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P.d0t posted:If it's D&D, AlphaDog has played it. I just realised that's probably close to true, if you only count core systems. I never played the black-box version of D&D, and only sorta played the "2.5" (combat & tactics, skills & powers) stuff, and I haven't played more than a handful of games of OD&D or B/x because I started with BECMI and had to go back to those later. I will also clarify that I never really played much 3.x, but I did play a bit - I was in my early 20s when it came out and worked weekends and had better stuff to do with my limited free time. I did read a lot of the books, played maybe 5-6 sessions a year, and spent some rainy days figuring out character creation exploits. My group played Hackmaster in the later part of 3.x's life when I had more free time, and so that's what I played too. I don't own brown box OD&D, but I've played one session* and have been able to borrow the books (along with a stack of other old 60s-70s war-game stuff) as an attempt to understand how RPGs and tabletop games in general evolved. My impression of OD&D is that it's really more of a proof-of-concept than a full game. It's confusingly worded and requires 2 other games to actually play (Chainmail and Outdoor Survival, and I've never read the latter). I can really really see how it was all fresh and new and awesome if you were into that sort of thing in the 70s, but I would say that it's eclipsed in every way by B/x, which is similar but is a standalone game. Chainmail itself (with the fantasy supplement) is something I'd be really interested in actually playing, but gently caress if it's easy to understand or if anyone else thinks it'd be fun. *Working around the fact that I've never been able to get my hands on Outdoor Survival Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 21, 2013 05:49
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Auralsaurus Flex posted:There was a contest a while back to determine the real reason for Cook's departure from the Next team. Dinosaur Satan's winning entry was posted in the TG rules thread as irrefutable truth; the original thread has since been archived. It's also linked to the whole thing in 3.x where it's ridiculously easy to use the combination of the social skill rules (especially Bluff) and the various cheap and easy ways to get bonuses to Bluff in order to make a character who can convince almost everybody of any drat fool thing, no matter how implausible. The memetic example is convincing them that you are the moon.
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Jun 21, 2013 11:39
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Ratoslov posted:It's also linked to the whole thing in 3.x where it's ridiculously easy to use the combination of the social skill rules (especially Bluff) and the various cheap and easy ways to get bonuses to Bluff in order to make a character who can convince almost everybody of any drat fool thing, no matter how implausible. The memetic example is convincing them that you are the moon. The moon currently being visible in the sky will not hurt your chances.
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Jun 21, 2013 15:10
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Splicer posted:Comic books. There's a lot of similarities in how the two pander to a dwindling fanbase, but I don't think even they'd go so far as to actively pay some toxic blogger to talk smack about someone who, for better or worse, is a pretty big name in the industry, especially when said blogger would be giving you his opinion for free anyway. I mean that would be like DC picking some commenter from The Source and paying them to to tell them to 'muzzle' Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison.
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Jun 21, 2013 15:38
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I'm astounded Pundit didn't get thrown out of the consulting gig immediately for that stunt. Gaming is admittedly not the most professional of industries, but I've worked in it for years and I've never worked anywhere where publicly cussing out a fellow team member would have been at all acceptable. That Cook was the one who ended up resigning, rather than Pundit getting instantly thrown out, is ridiculous. That makes me much more likely to believe that the grog appeasement in Next is institutional, rather than it (just?) being a case of Mearls making the game he wants.
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Jun 21, 2013 17:23
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Some day books will be written about the Next clusterfuck. This is some Ion Storm level poo poo.
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Jun 21, 2013 17:42
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Bongo Bill posted:He wants a game that identifies him as belonging to a group that excludes users of the shibboleth "simulationist." TG Rules Thread posted:When Tsukiyomi got there, Uke Mochi prepares the food by vomiting it. Even though the food she created was as fresh as possible and delicious beyond belief, Tsukiyomi was disgusted by how it was made and slashed her in half with his katana. The feel of D&D is all about shibboleths. The group Mearls is trying to appease does not care about the results, only about the feel. And a big part of that is the tribes of gamers. D&D Next is supposedly trying to reunite all of the tribes - that was its stated design goal, after all. Ultiville posted:I'm astounded Pundit didn't get thrown out of the consulting gig immediately for that stunt. Gaming is admittedly not the most professional of industries, but I've worked in it for years and I've never worked anywhere where publicly cussing out a fellow team member would have been at all acceptable. That Cook was the one who ended up resigning, rather than Pundit getting instantly thrown out, is ridiculous. The core goal of D&D Next is to unite all of the players of D&D. The toxic brand of players that Pundit represents is a major section of that. Pundit is a giant rear end in a top hat, so is Zak S. But they represent, guess what, the large number of D&D players who are also assholes. A lot of people who play RPGs are bad, broken people. They have poorly developed social skills. They tend to have poor hygiene. They have backwards attitudes on both gender and sex. They have naive viewpoints on many other social issues, like race. They suffer from thinking they can accurately understand and portray a Middle Ages Elfman with no historical perspective or acting experience. Most importantly, they don't really care about having loving FUN while playing make-believe. Its play, it is supposed to be fun. You make poo poo up in a game. But the rules are more important than that. And the shibboleths, the way the rules are written/phrased/used? that matters even more than the rules themselves. Remember all of the earliest polls, specifically asking about wording? I do. They've made the game they said they were going to make from the get go. Yes, it has been institutional to make the game they stated they were going to make, doing all of the things they said they wanted it to do. The only exception has been an abrogation of 4E, but given the shibboleths it was obvious 4E would have to be excluded from the process. The core is 2E, because that is Mike Mearl's favorite D&D. The rest of the hobby plays Pathfinder, so 3E/3.5E is the next biggest thing. Everything else is a sop to the RPGSite and ENWorld. Those places are filled with a lot of lovely, terrible people. This is a game made to appeal to those people. It is, in turn, pretty lovely and terrible. Gender based limits on ability scores was just a joke, after all. But it was a joke made in poor taste BECAUSE casual misogyny is part and parlance of 5E's target audience. drat that was a lot of loving words to say something simple. Game is hosed and its always been hosed. Just take the best ideas you see and use it in your home games or future games. Be careful about rolling twice for a thing though, that really changes the math of D20 outside of the +1 = 5% axis.
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Jun 21, 2013 17:44
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Not enough liquor ideas. Well its a Friday so here are some good lime based cocktails to enjoy with your friends. Caipriniha Half a lime, cut into wedges. 2 tsp Sugar or 1 oz simple syrup 2 oz Cachaca (I like LeBlonde) Muddle the sugar and the lime in a rocks glass. Fill with crushed ice, add the cachaca and stir for 10 seconds for a stiff drink and 30 seconds for a milder drink. Moscow Mule 3-4oz Gingerbeer Lime 2 oz Vodka You can make this in any glass. I suggest using a mug, because its traditional. Fill mug with ice. Juice the lime into the glass and add 2 oz of vodka. Top with the ginger beer, stir once, and drink. Pisco Sour 2 oz Pisco 1 oz fresh lime juice 1/2 ounce of simple syrup (one part sugar, one part water). 1 fresh egg white angostura bitters Pisco is showing up more and more in the US. Its technically a type of brandy. Anyway its a great drink. Ice down a rocks glass (highball glass) (fill it with ice) and set it to the side. Add 1 oz of lime juice, 1/2 ounce of simple syrup, and 2 oz of pisco to a shaker. Add one egg-white, pour in the ice from your iced-glass, and shake throughly because you are creating an emulsification. strain out the ice and pour into your cold glass. Gently drop 3 drops of bitters on top of the foam, then swirl them into a design. Admire your drink and then drink it.
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Jun 21, 2013 18:31
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I think you're overstating the extent to which horrible people play D&D. I run a lot of organized play for it and the vast majority of players are awesome people. This is true of all editions, though of very few edition warriors, probably not surprisingly, since it takes a special kind of attitude to get that worked up over editions of RPGs. That's my shock I guess - "uniting the editions" is actually easier than uniting the player base. I think it's easy to get thrown off by the extreme fringe if you're just reading stuff online, because they're the most likely to be bothered to type up huge screeds, but at least from interacting with my customers, a well-executed game that still looks something like D&D and reads a bit better than 4E would have been something that a lot of Pathfinder and OSR players would gladly have played, maybe not instead of the other games, but as a viable alternative. And unlike TCGs, you can afford to follow several roleplaying lines at once. I think it would have been totally possible to bring many non-toxic customers back into the fold, and good riddance to the toxic ones. So it's pretty shocking that they instead decided to actively court a toxic customer because he's vocal on the internet, not so much because it isn't an easy mistake to make, but because it's one they've consistently avoided making with Magic, where a vocal minority loves to get up in arms online about basically every change they make, and they proceed to sensibly ignore them and make the change anyway. The difference between brands here, even within the same company, is really night and day. The correct play here was to revise the language a bit to make the books more interesting to read (something they'd already started doing by late-phase 4E), put more clear support for non-combat play into the core PHB where it was harder to miss, probably by adding "exploration" and "social" pillars and doing them right, and simplify the system. Then proceed to push it through WOTC's in-store organized play, which is already by far the best in the industry. It would have been less effort than...whatever they're doing now, competent designers wouldn't have needed years of release blackout to implement it, and it would have been appealing to people who were turned off by the reasonable turn-offs in the initial 4E books without costing the ability to recruit new players through the Encounters program, which seems to have been highly successful. Honestly I'd apply for that D&D Brand Manager position, because I think the postmortem on this one would be fascinating, if I weren't pretty happy with my current job. Also, I think the Brand Manager one is pretty likely to get thrown under the bus before the real postmortem anyway, sadly.
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Jun 21, 2013 18:37
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My girlfriend made pudding shots, and I highly recommend them. Ingredients
1/2 cup Irish cream liqueur (eg. Bailey's®) 1/2 cup vodka (eg. Smirnoff®) 1 (4 serving size) package instant chocolate pudding mix Whisk together the milk, Irish cream liqueur, vodka, and instant pudding mix in a bowl until combined. Continue whisking for 2 minutes. Spoon the pudding mixture into shot glasses or disposable 'party shot' cups. Chill until set, about 30 minutes. The shots will have the consistency of mousse. That's the quick and dirty way. We made cookies and cream pudding shots with vanilla vodka, added crushed Oreos, then froze them. The whipped cream gives it the consistency of ice cream. We also made mudslide ones with Kahlua.
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Jun 21, 2013 18:38
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Ultiville posted:I think it's easy to get thrown off by the extreme fringe if you're just reading stuff online,
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Jun 21, 2013 18:53
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MadScientistWorking posted:You do realize that another two people associated with Wizards of the Coast ended up spouting off transphobic comments and or defending them this week. Holy crap, really? Do you have any links?
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Jun 21, 2013 19:03
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I'm not sure fear of The Other will ever get out of our DNA, but I love the concept of people associated with dnd being Xphobes, the irony is grand.
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Jun 21, 2013 19:23
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MadScientistWorking posted:You do realize that another two people associated with Wizards of the Coast ended up spouting off transphobic comments and or defending them this week. Are you talking about the latest Penny Arcade fiasco (which is only tangentially related to WotC), or is there another transphobia controversy ongoing?
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Jun 21, 2013 19:31
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PleasingFungus posted:Are you talking about the latest Penny Arcade fiasco (which is only tangentially related to WotC), or is there another transphobia controversy ongoing? Man going after Mike is like babby's first twitter fight. It's as easy as figuring out something he probably doesn't know very much about and then insulting him for not knowing about it. He will react by being a huge douche for a day and then dropping a big mea culpa the next day. He's so reliable about it you could use his twitter feed as a high-school science fair project, all tweets foaming out the top of a papier-mache volcano.
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Jun 21, 2013 19:34
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PleasingFungus posted:Are you talking about the latest Penny Arcade fiasco (which is only tangentially related to WotC), or is there another transphobia controversy ongoing? theironjef posted:Man going after Mike is like babby's first twitter fight. It's as easy as figuring out something he probably doesn't know very much about and then insulting him for not knowing about it. He will react by being a huge douche for a day and then dropping a big mea culpa the next day. He's so reliable about it you could use his twitter feed as a high-school science fair project, all tweets foaming out the top of a papier-mache volcano. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 21, 2013 19:35
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Meh, I'm not gonna worry about that since the dude is like super-tangentially connected to Next and I don't think anyone in this thread wants to talk about transgender studies (in this thread). I didn't see his defender buddy's post anywhere, do you have a link to that?
theironjef fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 21, 2013 19:42
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Sampatrick posted:Holy crap, really? Do you have any links?
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Jun 21, 2013 19:44
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I'm willing to confidently state that webcomics authors who aren't on WOTC's payroll doing unfortunate things isn't really related to my point, which is that most gamers aren't smelly, obese, frothing edition warriors (at least, not anymore). There are plenty of toxic mindsets that thrive in the gamer culture still, and that's awful. But if that makes them irredeemable people rather than badly in need of education and dialog, then the world as a whole is basically hosed. And in any case, I don't think it has very much to do with Next's strategy and marketing; it isn't going to be "transpeople in generic fantasyland" regardless. Though that'd be a potentially sweet game.
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Jun 21, 2013 20:01
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Ultiville posted:I'm willing to confidently state that webcomics authors who aren't on WOTC's payroll doing unfortunate things isn't really related to my point, which is that most gamers aren't smelly, obese, frothing edition warriors (at least, not anymore). EDIT: Hell Gabe actually was on the Wizards of the Coast payroll at one point too. WoTC posted:Table Titans follows the real and imagined adventures of three friends, Andrew, Alan, and Valeria, in their struggle to become the world's most legendary D&D gaming group. Cartoonist Scott Kurtz is teaming up with Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast to make Table Titans the only comic on the web that features official D&D products built right into the storyline. Scott Kurtz posted:I’ve been friends with someone since 1998. You read their twitter. But you’re going to lecture me on who they are REALLY. This is a thing. Ultiville posted:There are plenty of toxic mindsets that thrive in the gamer culture still, and that's awful. But if that makes them irredeemable people rather than badly in need of education and dialog, then the world as a whole is basically hosed. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 21, 2013 20:10
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Again I'm not trying to whitewash everything about the community. Most people are prone to knee-jerk defending their friends from criticism. Many people aren't great on trans and gender issues. Both of these things are true, and unfortunate. (Neither of them are exclusively true about gamers or nerds.) None of them have anything to do with whether Next could have brought in Pathfinder and OSR players without making a bad game or embracing the toxic fringe customers. It might be relevant to whether they've actually done that, if you think this makes Kurtz a toxic fringe person. Then again, we already have plenty of evidence that they have in fact embraced that, to whit, bringing Pundit on in the first place, then not kicking him to the curb over that open letter. On the larger scale, no one does anyone, on a personal or community level, any favors by just flat writing off everyone who makes an occasional unfortunate mistake. I didn't extensively investigate this issue, but from what you've quoted at least, it looks like Kurtz defended a longtime friend who made a mistake from someone who was claiming this made him an irredeemably awful person. His response isn't useful and makes him look bad, but this isn't a good mode of engagement on anyone's part, unless you honestly believe the PA guys are awful people consciously reinforcing bad cultural tropes, rather than ignorant people going along with them because it's what they know. I wouldn't put money on the former, given my experiences. It's easy to look at anyone who hasn't overcome toxic culture in the same ways you have and act like there's no excuse, but for the vast majority of people, the prevalence of these things in our culture (again, not just nerd culture but as a whole) makes it a long, difficult struggle to purge them from your thoughts and actions. It's bad that PA doubled down on the dickwolves, and people were right to criticize them for doing it. But it's also a totally understandable human reaction to feeling threatened. Going over the top and acting like no reasonable individual could ever say something like that isn't at all helpful, because much though we might hope otherwise, it isn't true. Reasonable individuals will say and do all sorts of unreasonable things if they have a significant presence in their culture. The way to change it isn't by digging battle lines, unless your motivation is to feel superior rather than to improve the world. At which point I'm pretty comfortable saying you've left the path of wisdom. (This is totally different from the Pundit situation because it's clear WOTC didn't take any steps to redress the issue at all. It's possible Pundit could have stayed on the team, but at the very least there's no reason he shouldn't have been made to issue an immediate apology if he wanted to stay. You can't have a productive team when someone on it thinks that's an acceptable way to air internal grievances. If WOTC cared to control Kurtz on this issue, they could do something similar, but this is both a much newer development, and of course a PR vs. internal team cohesion issue, from their perspective.)
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Jun 21, 2013 20:53
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You edited while I was writing my giant reply and I missed it. I haven't followed this issue well enough to say whether Kurtz has a history of this sort of stuff, or whether this incident is bad enough I think he should get his special rights revoked, or any of that. But I also don't care all that much in terms of this conversation, since they've already horrifically fumbled Next overall. I'd believe he might be a bad brand representative, but Pundit's a bad consultant, etc, etc. I'm still surprised that they have all this stuff going down given how deftly Magic usually handles this stuff. I guess the core point I was trying to make is: I don't think Next's basic plan of bringing back in some lost customers was impossible, I just think going to their harshest internet critics to help implement it was dumb, and that doubling down on that plan by letting Pundit post that letter and perhaps drive Cook away was astoundingly dumb, and a huge contrast with Magic's general good management. I'd certainly believe that also embracing someone like Kurtz, who appears to be a star-struck yes-man, is also unwise, on the other end of the "bad engagement with the internet" spectrum, though at least he has a lot of demonstrable reach among the gaming "centrists", so I'm less convinced that one was a mistake.
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Jun 21, 2013 20:59
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One, this derail is probably going to get stomped by Winson who already views this thread as pretty dumb when it isn't talking about cooking but for the record, Scott Kurtz is an enormous rear end in a top hat and has been known in the webcomic world for his periodic eruptions of assholishness for years and years now. This is hardly anything new. Secondly, aside from any stupid Twitter bullshit I'd just like to point out that WotC tapped Kurtz to make an official D&D-branded webcomic for them, ostensibly to help promote their upcoming edition, and so what does he do? He makes a comic about a group of stupid jerks and dwarf otherkin who have such a bad social reputation even among other gamers that nobody wants to run an Encounters game for them except one guy who's basically doing it out of a sense of obligation. When asked to make a comic to help sell people on D&D, Kurtz's idea of a great premise is to essentially go to the well of "roleplayers are socially toxic jerks and uncomfortable weirdos going around acting like they're fantasy characters DOESN'T THIS LOOK LIKE FUN?"
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Jun 21, 2013 21:33
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Kai Tave posted:When asked to make a comic to help sell people on D&D, Kurtz's idea of a great premise is to essentially go to the well of "roleplayers are socially toxic jerks and uncomfortable weirdos going around acting like they're fantasy characters DOESN'T THIS LOOK LIKE FUN?" Has there ever been a comic strip about RPG players that wasn't exactly that? I'm asking genuinely, since I can only think of Dork Tower and Knights of the Dinner Table off the top of my head and I would chase any character from either of those out of my house with a switch before letting them say anything.
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Jun 21, 2013 22:12
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I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a "gamer comic" where gamers are all portrayed as really cool dudes that everybody wants to hang out with, but at the same time most of them also try not to establish the protagonist cast as so disruptive and unwanted that even other nerds don't want to hang out with them. That's literally the comic's "how the band got together" moment, the GM informing the players that nobody else wants to run Encounters for them so it's play at his table or lump it.
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Jun 21, 2013 22:23
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Kai Tave posted:One, this derail is probably going to get stomped by Winson who already views this thread as pretty dumb when it isn't talking about cooking but for the record, Scott Kurtz is an enormous rear end in a top hat and has been known in the webcomic world for his periodic eruptions of assholishness for years and years now. This is hardly anything new. Ultiville posted:I guess the core point I was trying to make is: I don't think Next's basic plan of bringing back in some lost customers was impossible,  Mind you nothing I would ever consider worthy of grognards.txt but still its really hilarious.
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Jun 21, 2013 22:41
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I like to think of the chick tract "Dark Dungeons" with BLACKLEAF, NO! as the finest D&D comic ever produced. D&D's marketing for NEXT is a complete loving mess. Initially, they obviously wanted to avoid a repeat of Pathfinder. However, I think they realized early on there was no need to worry - there is no competitor running a well designed ad campaign and supporting all of the 4E material. With the online tools transition, a big draw of 4E (character builder, online compendium) can at least continue for Next. If the Next materials are available online in a similar fashion, then 4E holdouts still playing the previous edition will have access to all of the Next materials as they come out, which is a win for Wizards there. However, they don't really need to market to 4E since its the least volatile block. I don't see the kind of visceral anger that accompanied the launch of Pathfinder. While they might lose some customers, its not like thy are going to immediately go to the non-existent competitor. If you want to play a 4E style game, you have very few choices. I don't think that part of the strategy was intentional, I think it evolved organically from the big design choices they made to start the edition. MadScientistWorking posted:I honestly slowly started to realize that it was impossible as every time I have a conversation with some regarding D&D I hit upon some unique permutation of preferences and opinions. Pretty much. Even if they are good ideas, they can easily compete with each other. And I've had the same conversations with all of my friends. The 3.5 to 4E transition was good for us because we had realized 3.5 was truly broken. The thing we all hated? Save effects like Save or Die and Save or Lose. But I have spoken to many of my friends that play Pathfinder, and they really liked the Save or Dies and felt they added a lot of tension and interest to the game. Even here in SA, you ask 10 goons to make a list of things they want in a D&D and you'll get a lot of different answers. There is no consensus asides from "the feel of D&D" when you come to it, so yeah, from the get-go Next was an impossible task. Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 21, 2013 22:53
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MadScientistWorking posted:Actually wait a second now that I think of it why did they tap the most acerbic people that one could think of in promoting 4E outside of Whil Wheadon? From my own personal experience that is how my friend and I got involved with this hobby but still a few years older and I probably would have never even listened to it because they are really acerbic people. Well the thing is that they tapped the Penny Arcade guys, who are themselves no stranger to saying really dumb poo poo but, unlike somebody like Tarnowski, don't say nothing but dumb poo poo and are also really well networked and have millions of fans and readers. I mean, the answer to your question is because Penny Arcade was and is and will continue to be a genuinely successful comic-slash-brand with a hefty chunk of outreach potential among the sort of people for whom sitting down to roll dice and play pretend-elf isn't a super hard sell. Getting them to do the 4E podcasts was a smart idea that gave the game a lot of exposure and positive attention. Basically the Penny Arcade guys are what the Pundit wishes he was, and so it made a lot of sense for WotC to go "hey, you guys wanna get in on this 4E thing?" Scott Kurtz was really just riding the PA guys' coattails. I think he works at their office now so it's not like they had to specifically invite him to fly out and join them, it was just "oh and Scott Kurtz is here too, okay." Then of course Mike Mearls went to the Penny Arcade guys to talk about Next and basically took all that groundwork and good associations and pissed it away, straight-up telling Mike (the art guy) that if you're a fan of 4E then there's probably no reason to switch over to Next and spending a bunch of awkward "uh, I guess we can cobble something together" time trying to recreate an Avenger for Wil Wheaton's character, and so there's a reason that the Penny Arcade guys aren't making comics about their awesome fun D&D Next adventures and people aren't champing at the bit for the latest Penny Arcade Next podcast session. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 21, 2013 23:10
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Did they even settle on something for that recreated Avenger? I wonder what that would look like now. Probably just a poll result with a little attached editorial about how "players told us they hate playing Avengers anyway, so good news!"
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Jun 21, 2013 23:20
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What can they do for the Avenger? Their whole schtick in 4e was Oath's double attack rolls; that's now granted by having CA. 4e it had a power set that emphasized mobility...powers are out, so how can a Avenger be any different than a Paladin at this point?
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Jun 21, 2013 23:24
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Generic Octopus posted:What can they do for the Avenger? Their whole schtick in 4e was Oath's double attack rolls; that's now granted by having CA. 4e it had a power set that emphasized mobility...powers are out, so how can a Avenger be any different than a Paladin at this point? By being a cleric! They made Wheaton's character a cleric for the live PAX Next game.
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Jun 21, 2013 23:55
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Laphroaig posted:I like to think of the chick tract "Dark Dungeons" with BLACKLEAF, NO! as the finest D&D comic ever produced. I'm going with the Fell's Five series by John Rogers as unironically good in the style of recording a really good gaming group at work and then giving the recorded sessions a superb editor (and only keeping the IC stuff).
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Jun 21, 2013 23:56
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The penny arcade Critical Failure forum is more or less a mirror of our own. Lots of pbp games, lots of 4e love and 5e hate. Getting the personalities behind that community on board with the current version of D&D just makes sense. After all, they did a great job with the 4e podcasts. And then we saw how Mearls handled it with Next.
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Jun 21, 2013 23:56
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neonchameleon posted:I'm going with the Fell's Five series by John Rogers as unironically good in the style of recording a really good gaming group at work and then giving the recorded sessions a superb editor (and only keeping the IC stuff). Fell's Five was probably the best advertisement for D&D 4E, or for that matter any roleplaying game, that I've seen. In terms of D&D themed comics, Skullkickers is another good one: it's written by Jim Zub, who also writes the Pathfinder comic.
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Jun 22, 2013 00:06
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ritorix posted:The penny arcade Critical Failure forum is more or less a mirror of our own. Lots of pbp games, lots of 4e love and 5e hate. Getting the personalities behind that community on board with the current version of D&D just makes sense. After all, they did a great job with the 4e podcasts. Probably the best fan reaction gauge would be Reddit?
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Jun 22, 2013 00:17
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neonchameleon posted:I'm going with the Fell's Five series by John Rogers as unironically good in the style of recording a really good gaming group at work and then giving the recorded sessions a superb editor (and only keeping the IC stuff). I'm strictly asking about the non IC stuff. The stuff set around a table instead of in fantasy land. Generally every time a comic depicts a gaming table there's a total autistic mega nerd, a laid back fat guy nerd, a girl (no other info required) and a DM w/beard. Actually now that I think about it the best (because 2/3rds of the group aren't portrayed as backwards dinguses) depiction ever was the piss forest webcomic. Two normal dudes, utterly disgusted by their pee-fetish DM.
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Jun 22, 2013 01:03
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Hmm this kind of seems true. Though one of the main ones I read did indeed only have one "girl" though she is more of an old woman of indeterminate age, always plays characters that look like her dead husband, usually play the charismatic divine caster, or perhaps divine/arcane combo caster. She is also Jewish, does not approve of delivery pizza in her house for no explained reason, has a massive hatred for the older brother of one of the other players, for likely very good reasons, does not allow anyone up on the second floor of her house, has some mysterious connection with a major electronics company. Other characters include the pyro obsessed guy, who may or may not be an idiot, at the very least he puts off a good idiot character to the point that the others might believe it, and who also works at a Fire Department. Calls his older brother Darth Stan, the same one who is not allowed to be mentioned in the older woman's home. He pretty much always plays a caster of some type and pretty much always only casts fire spells, and tries to find ever better ways of making his character immune to fire. Another is the semi-photographic memory player who has read all the rule books, for all the games even ones the group is unlikely to play. A true min-maxer, rules lawyer, and on occasion loop-hole finder extreme. He survived a poison gas trap by making use of a curse necklace that would choke him to death. There is the math guy, who has a bit of skill in min-maxing but is still rather new to the hobby/group. The new guy. Seems to be a good person, but was kind of proteged under "Darth Stan" secretly, and is smart enough not to mention it, and when he could find no job with his math degree was given a job in a major electronics/computer company of some type, as the old matriarch of their group pulled some connection. Then there is the former DM, who is fat, balding/thinning hair, can be a bit of an adversial DM and can get rather pissed on the major min-maxer, who has a photographic-like memory and reads all the books, cheats or relies on knowledge his character shouldn't have. Was so happy when he thought he had finally killed min-maxer's character with a poison gas trap and the choking necklace the min-maxer had been carrying around. Only to be disappointed as the min-maxer pulled out some trick with a knocking coded message, a gauntlet of rust, and then the cleric/wizard's scroll of remove curse. Moved to work as a DM on WoW I believe and the new guy/math nerd took his place as DM. So yeah some similarities to that group, though there isn't really a laid back fat guy, and I'm not sure if the control freak old matriarch of the group really counts for what you mean by "girl". I think there was another comic that was a little different from the norm, though I think there was a laid back fat guy, I think there was two or three girls though, and there was definitely an annoyingly abrasive guy. Then again that comic also blended between games and reality with some kind of secret cabal of hunters that hunted nerds or something.
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Jun 22, 2013 01:30
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theironjef posted:Has there ever been a comic strip about RPG players that wasn't exactly that? I'm asking genuinely, since I can only think of Dork Tower and Knights of the Dinner Table off the top of my head and I would chase any character from either of those out of my house with a switch before letting them say anything. e: And the guy playing Aragorn starts off, uh, weird. Same for the Star Wars one. \/That'd be the star wars one. Splicer fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jun 22, 2013 |
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Jun 22, 2013 01:45
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theironjef posted:Has there ever been a comic strip about RPG players that wasn't exactly that? I'm asking genuinely, since I can only think of Dork Tower and Knights of the Dinner Table off the top of my head and I would chase any character from either of those out of my house with a switch before letting them say anything. Darths and Droids! Okay, R2D2 is a bit of a dick, but everyone else would totally be cool to play with.
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Jun 22, 2013 02:11
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There is Larp Trek, an odd one, where the joke is that the cast of one Star Trek series are actually the tabletop characters of the cast of a different Star Trek series.
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Jun 22, 2013 05:32
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