style that narrativists rail against. quote:My players don't want to control the minutiae of the refereeing. They want to have levers they can pull that will make changes in the fiction, without needing my permission first. And THERE'S the entitlement. Why? Are they afraid you'll say no? Are they afraid you'll set some difficult DC and won't succeed? Are they afraid a wasted attempt is as bad as doing nothing? Are they afraid their halfling fighter with a 16 strength can't push the ogre into the campfire because the rules are stacked against small creatures pushing large ogre's in fires? I don't think there's a DM in the world that wouldn't let you /try/ to push the giant around with your shield. I don't know a DM who wouldn't. They can try, and lucky dice rolls later might succeed. Or they might fail. And that's what the Tide of Iron power shields you from: failure. It just happens. It doesn't matter if its a pixie or the Tarrasque, it just happens. quote:Huh? The giant's AC, which will among other things reflect its size and strength, is a consideration here. If the player had his/her PC Bull Rush instead, the chance of success may be a little lower (Fort for many, but not all, giants is better than AC). Oh please. A giant's AC is reflective on its level in 4e and you know it. Size and strength play nothing into a monster's AC. Two level 8 monsters have roughly the same AC (within a few points) and it doesn't matter if they're nymphs using magical power, drow in chain armor, or giants with clubs. Level alone determines the bulk of AC in 4e, justify to yourself how you like. Now, in 3e with its pain-in-the-butt-realism, bull rushin was hard. You made a touch AC roll, then an opposed strength check, which DID take into account that giant's 25 strength a +8 size mod. Tell me 4e's atk vs. AC is anywhere near as complicated, or as realistic, as that? quote:As for dealing damage too - what's wrong with that? An AD&D fighter can make 3 attack rolls ever two rounds. The rate at which weapon damage is dealt has no connection to verisimilitude - it only arises within the framework of the game's action economy, which is pure metagame. In 3e, he moves his foe OR he deals damage. In 4e, player gets cake and eats it too. quote:I'm the GM in my group. But you are correct that I am bound by the rules. That's part of the point of having rules, for me at least! That is, I don't see the rules simply as rought heuristics for working out how things happen within the fiction ("rules as physics of the gameworld"). I see the rules primarily as allocating narrative power across the participants. They let me do a lot of stuff - for instance, declare that some particular NPC or monster enters the fictional action. But they let the players do some stuff, too - such as (if the fictional circumstances are right) roll a die, and if it comes up a certain value or higher tell me to roll my die, and if it comes up below 10 then while its true-in-the-fiction that this NPC or monster is there, it's also true that said NPC/monster is plunging down a cliff. See, my players come to the game with the consent to be ruled. I, in turn, do not abuse their trust and give them a game they will enjoy. If I don't, they don't come and I am a DM of nothing. I use the rules since they are the agreed upon parameter's for the night. However, when the rules come between fun and not fun, I chuck the rules and opt for fun. However, the payoff is that this sometimes screws the players as often as it helps them. Sometimes the ogre has 15 extra hp because the critical hit would have felled it in the first attack and everyone else wanted a shot at it. Sometimes the ogre's critical hit against the wounded cleric comes up a natural 1. Player doesn't know, he just knows that the ogre battle was exciting. He's willing to trust I'll make just and fair calls in the best interest of all. However, what I am being told again and again (and this round did nothing to correct me) is that players feel the DM won't always make the "right" call when it comes to when to screw the rules (usually when it benefits them) and they want the ability to make those calls for him. I guess for conventions and RPGA games where you don't have camaraderie with your fellow players/DM that's fine. But in a home game it strikes me as players wanting DM privileges for themselves without the responsibilities of actually DMing (creating scenarios, game prep, etc). That is the entitlement I dislike and every time a decides that my fleeing monsters would turn around, run back, and receive their one good whacking (perhaps killing them in the process) I feel the trust is broken and antagonism, not cooperation, has sunk into the rules.
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Apr 6, 2013 12:36
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quote:I don't mind a player of a paladin acting wrongly (by their own lights). But I want them to take it seriuosly, and I (as GM) would set up situations in which they have to take it seriously. I see what you're saying, but there are indeed plenty of "paladins" being played by immature or just simply greedy players out there, trust me, and the DM needs a way to not have to give them IRL morality lessons. They control the gods, and should be able to turn off the faucet of divine magic to their followers (as well as perform miracles unbidden, OTOH) who displease them. It's very much a 4e mentality that "Oh nooooes, you're not the boss of me. I want my shiny holy avenger while still hoarding the magic items and never once risking my own neck to save others like I'm supposed to". I'm talking of the "Cavalier" build, I mean, the default paladin. 4e takes away way too much power from the DM, IMO, and reduces the gods into being merely divine magic reservoirs, to be drained by any and all followers like pigs at a trough. Removing any penalties for bad game choices only reduces the out of combat portion of the game to be "fluff". I don't want that. I want there to be real worries about PCs losing their powers and spells if they chose to access magic from a divine power source. As I said, on the other hand, if they perform exceedingly well, the DM can reward them with boons that go above and beyond their normal class progression. If a paladin descends into hell and gives up all his worldly possessions, even sacrifices himself to save the weak, why shouldn't he return as the White Knight with a Deus Ex Machina at DM discretion? If you take away penalties that the gods can give, you also take away boons. Because if you only allow boons from deities, that's a munchkin game, meaning your PCs can indeed do whatever they want and get away with it. Bah. As I said before, you haven't encountered munchkin paladins, so consider yourself lucky. I want D&D gods to have real power, not have the rules shackle DMs with "no, you can't take away their toys because they'll cry" limitations. Earlier editions with morality clauses baked into only one class only made it so PCs who didn't think they could actually play that way would lose it, given they play at a table where DMs aren't just there to hand out goodies and never say no to their players. It sets a tone that says : magic is real, the gods are real, and in the control of the DM, and if your magic source is divine, then the DM should have the right to place restrictions on its use. The gods are not blocks of stupid mana goo up in the sky, they are sentient and have their own morality, foibles, goals, and agendas. Why shouldn't they pick and chose who they will favor based on their actions? I'm an atheist too, which is precisely why I want my D&D deities to have real power and not just be "absentee landlords" who just cash your rent check, turn the heating on in winter, and fix the plumbing while you're at work. I want them to have an active role. Don't you? Saying they can't have the power to alter something on their followers' character sheets, for good or ill, is really hampering your toolkit as a DM. PCs who don't like that should just play those who aren't explicitly worshippers of those gods. It's a give and take, not a take and take. The PCs have to live up to their end of the bargain, especially Paladins but Clerics too. You trade off the ability to do whatever occurs to your on a whim, change your alignment, steal, whatever, to gain powers that most envy or want but are not worthy to get. This is a good way to do the Apprentice levels for those classes, you gotta "earn" your divine favor and boons, earn the god's approval. Sort of like a pre-atonement to join the fan club. It should have RP criteria baked into the class. Again, if the PCs aren't willing to do what's required of that order to join their ranks, they can just play a fighter or something else. Only the few should make it. Not everyone IRL can become a cop or a fireman, you need not only certain stats but also a certain character. If humans are selective about hiring people, why shouldn't D&D gods be?
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Apr 6, 2013 12:47
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quote:This is really why I prefer a carrot approach over a stick. I agree that a character with a strong moral code has great dramatic potential. The DM should speak the will of the gods through the game, softly, but still carry a big stick in his back pocket just in case. The PCs should fear gods, especially the displeasure of their own. i.e. you need both carrot and stick in the core rules to really exert some control. If a PC doesn't like the DM having any say about their character, they need to play a mundane class or an arcane caster instead. The gods are played by the DM, there has to be some DM fiat as to how and when the gods can affect the world, which let's face it, is usually primarily though granting powers to their followers. If they can't take it away under any circumstances, that screams munchkin rules to me and puts the DM in handcuffs.
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Apr 6, 2013 12:48
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quote:This is so true. You hardly ever get what you want, you do however get what you most expect. If you treat your players like spoiled 2 year olds they start behaving like spoiled 2 year olds. OTOH sometimes grown men do act like spoiled 2 year olds, regardless of what you do. The DM should behave the same way to either type of player : don't be afraid to say "No". once in a while. And if the game rules allow you to influence player's behavior in a carrot/stick way, via in-game repercussions to their in-game actions, then the DM is also just roleplaying too and not acting as an IRL disciplinarian (because who wants / needs that?), since different gods have different moral codes, and you can emphasize those those in your campaign setting rather than alignment restrictions per se. But there is a place for alignment restrictions in D&D, it's because good/evil and law/chaos are something we all understand, even if we've never played the game before. ~*~ Bolding mine. More paladin talk!
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Apr 8, 2013 07:51
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Anyone who would even argue that torture isn't inherently evil, is ipso facto evil, IMO, (since we're talking about whether alignments are important in D&D), alignments, if they are optional, mean that paladins just don't make sense. I don't want a paladin who's taken a vow to his god, would accept an order of slaughtering his opponent's villagers. A true paladin would rather lose his powers and his status as a paladin, than commit an atrocity like that. It would surely be a test, by a tricky old-testament style god, to see where his true character lies. At some point, you need to take responsibility for your own actions and live with the consequences. Removing alignment restrictions and all its baggage seems like a roundabout way of calling whether it's moral or not to slaughter innocents merely campaign fluff on your way to get to higher levels, because hey, why not. Everything is relative, right? Again, not my idea of the point of having a paladin in this game. Saying one can be unaligned because the alignment system is too rough an approximation for real morality is not the same as saying there is no such thing as evil, and that's a very contentious issue right there which I doubt many people would really sign onto if they've, you know, looked at the world we live in and gave it 2 seconds of thought before delving back into their Counterstrike match.
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Apr 12, 2013 02:13
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If you're you're not using alignments at all, it still works, but the default Oaths should include alignment in their descriptor, because that's the classic archetype and I don't want D&D default to be this hard-to-understand, cerebral nonsense where your actions are fluff. I saw in too many 4e games the results of having no alignment : everyone is unrestricted to be lizards and rogues. Some might act decently, but e.g. we had a rogue who's make masks of the faces of our enemies, and as a paladin, it made my skin crawl, but what can you do? Police them? That's an issue about what's a "dealbreaker" to be in someone's company, fine, but because alignment was complete and utter fluff, there was never any consequence of my being allied to such an individual, nor was the DM even allowed to remove my powers, by RAW there is no way to do that, no mention of it at all. The end result of playing in an alignment-less ruleset, or one in which there are virtually no drawbacks for not following said alignment that's written on your sheet, is that nothing really matters. Nothing really matters, at all. Except combat. All you need is kill.
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Apr 12, 2013 02:16
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I have played a paladins and have seen many paladins played, in 1st ed, AD&D, 3.0, and 4.0. As soon as the ability to lose your paladin status is removed, the behavior of the player is changed. There is no disincentive to acting a certain way. Yes, I do blame the system for removing this constraint. 4e reduced paladins to just another set of bland power cards where their alignment was mere fluff, and much weaker than, e.g. rangers even in an undead-only campaign. Without it, the class is little different than a fighter/cleric. I find it tiresome that so many people are anti-alignment, and yes, I do think it's in Dark Sun one can run alignment-free campaigns easier, since there are no gods. And yes, I stand by my assertion that humanity is largely reptilian (selfish and amoral) in nature, all one has to do is turn on the news or read a little history. The evidence to support this assertion is overwhelming. Try playing a paladin in Dark Sun. oh wait, there aren't any. QED
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Apr 12, 2013 02:17
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Can one of the posters who is against paladins having a code that is enforced by the loss of their abilities, please tell me how a paladin (without the alignment/code/etc. restrictions) is conceptually different from a fighter who decides to fight for a specfic deity's cause? In other words without the alignment restrictions/code of conduct/deity power over abilities... what makes the paladin archetype any different than a mercenary for a particular religion? Even in 4e his combat role occupies the same space as the fighter's .... that of defender. This is one of the reasons I find the claims of him having to fight valiantly and throw himself into danger (like many other defenders in 4e who aren't based around a valiant or noble archetype) kind of hollow as far as it being the differentiating factor for a paladin, so my question is what differentiates him in a narrative sense?
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Apr 12, 2013 02:19
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If you don't see what the difference between a paladin with spells and a fighter/cleric, that's fair, but there are those of us who do. Again, the 4e mindset where all classes have to have the same chassis, no more, no less, is what most people AFAIK missed. Nobody is saying rogues should have to be evil, but certainly any non-lawful is reasonable. Otherwise why have alignments at all? Oh right, because all we are supposed to do is smash monsters in the dungeon and take their stuff, and everything has a modern relativistic morals sheen to it. Sometimes we want to play PCs who are conflicted with many shades of grey, othertimes we like the restrictions placed upon us. What's more of a spectator sport, boxing or a street fight? There are lots of rules in boxing, restrictions you might say, which make it even more fun to watch because once you define the limits you can go from there. If you don't like the rules of boxing you watch UFC or golf or something else, you don't say that restrictions are badwrongfun.
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Apr 12, 2013 02:27
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You can run a 4E game like 3E, but there is no point in it. As everyone is good in everything in 4E all challenges must be scaled to their level or they are trivial. A 9th level party comes across a door? If it is a normal door everyone in the party can overcome it. To be really worthy of actually being a challenge it has to be a adamantium door with a clockwork lock. In the end you still just have a scene with a generic obstacle. It doesn't even matter much what the obstacle is as everyone gets better at everything. The level of the PCs decide what door they face. In 3E this is different. Here the exact nature of the obstacle matter much more as PCs are not automatically good at everything. The best lvl 15 lockpicker in the world will still have trouble scaling a moderately challenging cliff if he never bothered to train climbing. And when they face a door it is just a door appropriate for its location. Maybe the rogue int the group is good enough to open it, maybe not. And the broad skills in 4E reinforce this "skills being redundant". You are good with athletics? Congratulations, you are a good swimmer (despite never having seen water deeper than your knee), climber (despite the highest elevation in your home country just being a mild 300 meters), etc. Someone being good in Athletics, Perception and Streetwise tells you nothing about that person as every category is so broad. It works for "hero" characters who are awesome at everything (Climbing, swimming, running, spotting, listening, gossiping, etc.). And that is just three skills. Considering that under the 4E system you get good in everything it means every PC is a walking superhero. But some people still want their characters to be humans with flaws and weak points. Those weak points are denied in 4E as it could result in someone not participating in an skill obstacle scene and that obviously wouldn't work with skill challenges.
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Apr 12, 2013 04:54
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quote:NPCs/Monsters don't have brains, they are intrinsically extensions of the GM's will, thus any judgment being made as to how to proceed is by definition the judgment of the GM, and is at the very least the subject of the GM's biases and subservient to his/her goals. It is the DM's job to not run the monster how he most WANTS then to be run but how they SHOULD be run. Anything else is Metagaming.
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Apr 12, 2013 05:05
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Dude, while probably rather dang gothy, that's not really grog. Person had a poo poo life and found meaning in gaming. A little pretentious sure, but don't begrudge a person for their happiness. ~*~ quote:I couldn't agree more. One of the things that I absolutely loved about 4e was that it pushed some of the world altering magic to a higher level or into rituals. This made the game so much more...organic and flexible in how one wanted to approach the world building. Of course, there was plenty of short term/range magical wahoo at the tactical level (what with the nightcrawler-esque bamfs of warlocks and High Elves and whatnot), but that was much easier to deal with most of the time. OTOH not having Fly in the game in any meaningful sense made it not feel very ...exciting. Hey, I can cast "overland flight" using a ritual in real life, it's called Expedia. Siloing good spells and effects like Fly, usable for time periods > 5 minutes per day, into a ritual bucket, made it feel like a cut-scene and the casting time was ridiculous. It was a mechanical hack to avoid having to design powers that worked in 3 dimensions, or balance pillars of play in an organic way. I don't siloing is roganic at all, it's a wall preventing all sorts of neat things from happening in the game. If you need ten minutes to get your party to fly out of the exploding volcano, the DM has no choice but to alter the flow of the lava to suit the game rules, or just kill you. That sucks. 4e Rituals suck donkey juice and ruined the magical feeling of the game for me. If I want to be stuck to the ground, and I can play a game called Warriors and Warriors, not Wizards and Warriors. You cannot balance fly with not flying, except by duration and x/day. 4e nerfed it waaaaay too much, and the rituals were like a slap in the face to proper D&D experience. Not once in any other edition with DMs have I seen the fly spell ruin an adventure. It's called design the game with 3d in mind, accordingly. That's just one example. There are just so many times when we wanted to do something that was only available in a ritual during combat in the heat of the moment, to react to an in-game event, but oh no, the duration silo'ed that possibility out of existence. It was a lazy hack to remove magic from exciting, real-time situations. Ten minute casting times is good for a cut-scene, but personally as a player, whether it's a videogame or an RPG, I hate cutscenes where I can't control my character. While a ritual is being cast, there is no possibility of combat, narratively (imagine a DM being a dick and dropping orcs on you in the midst of your ritual that you just spent 500gp on...wah waaaah, sucks to be you). The problem that siloing solves is not worth killing the entire flavour of the game over. It's just another implicit way they forced combat / non-combat time to be strictly separate. THAT would be a dealbreaker for me. The fact that spells now have ritual versions attached to them as an option, is the best way they could do it. But making stuff ritual only was one of the worst design fails of 4e and an utterly detestable atrocity.
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Apr 13, 2013 04:45
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First, character creation is "during play". If you're sitting with an open rulebook, making decisions and writing things down, you are participating in the game. Still, there is a distinction between a one-time prep and the regular recurring game. But I would say that many games other than D&D rely on that one-time event. If you're playing Civilization, it matters which civilization you choose. If you're playing Madden, it matters how you choose and construct your team. They're not all equal. If you're playing Magic, you have to create a good deck before the game starts. If you're into miniatures wargames, you have to create an army. In any of those examples, actual gameplay is dependent on effective preparation, and a wide range of power levels can be created. So clearly this paradigm can create a satisfying game experience. But there's also the verisimilitude factor. Does your character have to live with the character creation choices you've made? Yes. But so does a person. The genes you have and your early life experiences and social upbringing absolutely affect your level of opportunity in later life. And good fiction grabs those inequalities and runs with them. I also don't see how the first example affects the range of choices later on. AFAICT, even in the second example, people have a pretty full range of choices later on. As far as I can tell, the idea that all these character creation choices should be equal originated with 4e, and I'm hard-pressed to find any other examples, nor do I see why it would be desirable (nor do I like that the term "balance" has been co-opted to mean that").
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Apr 13, 2013 05:01
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quote:This is true, but my players always investigate as much as they can before venturing into the dangerous part, and even then the player who plays the wizard prepares the backup spells just in case if the party over saw something in their planing or didn't investigate enough. quote:The party winning isnt a problem. That could be your disconnect. From yoru other posts though you just dont seem to really know anything about the 3e casters. Learning more would make most of your misconceptions about their power disappear. quote:I've been playing 3e for past 10 years now and phb I know by heart... Like I said, for me and our style of play, caster are overpowered. quote:Ha, being able to win isnt overpowered. And rewriting the class immediately, (what 9 years ago?) doesnt give you a fart in the winds experience with how it should play. quote:erm yes, you must know every minute of my life for past 10 years. I rewrote the class 2 years ago after 8 years of patching, experimenting and finding what is best for my group. quote:"patching" and "experimenting" means re-writing parts of the class or rules. Not learning how it actually plays RAW. quote:What's with you? I'm not telling you how to play your game. yeah, actually you dont. You know how your patchwork house ruled wizard plays under your playstyle. That doesnt tell you squat about about the RAW wizard. ~*~ I will always find it adorable when 3e fans take personal offence at someone saying "I had a problem with the game I'd like fixed" ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Apr 18, 2013 |
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Apr 18, 2013 06:18
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Balance in relation to commoners and other "normals" in the campaign. This issue isn't a difficult one to handle by the RAW. Wizards should be treated as a highly trained and extremely rare thing. The education required for it is beyond our modern PhD. So yes, a wizard's spells can be beyond normal in the economy and in relation to the other abilities of "normals" in the game, but they are supposed to be. Most commoners have rarely seen magic, much less have an available wizard. They've heard stories... and maybe, at best, in a city they saw a wizard once. Can a single wizard break a village's economy... sure, but that's not a problem in my opinion. Wizards are and should be rare.
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Apr 18, 2013 06:22
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If the NPC is built with standard character class rules, I can put the NPC into a context relevant to the PCs as well as myself. If I can identify his abilities, I may be able to come up with a rational understanding of what he can do (and is unlikely to be able to do) that may guide my interaction. But if the abilities don't come with an identifiable framework or, worse, are arbitrary, I can't really learn much predictive about the creature I'm encountering. For example, if the fighter in heavy armor comes swinging into the fight, I'm generally not going to expect him to unleash a cone of cold as a spell at me all of a sudden once he's in close and we've exchanged a few blows. Or if he does, I might have been expected or able to see evidence of some trade-off that got him to that level of spell-casting proficiency. At the very least, from that point on, I'm going to expect he might do more of the same and use tactics accordingly. But if he doesn't (perhaps because that cone of cold was all he had), I'm going to be a little irritated. It feels to me that the opponent's spell was just a random "gotcha" to sucker me into taking more damage rather than interact (in this case fight) with a coherent NPC. ~*~ The DM sent an enemy at us who did something surprising and new. I HATE that. Way to break my suspension of disbelief!
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Apr 18, 2013 06:49
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I hate it when people try to take the piss. I hate it when they try to hide it under a veneer of “hey, I’m just like you!” Rubbish! I have difficulties taking it, and therefore here goes this article/rant. For the last few years we have seen, and quite a few of people applauded, comedy series that feature geek people. Big-Bang Theory, Community, The IT Crowd, The Guild, A Town Called Eureka…Suddenly people are claiming that we geeks are “taking our place and being more accepted” because we’re getting more exposure on TV and the internet. Nonsense! We are being laughed at!Most of those series put geeks into stereotypes and then compare those stereotypes to “non-geek normal” people to exploit what make them “funny”. With the exception possibly of Community (the series I am less familiar with), the rest blatantly and openly ridicule the role of the geek. Let’s take a look at the average geek characters of the series. Let’s start with the young ones. They are all mega smart but socially awkward. Most of them have problems interacting with women, they are clumsy, have a poor sense of etiquette, have even poorer social skills. Geek women are portrayed as awkward and emotionally incompetent or detached and every single one of them has an “unique” approach to fashion. The adults are more responsible, less socially awkward, they dress more like the average Joe does and they behave normally. Like you and me, that is. But they’re not in geeky jobs. If they are they’ll still have some awkward traits like poor social skills, a “unique” sense of fashion, or something in those lines. Of course not every series is the same and not every character within each series is the same, but there are common points here and there. Let’s take a more detailed look to some of them. This are just the ones I am a bit more familiar with. It is not a comprehensive list, but just a list to illustrate my point. The Big-Bang Theory This is one of the biggest culprits. i don’t know if I should feel sorry or angry at this comedy/parody/mockery. The geeks are not just geeks, they are hyper-geeks. They have very obvious and impossible to avoid OCDs, PHDs and incredible jobs as scientists. And they don’t know how to behave in front of the attractive neighbor. They either have such low self esteem they don’t think they’re worthy so no bother interacting, see the woman as a trophy to hunt, become so awkward that they always mess it up or, simply, can’t even talk to her. Exactly how pathetic is that view, comedic or not, of what geeks are like? Yes, it’s comedy and yes, I can laugh at many things, but there is no balance and the series plays a lot with the “Aww… you poor thing who can’t get a girlfriend” attitude. What I don’t like is that series is allowing people who are not geeks to laugh AT me, not WITH me. And make no mistake, there are plenty of people out there who laugh at us. Admittedly the series has changed from the original season to today, but, better as it's got, it's still a long way off not laughing at geekdom. The Guild Where to start? Another comedy that takes the piss, blatantly, of an exaggerated view of what a guild of MMO players is like. But it’s not just that it mocks the players because they play, it mocks the players because they are geeks. They have dysfunctional lives and even have difficulties relating when not playing the game.I am sure there are plenty of MMO players like that, but the majority of MMO players I know are seriously normal people who don’t behave anywhere near what you see in that series.What annoys me the most about this series is that is produced by someone who openly and loudly claims to be part of the geek-society. And this is how you want the rest of the world to see the geeks you so much claim to love? Seriously. If being a geek is such a cool thing, why not showing it? Why not writing the scripts so we are not nut-cases who need counselling or leave toddlers to fend for themselves near the microwave? Why not showing them just are you are in real life? Funny, clever, lovely, charming and a bit annoying. What is wrong with that? Because I really like it! Oh, wait! because that probably won’t create the sense of ridicule that people need in order to laugh at us so they can feel better about themselves at our expense. No thanks! A Town Called Eureka This one has a balance. Young geek, awkward geek. Older geek, responsible and mature geek. Seriously. Did Fargo have to be THAT stupid? Did the chef have to be the fat bloke? Did the guy who run the place (don’t ask me for many names… not good with names) have to be the evil-up-his-own-arse genius? Did the sheriff with less-than-average-intelligence have to be the hero? Did the strong woman who can make a meal of said sheriff have to be the sidekick? For a series with some very good plots and storylines, it sure has some of the stupidest character clichés ever. And the funny bit? We love it!The geekosphere has taken on those series and we (and I use the term “we” VERY loosely here) wear t-shirts, use the series slogans, take on nicknames, buy the DVDs and idolatrize the actors and actresses. Can’t we see we are being used and abused by a bunch of people who are there to make money?They have found a niche that can be exploited for laughs and they don’t give a monkeys about us. They give a about getting the next production contract for the next series. And if they have to laugh at us for that, then so be it. Of course not everything is bad and horrible and even I have to admit that some good has come out of it. We have gained more exposure in some circles and some people have felt empowered to “come out”, so to speak, and be themselves in the face of adversity. Plenty of people have identified traits with those of the characters and realised they’re not alone. The community has become more self-aware. And that is good. In fact is very good. But it’s time to stop now. It is time to start giving the world a more positive spin on geekdom. For starters expand outside science and gaming. There are sports geeks, make-up geeks, biology geeks, cookery geeks, car geeks… Secondly, please be balanced in the portrayal of our idiosyncratic personalities. We are all like that, geeks and non-geeks. Why does the world have to be able to laugh at us more than at anyone else? Why laugh at anyone at all? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 20, 2013 01:00
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I'll draw a parallel and try to illustrate what I am talking about with a different segment of the population that has seen a lot of changes in the last 40 years or so. Gay men used to be portrayed as "people who read" (last time I saw that was in The Bill, a few years ago when a copper was about to come out and one of the reasons the wife had to suspect he was gay is that he liked to read), or that he likes to cook (can't remember in what movie, but Rock Hudson flirted with a woman in a bar by making her feel he was gay using his love for cookery as a strong hint an putting her at ease because, suddenly, he wasn't a threat), or with similar hobbies and inclinations (we are artists, into interior decoration or fashionistas). They were also portrayed as effeminate people who like to wear female underwear or dress up as drag as alter egos. That was the vision that society had of homosexuality in the 70s and 80s. Then things started to change and now we have gay characters a lot more often without the stereotyping nonsense we used to see. Homosexuality is a non-issue. It just is.
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Apr 20, 2013 01:07
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The problem is only due to certain mods preferring 4e and not liking my choice of terminology. Make fun of my posts all you like, that edition is doomed. Sorry (whoops, it's true, it's happening, it's already a done deal. deal with it). It's a munchkin game for children raised in MMO mentality. Yes, that's offensive. So what, as the mods say, people in real life go for a jog and get blown up, the stakes here are so small it's silly to even fret about what we write here. I make games for a living, so sue me for having an opinion from the designer side of the table. Probably all of you have played my games and you have no idea how the other side (the producing) side works. We iterate every day on game design decisions, and the ONLY reason to resort to ridiculous rules like 4e is because your engine is LAME. What I'm trying to explain is, 4e, from my point of view as a videogame programmer, is not only a poor ruleset inherently, but encourages videogamey DMing simulating a VERY poor physics engine, that on top of that is slower than the ones that can simulate it better!! It's a lose-lose proposition. Once you play Next or PF or whatever else a bit more, you'll see the wisdom in my ways. Y'all are smart, but how many AAA games have you designed and implemented that I've played? What are YOUR credentials that makes your opinion so much less "asinine" than mine? Huh? Go into specifics. In the case of D&D, what I'm implying is that 4e DMs are running a (poor) turn-based-strategy board game that IMO cannot compete with a video game physics-wise, and is both slower AND less realistic than other editions that don't even go there. So why bother? The strength of D&D lies in fluid use of imagination and expected outcomes, not some ruleset thinking it's a good idea to define what "to fly" means, or "fire" means. In 4e, you cannot set a house made out of match sticks on fire without DM approval (target== creatures). Don't pee on me and tell me it's raining == don't attack me with fire damage at-wills in the middle of a barn and not AUTOMATICALLY burn the whole thing down. 4e turns suspension of disbelief on its head, it requires active disbelief to even be sustained past the first round of battle. And continuously thereafter. It is a crime against the imagination to subject ourselves to a game based on imagination that attempts to codify what effects "fire damage" does. No other edition did that. It disgusts me, and I will not apologize for it. Page 42 is the D&D equivalent of the Not-withstanding clause in Canadian parliament allowing expressly unconstitutional laws remain on the books, and encourages forum arguments to say "see, houserules on the fly are built into the power system so the power system, if it sucks, can be ignored". Uhhh, sorry, the entire game is premised on faulty logic and is an insult to the spirit of dungeons and dragons. AEDU powers are a system full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (since fluff is irrelevant, i.e. story is irrelevant since it's not RAW, it must be houseruled). I'm telling you guys, those who hate me, (or the mods who will ban me for saying this), in 20 years nobody will be playing 4e but people will still be playing AD&D 2nd edition, despite it's numerous flaws it is a far, far, far superior system as it encourages between-the-lines thinking, rather than stymies it in a series of, yes, asinine restrictions. I mean, they recently came out with an article giving Dragonborn aka Draconians the ability to "fly" quote unquote (because fly doesn't really mean anything in 4e, it's a non-sequitur keyword, same as "acid" or "cold" with effects that are completely arbitrary).' Do you realize how offensive it is to a physicist to think any creature would have any valid reason to have to have to fly back down to "Altitude 1" at the end of their turn? It is absurd and silly. The designers can't even make sense of the 4e rules, they are so contorted. You say "green" is blue", but then when you speak to people you say "green" but forget it's "blue" i.e. they write rules that have no effect or contradictory effects because they are so inherently obtuse. Why should you be able to hover at 5 feet off the ground rather than 6 feet? Ten feet? Why can you fly up 15 feet but, within 6 seconds, fly back down to precisely 5 feet before the end of your turn. It is an affront against all that is decent to subject ourselves to rules such as these. Why spend time playing it? Is it fun to play such a dragonborn with such a limitation? I played a cleric in PF in two months and was flying and fighting dragons and demons from other dimensions and I had no issues with DMs not being able to cope with a PC who could fly. Ever. 4e shackles DMs in the name of "balance" that in reality means it has square thoughts that resist circles. You cannot die of cold in 4e, you can die of HP loss resulting from "cold" powers. But then you have feats like "Wintertouched" but not "Firetouched" Why is that allowed? Why is that canon? Since when? How does that make sense? If you say fluff is separate from crunch, why exactly is it so much better to die in flames than to freeze to death. How YOU experienced both? I'd welcome a quicker death any day. The point is, it's all nonsense, and if I'm not free here to say so, then by all means ban me and prove to everyone how little-minded you are. Words mean things. Fire means more than is imagined in the limited / asinine 4e ruleset. I program physics in game engines for a living, if my games can do more than a 4e DM can, Houston, you have a problem. Humans should USE their imaginations, not be limited by some ridonculous ruleset. Let's let it die for good, and give it a nice, slow funeral pyre. (target == all objects, including obsolete rulebooks) I guarantee you all, that in 20 years from now, there will be more 2e players than 4e ones. To respond to the OP, I think it's offensive to not "bash" 5e as well, for the same reasons. If the rules suck, say so. Don't mollycoddle us like children. Criticism now will mean a workable game system for another 20 years. Ideally, a decent system that allows the imagination to thrive and doesn't require computers (because our minds .....you shouldn't need to look up whether a "fire" spell sets the house on fire, it just should, period). ///sigh. I really detest censorship, and PC mentality, although I appreciate being nice to people, I don't think critiquing a set of rules for an RPG on some website to be some crime worthy of punishment. If you can't handle that, that says more about you than it does me. ~*~ This poster was not moderated for this post. EN World! ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Apr 22, 2013 |
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Apr 22, 2013 15:01
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quote:Yeah, I can see how these attitudes lead to very productive discussions. There's a reason several very good posters have simply stopped posting at all. I know some that don't even come here anymore. They got tired of having to deal with these type of attitudes. Not having their insightful and productive posts is much more of a loss to this community than posts like those exemplified above have ever provided. Now this I must protest against. I don't post very often because I work 60 hour weeks, but if I had the number of posts that you have, I would surely have the amount of XP you do (meaning, the amount of people who appreciate my commentary). I apologize for being insuling and I will tone down the rhetoric, but I have just as much right to post here as anyone does, and I already quit the Wotc forums due to excessive 4venging / trolling of 'Next subforums that I simply did not want it repeated here. But that's the mods' job, not mine, and for my part I vow to not mention 4e EVER again because it is an affront to my appreciation of this hobby (and probably the worst thing to happen to it in years, but who knows, right?). And Umbran, insofar as this entire thread seems to be a free-for-all to casually throw insults my way, I find it very revealing that you take "umbrage" to my use of the word asinine, but not to others when describing my 'asinine' opinions on RPGs and games of various sorts, for which I assure you, will have more direct impact on the industry than most posters here do, given the millions of happy gamers who play the games I make. Yes, that's an argument from "authority", but it always seemed odd to me that an authority on implementing games would not deserve at least "casual" respect around here (again, you probably played most of my games, and written gushing reviews on them). But when I play an RPG on pen and paper, my standards are far more stringent, and although I write my opinions rather more forcefully than they should be, I do respect many of the opinions of the other posters here (even the 4e fans), and if I insulted them directly and personally (which I don't think I have, but I may be wrong) then I do apologize. But from my POV is seems like you're personally singling me out here and this is not the first time you've reprimanded me for my choice of terminology when, in fact, I did not violate the terms of service here. Once simply cannot say "don't be a jerk" and expect that to be a valid argument. From my POV posting in D&D Next rules threads and saying stuff like we need more contentious (IMO ridiculous) meta-gamey rules that the designers have already said would not be implemented in the game due to their violent rejection from most of the non-4e crowd, are my version of "being a jerk". However, you're right, I should just not rise to it. This is a meta-thread and of no particular importance, and you must realize that although you can block my account here, there is literally nothing you can do to prevent me from posting here again should I so chose. My purpose is not to troll, since I never went into a 4e thread and told people "those rules are asinine!" except when I was on Wotc forums and playing 4e weekly. Then I decided to quit (rather unceremoniously, when literally every single gamer I knew either quit as well or migrated to PF or other systems, or just went back to videogaming). What I'm saying is....I grow tired as well of people picking on me, and if you expect me to lick your boots to stay here you have a serious "water-cooler power abuse" issue that transcends this forum. I will simply not listen to someone tell me I cannot "insult" or "disrespect" a game rule, while you allow an entire thread to turn my alias here into your pinata. I assure you Umbran, people will read this thread, and whether they appreciate my posts or detest them, WILL realize the hypocrisy in your moderation inaction, when posts are clearly incendiary and directly insulting to me. Yet you do nothing. Ok, fine, maybe it's a little poetic justice for my own incendiary remarks, but don't claim to be an impartial observer, plenty of people do agree with my points (vigorously so! read my xp comments, I dare you) and you simply aren't a fan. And that's okay by me. Honestly, I make quite good money making games, and don't need your approbation or particularly care for the way this board is moderated. Sure, it's better than Wotc, but there is a lot of trolling of Next threads by 4e zealots that I don't see moderated which in turn, gives rise to threads such as these. The fact that you didn't lock the thread on your last post directed at me, when others started piling on, is simply exhibit A to your own gaming biases and has less to do with my choice of terminology than for your own biases. ~*~ The same poster. Once more, no moderation.
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Apr 22, 2013 15:06
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4E GM: So the Purple Demon picks a rock and throws it you... Rules-oriented player: Wait wait. Purple Demons don't have the "Throw Rocks" power. GM: Erm ... dude, he's picking a rock and throwing it at you, where's the problem with that? I'm just making up the powers as I go, that's what a GM does! ROP: Well guess what, I'm a Wizard and I can't pick a rock and throw it at you, because I have no such power on my charsheet! How is that you get to make up powers for your monsters out of thin air, while we're shackled to the rules? How's that for "fair"? At this point, the game is over. Contrast with: 3E/3.5E/PF GM: So the Purple Demon picks the rock and throws it you... Rules-oriented player: Ah, improvised throwing weapon, -4 to hit, damage for a big rock...hey, if any of you can enlarge me, I can throw it back. At this point, the game rolls on.
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Apr 27, 2013 01:57
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Why are people so upset that they can't get everything they want? You need to risk much (a poor score here and there), to gain much. IRL I have a poor Con score, which has caused me much frustration, but I'd much rather my current stat array than what I'd get with point buy, if such a thing existed. Point buy array type people shop at Gap and Walmart and have 2.3 kids and are very middle of the road. Nothing wrong with that, but one would get bored with guaranteed middleness if you could live out many lives. Try living with a severe handicap (I have), it's not fun at all, but if you can have a PC that has some negatives to get some huge pluses too, that's fun and different and memorable too. Point buy and builds makes me think of fixed mortgage repayments and RRSPs. Very low risk, low reward life. If I can play D&D Next with a guaranteed 18+ due to point buy, I'll be very disappointed. It seems like they've unconditioned my game mentlity from the stat-entitlement that I learned (from playing that edition that will not be named) and rekindled the spark in there. It's fun to roll up many characters. It's fun to not know how Providence will treat you next go around. Will you be a strong and fierce warrior who can still hold a conversation? Or a weak-willed and deceptive, frail wizard with only her wits and her cat to keep her company in her long hours of study. Why should everyone be decent or good at everything? In my group of friends, I have several who are downright awful at certain things, so much so that it's a gag to even consider trying to engage them in it (myself included). My point is, is that every min-maxer with a point buy spread that allows a natural 18 will "cheat" and roleplay a suave guy with an 8 charisma, because everyone's supposed to level at the same time thus it's a faut-pas for DMs to award XP based on RPing or clever game play and thus everyone is levelling at roughly or exactly the same time. Once you remove the sense of PC entitlement to gain levels, have a perfect build, a starting 18 in their main stat, then you create a gritty, yet fun and exciting, climate of survival against odds, and wonder when unexpected outcomes occur. The weakling becomes king. The fool wins the hand of the fair maiden, or finds the secret treasure. In my mind, all these aspects of RPG rules are tied together, and it's taken me 25 years since I first got into this hobby to realize why you feel some rules are good and some are bad. And even realize that rules you may have despised as a youngster were actually good rules (such as paladins having a strict code, magic being truly awesome, or fighters owning the battlefield with help from their magically inclined allies rather than mere derision). So far, from what I've seen, as rough and imperfect as it is, lots of what they're doing is good stuff (such as not giving "expected gold" or 30 strength). I mean, really? People really want to be able to say, I'm starting at level 5, gimme plate armor? Wtf. That's absurd. Just pretend it's like all your gear was stolen or you escaped from prison. Your character should be more than just his/her gear, and any edition where it's viable to grab an oaken tree stump and use it as a shield (mathematically), and beat back the orc chieftain, deserves massive applause. Mechanics and simulation capacity go hand in hand. It is possible to come up with rules that are better AND simpler than any that we've seen before, and I do want to see that Conan character one day rubbing way paint on and sneaking around, and the other day riding into battle in plate armor on horseback. This makes the game interesting and not pigeonholing you into artificial roles or constant patterns. A DM should say, no, it's too hot here in the desert to wear your armor, if you do, you'll die. If that happened in an "encounter", you'd have half the defender classes crying foul for "wtf, imbalance!!", same for a non-magic zone or whatever else the DM comes up with or makes sense. Player entitlement is encouraged by bad rules, and it seems like they have a handle on it. It's funny reading some comments from obvious noobs in the feedback who say stuff like "why do I have to chose between stat boost and feats!! no fair!!" It's like, my god, people, getting everything you want for free does not make a good game. If you start at level 5, or 10, forget getting more gold. You should pay the iron price for your fancy magic sword : i.e. go and raid a dungeon, steal it (and risk getting beheaded by the town guard) or kill the orc chief to get it. Starting with magic items seems like a DM fiat option to me, in a high magic campaign maybe. I don't want to roll up my paragon-level guy and say "here, I took a jagged axe, this hunter magic hide armor, etc". As if you could simply order all that stuff from Amazon. ~*~ Fun backstory on this guy - on top of (now) claiming he totally beat a terrible handicap, he's also bragged about single handedly saving video game companies, making mega selling games that all prove the superiority of simulationism in D&D, and being the most popular guy in his area who has brought tons of people into the hobby who all hate 4e. Oh, and he has a horrible crippling terror that his players will cheat if given any ability to do so at all, ever, to the point where he's said paladin requirements are too lenient because "WHAT IF THEY CHEAT ME AS A PALADIN?!"
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Apr 27, 2013 11:12
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dwarf74 posted:Tell me about that marvel heroes game that's getting canceled! This is the guy who was just banned from RPG.net. I'm glad to see RPG.net's trash bin is branching out into places other then just RPGsite (although this guy, of course, immediately lept into there to start complaining about the FASCIST MODS, too). Anyways, grog. Did you know it's functionally impossible for a d20 game to fail? And that everyone loves them? And that they're perfectly well suited for any style of game? (d20 is a mental illness) ~*~ quote:I knew we should have used a d20. Cheers, Cam Now THAT'S worthy of a reply, even though I didn't care for the OP. I wish the game had used a d20 as I probably would have understood it. As it is, I have a very pretty book but I don't really grok the rules. Still, I wish the game had succeeded--better for the hobby. Maybe in a natural selection kind of way the next iteration will be an OGL or Savage Worlds variant that I can use.
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Apr 30, 2013 03:43
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Let’s face it – stereotypes exist because there is some truth to them. I am a middle-aged man that is overweight, I have a beard, and I play Dungeons & Dragons. I did play D&D in my parents’ basement as a teenager. But those things do not mean I have not had relations with a woman of the female persuasion. I have four kids. And my wife plays D&D. And Magic the Gathering. And she could kick your butt at Castlevania back in the day. So when I see gamer stereotypes portrayed on TV, I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’m glad that my favorite pastime is trickling into mainstream America. On the other, I’m frustrated that the stereotypes are being perpetuated, and that most of the portrayals are inaccurate. It’s one thing to make fun of D&D – it’s another to make fun of it while doing it wrong! They’ve played D&D on Big Bang Theory several times over the years, most recently the episode that aired this past week (“The Love Spell Potential”). They’ve played D&D on Community, and on Freaks and Geeks. In every case, they’ve done something I’ve never seen in any game I’ve ever played – the DM rolls all the dice. Why? What was the logistical conundrum that made portraying the game accurately such a difficulty? If it’s “all in good fun,” why give an erroneous portrayal? Why they be messin’ with my game??? Honestly, I can’t even begin to imagine why the change was necessary. They’ve got the DM screen; they’ve got the character sheets; they’ve got the dice! How hard is it to show more than one person rolling a d20? I think part of why I take umbrage is the erroneous implication that rpg players are antisocial. Nothing could be further from the truth – socialization is a requirement to play the game. When the writers show the DM hoarding the dice while the players simply sit and watch, it promotes a false image of an activity that is already steeped in negativity. I love D&D, and I love to share with those I think can appreciate it. I play online, I play with my local gaming group, and I play with my children. The last thing I want is for my girls to go to school and tell their friends or teachers we play D&D at home, and they think about what they’ve seen on TV. I think D&D is a positive experience, and I don’t want my children teased unduly. There are a lot of pastimes of which people take a negative view, but I think that attitude is born of ignorance. I can’t fathom people enjoying watching sports – to me, it seems repetitive and devoid of intellectual stimulation. Obviously I’m in the minority, and I recognize that; I consciously try not to judge others based on their fanaticism for sports, just as I wouldn’t want to be judged solely for my love of D&D. But I don’t see tv programs showing players running the wrong way around a baseball diamond, or carrying the soccer ball down the field, or kicking the football from player to player. I don’t see bowling with the wrong number of pins; I don’t see people playing poker with the wrong number of cards in their hands. Perhaps I’m overly sensitive, and production teams make all kinds of mistakes all the time, and I’ve never noticed – except when they portray people playing D&D. Maybe it is ignorance of the subject matter, but I would think after seeing all the work that goes into making a television show that they wouldn’t skimp on research for that one element. Heck, you can’t tell me that SOMEBODY involved in making the Big Bang Theory hasn’t played D&D and couldn’t speak up. Surely SOMEBODY knew that the portrayal was wrong, no matter the show. D&D has been portrayed accurately – and with humor – in movies like The Gamers and The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. It can be done, so why won’t television do it? Freaks and Geeks probably came closest to an accurate portrayal, so maybe I’m just being too sensitive. Perhaps it’s a symptom of my obsession. I WANT people to like D&D, and I can appreciate humor and good-natured ribbing, but I can’t help feeling the scenes I’ve seen give a negative impression of the game. I’m afraid of the negativity at a time when our hobby needs a serious positive boost. There may be a certain prejudice involved in these portrayals; they’re being done for laughs, but perhaps the assumption is that such a small segment of the audience is actually familiar with D&D, so the actual details don’t matter. You could argue that it’s just the concept of roleplaying that’s being spoofed, but they call it D&D. When Big Bang Theory shows the guys playing cards, they don’t call it Magic the Gathering – it has a made-up name. Are roleplaying games so obscure that the activity can’t be spoofed without spoofing a specific game? Is anyone aware of a positive portrayal of roleplaying games on tv? Am I wrong in my assumptions? Does it not bother anyone else? I must admit, I feel a bit like an old man shaking his cane at kids yelling, “Keep off my lawn!” Or Chris Crocker crying, “Leave Britney alone!” Leave D&D alone! I don’t want its name besmirched in the mainstream media. I don’t want it ridiculed and derided. I had enough of that in the 80s with Jack Chick. Which brings me to another point. I heard of a couple of projects planning to turn the Chick tracts into a full-blown movie, and the producers plan to play it all straight. On the one hand, I think it will be hilarious – but then, I KNOW it’s a wildly inaccurate portrayal and the humor stems from the complete ignorance of the author. But the general public doesn’t know that. I fear too many people may take it seriously. Creators need to follow due diligence because the audience won’t. Recently Pat Robertson on the 700 Club made an erroneous reference to D&D – how many of his viewers simply accepted it as fact? The bottom line is, I appreciate the humor, but I’d appreciate accuracy more. I’ll still watch Big Bang Theory (I only watched Community because of D&D – I don’t enjoy their style of humor), but a teeny tiny part of me died inside when Wolowitz said, “But only the DM rolls the dice.” The dice are for everybody man…everybody gets to roll the dice.
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May 14, 2013 03:01
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When I play a female character, I often develop the personality from the standpoint of why the character has to be female...I ask myself why the PC couldn't work as a male. For instance, I played a Ley Line Walker in RIFTS some years ago who believed her powers were linked to her menstrual cycle & virginity- something I gathered from a book on the shamanistic beliefs of certain cultures. It would have worked better in HERO, which would have changed the way her powers worked as compared to other LLWs, but it still worked well as a groundwork for why she behaved the way she did, when she did. And it would clearly not have worked for a male PC. Or a female paladin from a misogynistic culture: her weapons were oversized versions of those used in the trades she had learned, so that she could still carry them where & when most women of her culture would be unarmed. Again, it was a concept that worked better for a female than male PC (not many misandronistic cultures out there; human males tend to dominate the warrior caste of pre-gunpowder cultures due to physical size and strength).
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May 14, 2013 03:06
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Babylon Astronaut posted:That tier list. Bill and Ted had a time machine and beat death. No one on that list is mundane. Must not take the nerd bait. Not really seeing the big grog there...? Someone asked "What edition should we play" and someone answered with very little bashing of other games. dwarf74 posted:So let's talk about inclusiveness in D&D. Should D&D be inclusive? Before I start can I just say that MOST of the posts in this thread were not awful. That said, this thread does not exist for those posts. It exists for these posts. ~*~ The fantasy genre throughout all forms of media is primarily based on western European and D&D is a reflection of that. There is even objections to include classes like the Monk or Samurai in it because of that. Settings that are different such as Dark Sun are largely settings that aren't as high profile. If they try to stray from that in the core books, it could negatively hurt sales as the people they are targeting are primarily those that want the western European fantasy.
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May 21, 2013 12:05
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Player entitlement is a thing, even if it's what you prefer as a playstyle. You're welcome to throw out everything that restricts players in your game if you like, but I doubt many other people want to play that game, even if they think they do upon hearing about it. If you want your game to be masturbatory fanfic, go for it, I don't care, but if you think that's going to compete with other games on the market, I'm afraid you're mistaken.
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May 21, 2013 12:55
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The great thing about ENWorld's thread on diversity in D&D is that it isn't a whole thread of terrible, it's just like these two or three people who are consistently awful on all the threads they post on, yet have never been banned. I don't think ENWorld actually even bans people anymore. ~*~ quote:Maybe not, but I also think that two people in revealing clothing are thought of in certain ways due to the person perceiving them, too. Why does a sorceress and a barbarian, both equally partially nude, mean something different except because guys like looking at half naked women whereas women are shown not to be as visual, sexually speaking, as men? The only reason the babrarian isn't as "sexualized" is because people aren't as sexually attracted to the half-naked barbarian due to his appearance as they are the sorceress. There's really no countering that, so long as you treat the both equally sexually or non-sexually in art-style. I find that's somewhat true, but not entirely. When I bought Age of Conan MMO, I enjoyed the non-PC, non-sanitized, non-childlike overt sexuality and adult themes. I'm an adult, why not? My girlfriend at the time also told me she enjoyed the barbarian character I was playing, and wasn't offended in the slightest at my luring around the slave girl at the beginning (despite being a feminist university professor at an Ivy League uber PC faculty). It's called having some perspective. D&D books cannot, and will not, and should not be here as a vehicle for some orwellian progressive social renaming of gender-neutral pronouns in its books. For some reason women are less interested in physics and math at the university level, despite being provably just as able in those topics. They simply aren't interested. It's the honest truth. Same thing with D&D. I will stand by this : I doubt that no matter how Star Trek-like we ever become, this particular hobby, in this particular manner of playing, for whatever reason not related to offputting sexist or degrading imagery or over-use of "he" in books, will never be 50-50. If you think so, you clearly need to look around more at the gaming stores. There are some really cool geek girls out there, but they are far and few in between, and calling every 1 in 2 paladins in the PHB a "she" will do LITTLE OR NOTHING to change that. How do I know this? Because they already did so, thirteen years ago, with 3.0. I know there are gamer girls out there, and I'd love for there to be more, but it WAS pandering to use "she" half the time. She is not gender-neutral. I've read thousands of books and not in a single one of them did some author begin a sentence describing a soldier or a knight as "she" without context. It is simply absurdist pandering and a transparent ploy to sell more books. Which, as we know, largely failed. Hate this post all you want, Obryn, but I speaketh the truth and you know it.
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May 23, 2013 09:55
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quote:Using she instead he is jarring because it is just poor English. If people did that during their English classes, whether high school or college, they would have tons of red marks on their papers. Animals even have biases amongst the sexes, some in which the females are larger and stronger. This is great for fantasy, allowing tropes such as Amazon warrior troops to be just as common or uncommon as you'd like. I'm all for that. But D&D does have an implied setting, and despite us all agreeing we need to be inclusive, that doesn't mean we need to pander by uttering absurd falsehoods. Yeah, the 3.x books went way overboard. Mialee was a great example, it's perfect way to elaborate on the rules with clear examples and use cases, and referring to her with "her" is simply good english. But "she" is NOT gender-neutral, and D&D does NOT get to re-write the entire english language and expect it to stick. Imagine you read a newspaper and it was talking about wounded soldiers, or football players, or any number of other highly gender biased professions (in the other way too), and without ever explaining the subject is an exception, it would be silly to pretty much anyone to refer to them as "she". It's intellectually dishonest, and worse, it's insulting and sexist to both sexes. One doesn't need to pretend like an offhand "he" is poor shorthand for any soldier or fireman by default in referring to them, or conversely for other professions "flight attendant" and stewardess, or nurses are not typically thought of as being female. There are exceptions here, but it's IMO not D&D's responsibility to correct the world's biases, and it couldn't even if it was. The best adventures have tons of variety, gruesome and typical and a-typical things in them. Once we had a gay gnome wizard, our DM roleplayed him so well, we were all cracking up. He was very well respected too, like Tyrion. Other times our rogue was caught finger banging a halfling's corpse, to the disgust of my paladin when he fought out. He made him give up all his skin masks of our fallen enemies in punishment. Things in medieval times were unequal, brutish, and unjust in the extreme. D&D is medieval fantasy, by default. Imagination land is a big umbrella that can fit all sorts of magical "metrosexuelves" (lol) too. But that doesn't mean I want a lecture or my rulesbooks I paid good money for to try and right all the wrongs of history, or even literature. That's not what I'm paying for. I'm paying for a good set of rules, not a bloody lecture on how to be politically correct. And until we do see, I agree with this thread, the actual sales figures over the years, I am going to say that unfortunately, variant, girl gamers are those cool, rare, counter-culture subset that aren't swayed by the extreme geekness of D&D and find something they like in it, but that they are, at least for the time being, a rarity. I wonder if Morrus has any stats on the sex of the members here, or Wotc on their members list. I'd be willing to bet 95% male, if not more. Same proportion that I see at the local D&D encounters here in Toronto (Actually, there wasn't a single woman, in the ENTIRE STORE last time I went), which is hardly a mecca of intolerance or lacking diversity. So I call BS on those who think there is any reason for this lopsided skew in the demographics of this hobby other than personal choice. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's a long-held geek wish to have more girls at the table (actually, it would go a long way to making things more civilized, IMO. I get annoyed by the immaturity I see quite often). But there is only so much pandering Wotc can do, be inclusive : sure! Pandering, no. Using "she" pronoun everywhere to describe a typical soldier is simply sexist : to men. And a load of double think that we all know to be a patent falsehood. Fantasy allows us to make whatever scenarios we like, in game, but requiring us to submit to a disfiguring contortion / baudlerization of the english language is not what people buy RPG rulesbooks for. If we want to learn to be sensitive to the subtleties of sexism in society, there are ENTIRE RACKS of books on the topic at virtually any book store. I don't buy D&D books for that. I will venture this in favor of our drooling comrades : D&D geeks are not the ones beating up on gays or minorities, we are already, as a counter-culture, far in advance of many other areas of society. (and far behind in others...)
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May 23, 2013 10:18
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It really is a wonderful gift. Wouldn't you know, the people with the shittiest opinions in that thread also unanimously have lovely opinions about D&D? ~*~ Honestly these threads pop up a lot. I really don't care much, but the art should also keep the market in mind. Peter David should be commended for representing more gay characters in the marvel universe. At the same time I say this I dropped X factor after several issues of shatterstar and rictor kissing each other and discussing their relationships. I am not interested in the romances of the gay characters in the least. I don't demand they don't include them, but I don't want to read about it. So I don't buy the material. I would find artwork of males with make consorts jarring. I would probably avoid it. YES YES I know it is not politically correct, I know other people like it and need to feel included. That is fine. If I find the images distasteful I will not buy the product simple as that. I know the problems with it: Cheesecake picturesof female character in the books and I will generally buy it. Too many Beefcake and I am not buying it. If the cheesecake was eliminated it wouldn't bother me in the least. If they keep it, that's an added bonus. inclusiveness is a laudable goal, but I am not going to support a product BECAUSE it is inclusive. It just doesn't matter to me.
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May 24, 2013 17:28
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Down with inequality! Not just gender-based inequality, but also age-, physical appearance-, body type-, and disability-based inequality as well! A female barbarian should be just as strong as a male barbarian. An elderly rogue should be just as nimble as a young rogue. An ugly bard should be just as charming as a handsome bard. An obese fighter should be just as effective as a fit fighter. A blind ranger should be just as accurate as a sighted ranger. Down with inequality!!!
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May 24, 2013 17:31
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