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ProfessorCirno posted:ROLEPLAYING, NOT ROLLPLAYING. Smug nerds (like, uh, me at the time) looked down on D&D as the sort of simple-minded (yet also overly-complicated!) game that you played until you were ready for a real roleplaying game that wasn't just mindless combat and powering up, and pitied the people who stuck with it despite the presence of so many obviously better choices. And the 1990s took that strain and ran with it, both with WW/WoD's alleged emphasis on story and mood and theme and political maneuvering and the explosion in super-detailed metaplotted settings (which included a lot of AD&D worlds, where you had to read a stream of tie-in novels if you wanted to keep up with the ongoing changes) and eventually culminating in things like 7th Sea and Brave New World and Trinity, where critical setting details about what was really going on were withheld from the GM until more than a dozen supplement books were published. D&D 3E was (as you point out) a clear break from this progression, with its original emphasis on straight-up Dungeoneering and its detailed tactical combat rules and its original emphasis on toolkit-style design (for the GM to build his world from) instead of hyper-detailed pre-made settings. And this drove a number of people completely bugfuck, because it wrecked their notion of the hobby inexorably evolving from its base, vulgar, crude Gygaxian roots towards a more refined story/narrative gaming thing. Wick in particular is furious because his preferred style of play (GM tells an intricate story full of important NPCs that PCs flit around in) was being deprecated in favor of a kill things/take stuff/level up/gently caress yeah throwback approach. It's particularly funny because by the time 4E came out, 3E had evolved (in many nerd minds) into this intricately detailed and infinitely customizable game engine that WotC unforgivably pitched aside in favor of a tabletop WoW emulator boardgame for babbies that wasn't even a real RPG. This, depsite the fact that 3E was full of range templates and facing rules and flanking effects and grappling rules that were like a zen koan to decipher and, oh yeah, Attacks Of Opportunity. Which just goes to prove your point that... quote:Nerds being insufferable and exclusionary is maybe just an inherent thing.
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# ¿ Dec 6, 2014 03:26 |
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# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 15:54 |
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As we all know, John Tarnowski's latest project was an OSR retroclone based on Indian mythology titled Arrows of Indra. He's always denied that there was any relationship with or influence from the classic old-school Indian mythology derived Empire of the Petal Throne RPG. Well, someone at YDIS ran some side-by-side comparisons of the magic systems of the two games, and um...Arrows of Indra priest spell list posted:Tier 1(hosed up the order) EPT priest spell list posted:1. Calm water/wind/people* The guy posted it to RPGsite and the last brave honest truthteller in all of RPGland immediately started banning people and deleting posts and wildly lashing out at strawmen. It's amazing.
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2014 17:08 |
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Chaltab posted:The thread's still there in their Reviews subforum.
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2014 22:03 |
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Goodman Games has something to sell you!
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 00:06 |
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Covok posted:Ok...what?
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 00:10 |
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inklesspen posted:I googled their two names, though, and I couldn't find anything apart from Ken having also been credited in D&D 5. So that was another example of "apparently a thing happened but I can't find any evidence of it". Not saying it didn't happen. Just saying I can't find poo poo and it bugs me to hear about stuff that I can't substantiate.
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 06:43 |
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Gamers using "milieu" are just parroting Grognard Prime himself, whose writing tended to use unnecessary ten-dollar wordsGary Motherfucking Gygax posted:As has been often pointed out, AD&D is a game wherein participants create personae and operate them in the milieu created and designed, in whole or in part, by the Dungeon Master and shared by all, including the DM, in imagination and enthusiasm. The central theme of this game is the interaction of these personae, whether those of the players or those of the DM, with the milieu, including that part represented by the characters and creatures personified by the DM.
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# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 13:06 |
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The RPGnet Far West thread continues to deliver. Where did all the money go? A random poster suggests a possibility.quote:If you read the early (I mean first couple of months) updates you will see that GMS went to Hollywood to show far west around...I think most of our money went there.
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# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 21:16 |
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Ahahahaha, Desborough is bent about Munchkin going on to make a zillion dollars for SJG while he never saw a cent of it. He was one of the authors of The Munchkin's Guide To Powergaming book that SJG published in the mid-1990s, which was sold well enough to make Jackson think there was a market for gamer-self-mocking "Munchkin" products and games and well the rest is history. No wonder he keeps trying to fart out hastily-thrown-together card games based on some passing nerd culture meme - he saw SJG do it and make millions, so he figures he's due. Yeah, good luck with that.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 02:32 |
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Also, it seems "Freedom" now means forcing other private companies to carry your game and do business with you whether you want to or not (so long as it's not illegal). SJG and DTRPG should have no ability to decide what they should or should not carry. Good to know.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 02:35 |
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Pundit's belief that storygame swine are just hipster poseurs next to True Raw Edgy Original Talent Zak S (of whom they are terribly, terribly jealous) cracks me up. Also, that guy at YDIS compared the magic item lists between Arrows of Indra and Empire of the Petal Throne and welp big shock it turns out the former is an item-for-item copy of the latter.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 04:31 |
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My understanding is that Steve Jackson is pretty much a libertarian, with a libertarian's dim view of state power (If the Secret Service had pulled the poo poo on me that they did on him, I'd be one too) and a small businessman's loathing of taxes and regulation.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 04:40 |
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Rulebook Heavily posted:He uses it to feel superior to other people who play RPGs, which is the relevant/funny part. It's also funny because it's so at odds with his usual self-appointed role of clear-eyed scalpel-sharp truthteller looking down at all the silly, unthinking, irrational sheeple who fall for all kinds of nonsense - throwing an "oh, by the way, I (and I alone) command the Eye Of Thoth and comprehend the True Inner Mysteries" into that mix is such a wonderful, self-negating touch.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 13:26 |
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inklesspen posted:It's his new book, the one which Zak claimed (in the Google Plus posting I screenshotted earlier) was the true reason Kemper was down on Ken Hite. The DTRPG description says it is perfect for your "first, second, third, fourth or fifth edition game". Because the only game in existence is D&D.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 14:17 |
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Desborough managed to finally make a good showing in an online argument! ...with a Markov script bot
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 15:39 |
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Slimnoid posted:Of course, he still takes time in his mini-rants to rail against THE PSUEDO-ACTIVISTS but it's kind of funny how even Desborough is running out of other toxic elements to hang out with.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 04:48 |
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Halloween Jack posted:I will comment to point out that grognards tend to be laissez-faire South Park Republicans until it negatively affects them in the slightest way, at which point, business owners having control over their own business becomes censorship. Will you be surprised to learn that it's a stirring cry to battle, to fight at the barricades against the dawning of a new intellectual dark ages, and the very soul of civilization itself? gradenko_2000 posted:There you go. In fairness he's not really a grog, probably just a new player that isn't familiar with the history.
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# ¿ Dec 12, 2014 18:56 |
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Chaltab posted:Don't you people know that d20 is a perfect world-simulator that has physics/rules* that can be used to run literally anything?
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2014 01:00 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Saving Dwarfs From Forlorn Encystment How long have you been sitting on this?
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# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 22:27 |
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From our very own D&D Next thread:Gerdalti posted:I may be a bit more technical than the average person (seasoned IT person), and I love RPG video games and MMO's, so I have some experience with the subject matter. Until this week I had literally never even heard of most of these other systems (Fate, Dungeon World, etc). Gerdalti posted:I mean hell, I learned and implemented site-to-site ipsec vpn on a totally unfamiliar system in 3 hours this morning. I am clearly not the average scenario, nor am I even close to bordering on the nerd-curious.
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# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 23:08 |
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From an article at Deadspin, of all places, on what people in prison do fill up their endless, endless days:quote:Unfashionable games from the past, abandoned by the free world in favor of the digital, have survived in prison. Men still like cribbage (which requires pegs), horseshoes, and Dungeons and Dragons. Although some prisons actually forbid the latter out of a belief that it spurs nerds to violence, inmates own the books, draw the fields of play, and hold elaborate campaigns. It's like the '80s all over again: What flourishes as a nostalgic novelty in the free world serves as a present-day necessity inside.
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# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 00:35 |
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Bendigeidfran posted:Their lore apparently involves an exodus of Extreme Sports Club members who fight off Gargantuan WerePenguins and eventually find a friendly starship to take them to their homeland. There is also a cannibalistic wizard tournament to determine who gets the right to eat the others and be the last remaining Blacklore elf in their starving colony. This poo poo is goddamn brilliant. ( )
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# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 19:48 |
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Asimo posted:It's not "just" a nerd thing, no, but the older I get and the more time I spend online, the one thing that really, really seems to define a nerd is the utter and complete inability to understand even the most rudimentary and basic subtlety and themes in a work of media. It's like a screaming unintentional shibboleth once you realize it.
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# ¿ Dec 25, 2014 19:34 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:gently caress, somewhere out there there's a grog defending their position with "it's a fantasy game, and in MY fantasy, women are weaker", right? lizard posted:As a side note, there seems to be a common assumption in this thread that female players play female characters, and thus, anything which affects women in the setting is inflicted on the players themselves, by constraining their PCs actions. A DM who insisted that players limit themselves to their own gender is probably not one I'd choose to game with. Assuming there is a freedom to choose your character's gender in the game, what is the difference between "This nation is strongly patriarchal; female PCs will probably get some grief from NPCs" and "This nation is run by dwarves; elf PCs will probably get some grief from NPCs"? If you're told, going in, "This character type faces some form of discrimination", and you are free to play something else, but decide not to, that's your choice. (Before someone says, "Well, prejudice against women is real, and prejudice against elves is not.", I shall point you to umpty-zillion and two threads on why classic fantasy depictions of orcs, etc, are questionable because the same concepts applied to fictional entities in games have also been applied to real entities in history.) It's always telling where the dividing point between "geez its a fantasy game lighten up" and "my versimilitude!!1!" lays. How does this isolated city in the mountains feed itself? Why are all the traps in this ancient tomb perfectly functional after being buried for 2000 years? If the graveyard outside of town is full of ghouls why haven't they overrun the town's level 1 guards and eaten everyone already? Eh, shut up, it's just fantasy, don't worry too much abou - wait, does your amazon PC have an 18 strength?
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# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 18:10 |
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I've decided the most reliable tic that signals that you're about to read some bullshit from an old school grognard is when they make a point to mention (brag, really) when and with what version they started playing D&D. You just know that as soon as someone tells you about how they cut their teeth on Moldvay B/X or Holmes Basic back in 1981 or whenever that you're about to get hit with a tsunami of whiny grog nonsense. Case in point: quote:Where did *my* D&D go? Seriously, it's like a perfect tell. It reminds me of old viking or ancient greek warriors who made a point of boasting their heritage and feats every time they were formally recognized at a meeting or before engaging in single combat.
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# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 20:28 |
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MalcolmSheppard posted:What does this mean? It means Gary Gygax took Mordenkainen with him to his grave.
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# ¿ Jan 3, 2015 12:00 |
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It also included this fun bit of Gygaxgrogquote:Second, these personalities allow the DM (and player, if the DM shows these to the player) to see the wide variety that different campaigns allow. Many things are non-standard, such as a lizard man and a centaur, and some new magic items are detailed. Although this does not mean that these things are recommended for AD&D, they do show the variety of individual campaigns.
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# ¿ Jan 3, 2015 12:03 |
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Happy new year from GMS! Why does this site that I openly wish for the death of keep saying mean things about me?
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# ¿ Jan 5, 2015 06:32 |
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# ¿ Jan 5, 2015 23:15 |
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ManMythLegend posted:Holy poo poo, this stuff is almost as old as I am.
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# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 14:28 |
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More like osirisisdumb
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# ¿ Jan 8, 2015 00:03 |
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Unusual Exalted grog from rpgnetquote:What if I want to play a character that has no useful skills at all? Every edition of the core book has rules for creating a non-heroic mortal. I want to play one of them. I will have, at most, 1 dot in anything., and exactly one attribute at 3, and all the others at 2, and basically no virtues. I will also not be able to double 10s.
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# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 13:33 |
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unseenlibrarian posted:Pavis is great because it's basically Glorantha-as-Microcosm. You've got a pocket of Sun worshipers, you've got Sartarite clans, , you've got ducks, you've got the lunar occupying forces, you've got Dragonewts and Trolls, you've got aldryami, the animal nomads, heretic dwarves worshiping one of their own, and etc all in one convenient location, so you can focus on whatever bits you like. Hell, I think one of the Runequest 3rd adventure lines was about how everyone reacts to a Western sorcerer moving into town. Pavis is great, is what I'm saying.
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# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 18:41 |
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The problem with making a "realistic" combat system is that there's no agreement as to what actually happened during bronze age or medieval or modern combat. Even questions like "how heavy and strong were swords" have no definitive answer (there's a strong suspicion that most of the surviving armor and weapons that we have from Ye Olden Days were created as fancy display pieces that were never meant to be used in combat). There's no scholarly consensus about any of this. There's no better documented organization from the classical world than the Roman army, and there's still zero agreement about how it actually fought. Hell, several armor types specified in AD&D may not actually have ever existed. The whole thing is only a half-step more "realistic" than making huge charts showing which Veritech VF-1 missile loadouts will do the most damage to different kinds of Zentradi energy shields.
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# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 15:52 |
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Guilty Spork posted:I was thinking more of the comments, which feature Pundit and Zak being how they are. Plague of Hats posted:Ron said some stuff that might've had a fine intended message, but he said it in a really loving dumb way. I really don't feel any sympathy for him on this one. poo poo was loving dumb and he's trying to act like it wasn't.
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# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 17:37 |
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That whole G+ thread is great watching. Tarnowski, Zak, and Ron Edwards all trying to pwn each other in an endless ourobouros. Can you guess how many posts it takes before they start arguing over matters of pure semantics and the definition of words? It's almost certainly less than you think.
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# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 21:20 |
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That whole G+ thread continues to be amazing, just three giant black holes swirling around each other and sucking everything in sight down into their lightless abyss and giving off blasts of disorganized radiation
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# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 19:45 |
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Biomute posted:Why would anyone have an issue with a way of looking at recurring themes/cliches/motifs/literary devices. As long as you're not being annoying about it, what's not to like? Trope tunnel vision is hilarious, especially when they try to hammer square pegs into round holes (the four protagonists actually make a classic five-person team, because one of the characters fulfills two roles if you squint hard enough! The seven-person protagonist team is actually a subversion of the classic five-person team!). Plus, most of the tropes themselves have terrible inside joke names (it's a classic Squick Squee situation that inverts the traditional Hilarious Badass of Doom trope!)
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# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 01:02 |
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And yeah, one of the defining characteristics of nerdery is an inability to critically engage any work of art except by nitpicking plot holes or "unrealistic" details or continuity glitches or fidelity to the source material.
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# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 01:11 |
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# ¿ Mar 29, 2024 15:54 |
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Bendigeidfran posted:is it going to end up like model trains someday?
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# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 02:51 |