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Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Ratoslov posted:

Yeah, I remember hearing about a 3,x game where the game master introduced a huge double-door made out of adamantine into a mid-level dungeon in order to minimize the players' ability to circumvent it via shenanigans. The players immediately absconded with the door, since it was more valuable than all the treasure in the rest of the dungeon combined by a factor of ten.

I believe someone pointed that out about the Tomb of Horrors - which actually had crap treasure making even the golden runs a loss for the party cost-wise, but gates and doors made out of really valuable materials like Adamantine and Mithril, so the updated version specifically pointed out they became worthless pig iron if taken out.

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Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

I didn't even think of the "Trans deliberately tricking people" stereotype and now I'm even angrier at this stupid loving game.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Black August posted:

I don't get those types. Why are these people playing games when they just seem to want to make people angry and lose? Doesn't that get tiring and boring really fast? Where's the fun, the joy?

Some people find it really fun to annoy and irritate people, and they're the type that's best to cut loose as they never learn why they keep losing friends. These tend to be the same people who tell offensive jokes and get angry when people get upset.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Lucinda is just infuriating as a character even when removing the fetish bait, she's basically the ultimate edgelord mary-sue, and basically makes no sense.

A character powerful enough to teleport someone to a pocket dimension even before she drew her first breath, and basically canonically is more awesome at magic then the teachers, has zero desire to learn, engage in school activities, or a need to be 'protected', and clearly dislikes being in school would not stay, so it's a huge "Why the gently caress are you even here?"

Then her very presence makes everyone else worse - it's hard to believe anyone is a good guy if they respond to her sadistic, murderous "pranks" as 'Lucinda just being Lucinda'. And it's not like anyone shows they're doing it because they're terrified of her, but that casual torture is no big deal to the group.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Black August posted:

I guess it'd make for a good villain backstory. Anyone with that much effortless power and hatred for authority is going to start calling up Satan for favors and murdering people for fun and power right quick.

If she was ever treated as an outright villain, it'd be more forgivable, but she's treated as the cool anti-hero.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Certainly, the thing that tends to bug me more about that sort of fetishism tends to be the denial more than the fetishism itself. If WGA positioned itself as a game for transformation fetishists that wanted to live out sociopathic fantasies and said so I'd be like "well that's creepy and I certainly don't want to play it but whatever", but no, it has to act at being a game for kids, and that's where things go past problematic and more into "NO".

And I think that's why everyone's reaction is so strong - is the recognition is the authors get off to the setting, and the sense you are by-proxy acting out their fetishes, and given it's targeted at pre-teen/teen girls... bleugh.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Fossilized Rappy posted:

There are two frogs. Did she turn Harry Not-er into two frogs? Are there two Harrys? I'm not sure what's going on.

And why do I care? :psyduck:

I think it's Harry and Ron

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

There's a reason why SMT restricts moves that grant extra turns to bosses - though that's still very frustrating to deal with.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Doresh posted:

Aside from WGA being a fetish disguised as a children's game, it's the effed-up non-morale of "People with power should be allowed to (ab)use it as much as they want" that really gets to me.


Doesn't hitting your enemy's weakness give you an extra turn?

Yes, though bosses have exclusive moves like "Dragon's Eye" that gives them 3-5 extra turns.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

I'm trying to figure out how declaring something Steampunk makes it unusable to everyone else. Everything else had a weird logic, but that one.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Fossilized Rappy posted:

This reminds me, are there any current RPGs out there that have tried to wrest back the idea of steampunk from the whole "just glue some gears on it" fad trend? Like, one with actual social revolution, anti-colonialism, and anarchism that dotted the real Victorian era?

Not that I heard of, I wish - because the idea of Shadowrun but Victorian Era is a pretty rad concept to be honest. The Colonial Apologism is pretty much got me out of Steampunk

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

and the same goes for tabletop games unless they're specifically designated as one-shots. It's a bit like watching a production of MacBeth, and having Duncan walk back in to join his son in battle without anyone asking why the dead guy is back.

Unless stated otherwise, when you got a persistent setting - and you play by the rules and actions, cause and effect is expected unless *otherwise explicitly stated*. So in this case, if I was Circe, I wouldn't be playing chess with the girl who nearly killed me by turning me into a cigarette.

And that's the huge problem with Lucinda's characterization, she does horrific things on a daily basis, but everyone doesn't remember or forgives her too easily with no good reason.

I'm pretty sure Post-Modernism doesn't mean "Actions have no consequences whatsoever"

Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Mar 7, 2016

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Nessus posted:

To forcibly bring this back on the rails, how is this sort of thing handled in TOON? In fact has anyone ever done a writeup or anything for Toon? It seems from what I remember to have had interesting precursors of some of the things like FATE, as well as being ridiculous for being a game in which you were all cartoon characters.

iirc, no one dies in TOON - they just 'fall down' until the next scene, and it's explicitly treated as exaggerated non-lethal violence, the problem with WGA is it tries for the cartoon-y feel, but makes note people do go insane or die because of the actions.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Doesn't help with Yu-Gi-Oh that at one point, the original American publishers got it in their heads that they owned the games, and created and sold a bunch of counterfeit cards, throwing off the balance Konami had intended to have for the TCG.

And I remember Pokemon Cards being barely tolerated by the card shop (aimed mostly at M:TG and Star wards) because the kids brought in so much money.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

and if you accidentally spill something, you might as well throw it away as the act of dabbing would tear it apart, and the ink will probably run even if you just let it air-dry.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

The dollmaker's fun, but I am sadly addicted to dollmakers - but it's ridiculous. Either don't use art, or sparingly. This is both lazy and somewhat dodgy as they're taking someone's work for profit.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

It's wrong, to put it bluntly.

Do they credit their artists? Now I'm curious.

I sent a message to the creator's facebook to see if they knew about this. What's really funny is the Senshi makers actually have a drat good variety of stuff and they went with possibly the most vanilla options possible.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Finally heard from the Dollmaker creator - from her response, while Sparks of Life credit DollDivine, they never sought permission before publishing.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

It's amazing how when WGA isn't awful, it's terribly lazy - and the Axe Guitar just makes me wish someone would make a setting based off of Brutal Legend (with a sane rule set)

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

And it does not help Brucato comes off as an extremely smug bastard high off of his own fumes, or all the troubling content: the overuse of rape and sexual abuse as drama without warning, the 'Old man yells at clouds' sneering at technology, magical fetishism of LGBT people - especially Trans people being treated like magical third sexes hermaphrodites, his inability to keep his biases out of the writing, downtalking the traditions and technocracy for his special-sue groups - instead he turns what's suppose to be a revised guidebook for oMage into his own personal soap box.

If he wants to write about Chaos Magick as the paradigm of the world, he's free to write it as his own thing and publish it - easier to do it now than ever before with the advent of e-books, but in a product line with established lores and expectations, that's not acceptable to throw it all out for his unique vision. That's like someone revising say... Eberron and they declare that Gods are real Faerun-style meddlers and the clock/steampunk elements have been wiped away in a catastrophe.

Yeah, technically that person can do it, but people will be rightfully pissed off.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Doresh posted:

His weird trans boner is pretty hilarious, actually. Like some (hopefully) hypothetical hardcore weeabo who unironically agress with the "Katanas are underpowered" meme.

It's hilarious, but also pretty gross - he puffs is chest in pride at being so liberal and enlightened, but there's so much awful stereotyping, from magical noble savages to mystical asians, and the overuse of the 'women only gaining power and agency after being made victims' in his write ups.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Doresh posted:

That's some weird overlap with this Witch Girls: Adult Edition nonsense. Apparently, the more you're willing to cram your progressiveness into your books, the less you actually understand about it.

More so when you throw in the fact they insert their weird fetishes into their words, Soto's Transformation/Smoking/Snuff with Brucato's Animal loving/Furries

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Echo Cian posted:

Pretty sure this is actually a bench in a tree, which is pretty rad tbh.


A "leftist revenge fantasy" that involves rampant murder and rape, or a "feminist" revenge fantasy that involves treating all men as evil except for the dudes you gently caress (and that is their only stated redeeming quality) and rape/forcibly impregnate is very much missing the point.

This is the sort of thing you think of in disgust when you see victim blaming or harassment or whatever other poo poo, much like briefly fantasizing about if someone you hate got injured because that would show them. But most people know better than to entertain the idea for more than a minute.

Actually making a game about beating up strawmen, or putting it in a novel, is gross and short-sighted since it means those MRA types can point at it and yell, "See, this is what those feminazis REALLY think!" when... No, it really isn't. And this isn't helping. It's stooping to the level of writers who make women weaker than men statistically because :biotruths:, or reduce them to rapebait fucktoys with no agency to satisfy male fantasy. Doing the same thing in reverse is just as stupid.

Viewing it as a leftist or feminist revenge fantasy that would be "good to see" is lazy at best, suggests some unpleasant things at worst.

Bellum Maga is a steaming pile of poo poo with no redeeming qualities.

Exactly - you said everything I want to. And notice we say TERFY about Bellum Maga? Because it loving is.

The one mention of Trans individuals is offensive, trite, and hammers in the TERF narrative that Transmen are gender traitors and Transwomen are never women - and they're only acceptable as some kind of loving hermaphroditic succubus.

That's not feminism or equality, that's making a new club that excluding everyone who doesn't think like you. Chocula, I'm not sure how you managed to miss the loving point when several people - women including are telling you at length why this is just someone's masturbation bait using feminism as a thin excuse to to justify it.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

And could argue Cheerleading exists for men to leer at bouncing titties and panty-flashing, but that gives Soto too much credit, and also falls into the awful trap "You are not a real feminist if you like traditionally girly stuff!"

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

I think so, given it's designed to emulate the likes of Mercedes Lackey and Tamora Pierce, and the society's pretty egalitarian.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Because the writers on some level agree with the High Binders and honestly don't see the problem with the extreme overkill in retribution the cast regularly partakes in.

The problem with stuff with an element of Revenge Fantasy (Bellum Maga is especially bad for it) is the punishment has to fit the crime, making the characters you're suppose to root for all powerful and able to wipe out the "Bad guys" with a snap of a finger ends up paradoxically make you feel sorry for the "Bad guys" and disgusted at the "heroes" for punching down instead of up.

There's a reason why Warner Brothers created Yosemite Sam - because Bugs Bunny so regularly run circles around Elmer that people started to feel sorry for the guy, so they needed someone that's marginally more dangerous in theory and a big enough of a jerk to create the right level of schadenfreude.

Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Apr 9, 2016

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

apparently people who worked with John Wick on L5R didn't care for him very much either.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Josef bugman posted:

See why didn't he just do a game set in Glorantha? Players are tied to an actual clan and all that, but you get to create different stats and poo poo anyway. I mean you even get the advantage of setting up murderhobos if you desperately want to.

Probably because Ducks are too silly and it's made by a "Weird hippy shaman"

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

And despite not playing the actual tabletop games, I bought monster manuals because as a kid that wanted to do both fantasy writing and art, they were wonderful jumping off points, and it's kind of surprising when I did play what I considered to be be the memorable monsters versus what those who played the games did.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Almost feels like there's mechanical support for a Live-a-Live style campaign in Spellbound Kingdoms from the skimming

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

They're also cheap, apparently at least one artist they commissioned has yet to get the full amount they're owed.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

And it's amazing how awful they talk about the lines where the subjects had no choice in their creation, the rest could have volunteers - and Sin-Eaters had to agree to the bargain to be come one, but Changelings were basically kidnapped and abused, and Prometheans never asked to be born.

So it ends up reading like the person who picks on the disabled kid to feel better about themselves.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Thing is, most classes/splats have to sell you on how awesome it'd be to play this, Beast does not do that. There's only a couple that seem like it'd be cool in the hands of a more competent writer, the rest are either really horribly petty or so offputtingly awful that you have to be a sociopath to enjoy it.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Both are pretty good takes on the Lucifuge, and the fan splat I made (Supernatural version of Murder, Inc.) would be "We may be crooks and criminals, but we don't gently caress people over just for giggles."

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

"We already get that everyday, try watching the news, buddy." *BANG*

but really, there's nothing Beasts do that another line hasn't done better, or would be so horrible that I would side-eye someone wanting to play them.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

of course changing it so Jacqueline Kennedy is killed makes perfect sense if they're replacing JFK with an imposter - get rid of someone that would notice her husband's change in behavior.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

I wanted DitV to be a nice alternative to weird west from Deadlands, but being someone near chief Mormon country, it is rather uncomfortable how close the 'virtues' is to the breakaway fundies beliefs.

You really have to gauge how your party will handle that poo poo before running this.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

*Tendency to try to reject basic good versus evil paradigms - and overshoot 'moral ambiguity' so far that it ends up with everyone being evil, stupid, or both and a setting that's hopelessly bleak or actively hostile to people trying to change things.

*Lack of editorial control so writers will boost their pet factions (i.e: Wick's Scorpion Clans, oMage traditions vs Technocracy wank, that Revised Children of Gaia book), often causing problems with game balance or setting consistency,

*Attempts to tackle mature topics become tone-deaf and sometimes downright offensive.

Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 00:44 on May 12, 2016

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

And I believe WGA write ups, though the game's newer - almost every character breaks their rules, and are incredibly lazily done - it seems pretty prevalent in the hobby.

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Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Regardless of intent, and execution, those rules alone makes DitV a game you really cannot bring to the game table without some considerable discussion beforehand.

It's one thing if demons and stuff is real, but the Dogs and not!Mormons only believe they come because of violations of those rules - with an idea of following the tenants, or the Dogs digging deeper for the real cause and come to a crisis of faith, but as written, it's explicitly tied together.

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