TG Chat/Cooking Thread 2016

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Chat/Cooking Thread 2016

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

According to Scion, almost every Goddess has sacred prostitutes, or can be found working in some sort of sex related profession, for some reason. Even the virginal ones, or the ones emphasizing motherhood, marriage, etc.

There's the idea of a good game inside Scion, but the presentation and the research done into even the Greek pantheon is so surface "I browsed Wikipedia for a bit and extrapolated from what I thought would be the case" level that it comes off as pretty, if not offensive, then at least dumb and inaccurate.

With some actual work by actual scholars, they could have something, but even going into, for example, the differences between the different aspects that Athena was worshiped under in different areas and in different time periods, could and has taken up entire textbooks, and how exactly to distill this into something playable without turning it into a research paper... And that's for a Goddess most of the target audience is going to be at least roughly familiar with.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 15:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:09

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

Evil Mastermind posted:

Well, to be fair TECHNOLOGY = UNIVERSALLY BAD has been built into the WoD since loving Werewolf 1e.

As the quest for peak irony strives further and further, a multi-million dollar company that made all its money on producing addictive and absorbing games that take hours to play and generally have no set victory conditions, and has purchased the IP from the producer of even more addictive MMOs, decries modern technology and advancements. "No, seriously, we're like the good guy hacker Tradition," the founder was quotes as he pushed his VR goggles up onto his forehead and hastily shoved a pile of money into a desk drawer, slamming it authoritatively.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 03:02

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

oriongates posted:

"White Bread Fantasy" is exactly what's best for a movie. The less you have to explain to the audience about the setting the better. The more cliches and standardized fantasy tropes the better, because that allows audiences to instantly buy into the setting without need for exposition and instead focus on interesting characters and set pieces. You might get the occasional setting in-joke or reference for the table-top gamers in the audience, but expect those to be simple quick references, place names or background references. There's nothing Greyhawk or Mystara can offer in that context that Forgotten Realms can''t.

What Forgotten Realms can do is give name recognition. Because unlike Greyhawk or Mystara it's been the setting of novels and video games which have been popular not just among tabletop gamers but also mainstream audiences. Say what you like about it's worth as a setting for playing your elfgames, but it is objectively the best setting for a D&D movie. Heck, Dragonlance would make a better setting than Greyhawk or Mystara. Remember, the D&D movie isn't being made because they think mainstream audiences want to see someone gamer's fantasy sandbox on the big screen, if anything they're hoping a well-done fantasy movie might convince more mainstream audiences to check out D&D afterwards (or more likely, to promote a tie in video game or MMO).

Now, a more exotic setting like Dark Sun might be able to pull off a movie on pure spectacle and uniqueness...its unlikely to be honest, but its possible. And something like Eberron or even Spelljammer could work if they play up the "magic as technology" angle because the audience can easily grasp "sending stone=walky talky" and "wand in a holster =gun".

This is dead on, and part of why Marvel has been doing so well with their movies.

Example because it's fresh in my mind: Guardians of the Galaxy explains almost nothing about its setting. There's a planet called Xandar where an organization of space police called Nova live. Some scary religious fanatic guy named Ronan, who is a Kree, wants to blow it up. He wants the Orb that the heroes have so he can do that. Everything is painted in real broad strokes so you can quickly grasp which environment each planet is: here's the Earth-like nice planet with all the cosmopolitan people. Here's the prison. Here's the seedy place where outlaws and bars are, which incidentally is in the head of some dead space God.

You don't need to know anything about the pink and blue skinned Kree, the history of the Nova corps, etc. They jettisoned almost all of the backstory for the characters (Groot isn't a planet devouring monster, Rocket isn't the only police officer for a planet full of lunatics, Star-Lord isn't an astronaut blessed with superpowers by the Master of the Sun, etc.) because the film doesn't need them for the plot to move forward. I could tell you a lot about the setting because I've read the comics, but as for what's actually in the film, and what needs to be in the film to let it maintain the pace it wants and the tone its aiming for? It's intentionally stripped down for details.

It'd be boring to watch an extensive backstory. Outside of the prologue, you get a couple lines, at most, for outright stated motivation and/or backstory, and then its either let the audience pick up the rest from character action, or work it into the ongoing plot, especially during arguments where people are most likely to throw past actions back at one another. (If you don't believe me, try to watch this without boring yourself half to death. Then, think about what it says that you don't trust your audience to understand what psychics, warping through space, and emperors are before your movie even really starts)

I'd expect any D&D film to have pretty stock characters that are easy to identify (The big guy who talks slow and makes grammar mistakes, the thief who's too greedy but has a heart of gold, the girl trying to avenge her dead family, the hero who has a destiny due to a prophecy) and there will be a lot of set pieces (battle on the treacherous snowy mountain pass, fight on horseback in the forest, chase scene for the MacGuffin in the crowded market), with details like which city it is and how its history affects the hero's destiny being left as either inside jokes or as relatively unimportant to the overall plot.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 06:03

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

gradenko_2000 posted:

The rough idea is that you can populate the dungeon with a certain amount of monsters and hazards "for free", but to put a fifth Dark Elf Sniper in the encounter in the third room, or to enable the Frostbolt ability on your Lich boss, is going to cost "DM points". To earn DM points, you have to place treasure in the dungeon, and when the players discover it, you get your points.

Conceptually, it's a neat sort of push/pull where it's adversarial, but there are strict limits on how much of a dick you can be. It's also in a way self-scaling in that in order to be more of a dick, you have to give the players stuff that gives them a better fighting chance against your dickery.

So an online version of Descent, basically?

That sounds like it might have some legs.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2016 17:23

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

Helical Nightmares posted:

Someone really needs to make a Monopoly/ GTA Vice City crossover. Board expansions, hitmen, arson, electing corrupt officials, the whole nine yards.

Edit: because the version of Arson and Bankrobbery Monopoly when I was a kid was basically one player (always someone who was losing strangely) getting bored and punching the banker for extra dough. Then it devolved into negotiations with other players for burning down apartment buildings.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/59302/lordz-hood

I played a ton of this when I was younger, but it never received wide distribution...

The rules are similar to Monopoly, but you can chose to burn down properties rather than pay rent (with a random chance of screwing up and having to pay for repairs), set up illegal operations rather than building houses and hotels, and can hire Murder Inc to assassinate other players.

It's not balanced at all, but it's quite fun.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2016 07:52

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

Helical Nightmares posted:

I'm not a latin scholar so I wasn't part of that group. I'm not sure how they would translate d20...

http://www.christies.com/Lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=4205385

quote:

Lot Notes
Several polyhedra in various materials with similar symbols are known from the Roman period. Modern scholarship has not yet established the game for which these dice were used.

# ¿ May 6, 2016 04:14

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:09

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

Tulpa posted:

No, they still suck.

They suck because the triggers for those moves are poorly written, "Call people on their poo poo" in particular is just terribly worded. Can you tell me what the actual trigger of that move is just from the text of that move? It's not "calling people on their poo poo" because that's indistinguishable from 'Shut someone down'. It's actually 'taking a stand against bullying/abuse'. This actual trigger for the move is embedded in the middle of a sanctimonious paragraph describing the moves.

Have you ever tried actually using them in play? They suck because they don't do what they're supposed to. 'Make someone feel beautiful's 7-9 result is just identical to one of the ways you spend a string on someone. So, that leads to the question, in what way is it mature and helpful to manipulate people into following your lead? In what way is "eye-for-an-eye justice" (quoting straight from the description of Intervene) even remotely the behavior of an adult that actually cares for others? In what way does "share your pain" help others if you just choose the selfish options? It's the only one of the grown up moves that's strictly better than the move it is replacing, except that the fictional positioning is boring. The fictional positioning that all these moves can provide is painfully boring.

There's no reason to use these moves versus the basic moves, you can help people just as well by lashing out physically in defense of someone else and only spending strings as a means of helping others and only shutting down bullies. The growing up moves are just strictly worse versions of basic moves and they really seriously fail to do what they are supposed to do (which is to give characters means to act like adults instead of idiot children)

Well, yes and no.

I'll give you the purple prose could stand to be toned down. The whole book is written like that, and it's a pain.

The adult moves have different plot triggers than the basic moves, which is a story game thing you either love or hate, and roleplaying them into the game itself is supposed to function differently. "Make someone feel beautiful" is supposed to be the nicer version of "Manipulate someone". It's literally in the text that it's being done genuinely, hence why it doesn't requite a string worth of emotional leverage to give the same effect as spending a string. Spending a string on someone isn't a good thing. A string implies power held over the person: neediness, emotional blackmail, fear, worry, doubt, etc. People can and do get along in life just find by doing that to others, but it's not terribly healthy. "Make Someone Feel Beautiful" gives you the same effect without using harmful leverage against them.

Same with the others. They reward you for playing an other centric character. "Lash Out Violently" doesn't allow you to penalize a character for attacking someone or take a blow intended for someone else on yourself, and gives you the possibility to fall into your darkest self. It's not interchangeable, or necessarily the better move in all circumstances, depending on the fiction.

You can dislike this, and think that it doesn't accurately represent growth as a person, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a definition of maturity that didn't include learning to acknowledge the needs of others as sometimes more important than the self.

I'm not going to claim that Monsterhearts is some sort of deep and transcendent experience that only the most choice of gamers can appreciate or any of that kinda nonsense. It does it's own thing, emulates the supernatural romance genre quite well (by literally denying you the option of getting Edward and Bella together in the first session for the same reason that any good D&D DM will prevent Gandalf from summoning the Eagles to fly everyone to Mt. Doom), and doesn't try to do anything else. It's something a lot of folks will find boring, and that's okay too. Plenty of games out there for everyone.

# ¿ May 8, 2016 04:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Chat/Cooking Thread 2016