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What is it with nerds and making garbage movies and then fellating them because nerds made them? Knights of Badassdom was absolutely terrible other than Dinklage (seriously as soon as it turned into a horror movie I basically checked out) and yet all my elfgame-playing friends think it's the best thing ever because it's about LARP. They're not even grogs, they run nothing but storygames and WoD, but for some reason that movie put blinders on them. The hell is even the deal with this?
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May 26, 2014 18:28
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SALT CURES HAM posted:What is it with nerds and making garbage movies and then fellating them because nerds made them? It's tribal signally. Someone is signalling that the obscure-thing-you-are-into is worth recognizing and joking about on a larger stage, especially with injokes and asides that only true fans will pick up, and that provides an ego boost that totally outshines whatever flaws the thing may have as a movie or story or whatever.
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May 26, 2014 18:34
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Phew, thanks guys! We almost enjoyed something there, but thanks for setting us straight!
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May 26, 2014 19:52
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don't mention it 
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May 26, 2014 19:56
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Evil Mastermind posted:Phew, thanks guys! We almost enjoyed something there, but thanks for setting us straight! Enjoyment of media may mean you have poor taste.
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May 26, 2014 20:53
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Evil Mastermind posted:Phew, thanks guys! We almost enjoyed something there, but thanks for setting us straight! Go ahead and enjoy it, dude. There's not a poster in TG that doesn't enjoy something objectively bad.
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May 26, 2014 21:24
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Mr. Maltose posted:Go ahead and enjoy it, dude. There's not a poster in TG that doesn't enjoy something objectively bad. Just let people enjoy poo poo. Why is that so hard?
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May 26, 2014 21:48
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Evil Mastermind posted:Phew, thanks guys! We almost enjoyed something there, but thanks for setting us straight! You can enjoy it, and I can think it's dumb pandering bullshit that most of their target audience doesn't even loving remember the reference it's making except through osmosis, opinions are pretty great.
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May 26, 2014 21:57
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Objectively bad is a pretty dumb phrase related to entertainment in general. You can have mechanics that are objectively broken, or elements that are objectively flawed, or even just movies/games that objectively fail at doing what their author intended them to do, but entertainment is almost by definition subjective. Discussing what made a thing work or not work for you can be good discussion, but laying down a blanked "it's bad/good" is more of a conversation killer than starter. That said, we don't hit that territory too often. Even the talk about tribal signifiers is actually pretty interesting.
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May 26, 2014 22:59
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Mr. Maltose posted:Go ahead and enjoy it, dude. There's not a poster in TG that doesn't enjoy something objectively bad. For instance, I enjoy your posting.
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May 27, 2014 00:10
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SALT CURES HAM posted:What is it with nerds and making garbage movies and then fellating them because nerds made them? Usually it's the other way around, with people getting really overly upset over people referencing their games especially if the filmmakers got something wrong. I guess your friends are just pretty chill people in general and you should cherish them for their easygoing personality.
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May 27, 2014 00:13
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I am sorry but if you do not think they are playing Dark Dungeons as straight as possible then you are just too cynical to enjoy anything anymore. I will grant that only the coven leader/gamemaster is skilled enough to pull it off 100% but everyone seems to be doing a decent job keeping up with it. I bought my ticket to the event premiere the moment I found out about it, and sorry if you lameoids are not awesome enough to be there with me August 14.
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May 27, 2014 04:47
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I liked the comic better, Hollywood ruins everything.
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May 27, 2014 04:50
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God, another comic book adaptation!! When is Hollywood going to have an original idea?!
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May 27, 2014 08:02
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SunAndSpring posted:Usually it's the other way around, with people getting really overly upset over people referencing their games especially if the filmmakers got something wrong. I guess your friends are just pretty chill people in general and you should cherish them for their easygoing personality. I do cherish them. It's just odd to me that a movie that, ordinarily, they would not touch with a ten foot pole and possibly hold their noses around is suddenly Literally Jesus because it acknowledges the existence of elfgames and shows Tyrion Lannister hitting a bong.
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May 27, 2014 08:03
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SALT CURES HAM posted:I do cherish them. It's just odd to me that a movie that, ordinarily, they would not touch with a ten foot pole and possibly hold their noses around is suddenly Literally Jesus because it acknowledges the existence of elfgames and shows Tyrion Lannister hitting a bong. In actual gaming news, WotC announced today that the "Basic" version of 5e will be a free PDF. It's going to have the "standard" setup of fighter/cleric/thief/wizard and human/dwarf/elf/halfling up to level 20. quote:Basic D&D is a PDF that covers the core of the game. It’s the equivalent of the old D&D Rules Cyclopedia, though it doesn’t have quite the same scope (for example, it won’t go into detail on a setting). It runs from levels 1 to 20 and covers the cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, presenting what we view as the essential subclass for each. It also provides the dwarf, elf, halfling, and human as race options. So I guess it's everything you need to play (except monsters and GM stuff)?
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May 27, 2014 14:49
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It reads to me as if there'll be a handful of basic monsters just so people can see how the combat mechanics work, but if you want "more critters" - ie, anything beyond 'orc', 'kobold', 'goblin', 'giant rat' or 'stirge' - you'd better have your  ready for the MM.
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May 27, 2014 15:02
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I like the free pdf approach - I'm not prepared to spend any money at all on another edition of D&D, so I was going to just let this one pass me by, but by making it free they've given me a reason to at least take a look.
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May 27, 2014 16:01
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All my elfgame opinions are objective. Especially the bad ones. To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given, The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven. The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see, To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me
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May 27, 2014 17:31
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Making the base game a free pdf also makes a lot of sense if your strategy is to maximize the brand value instead of trying to get rich by selling RPG books in 2014.
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May 27, 2014 18:15
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OtspIII posted:Objectively bad is a pretty dumb phrase related to entertainment in general. You can have mechanics that are objectively broken, or elements that are objectively flawed, or even just movies/games that objectively fail at doing what their author intended them to do, but entertainment is almost by definition subjective. I dunno. I feel pretty safe saying that HYBRID RPG is objectively bad as a RPG. It's pretty good as outsider art, though.
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May 27, 2014 19:23
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Payndz posted:It reads to me as if there'll be a handful of basic monsters just so people can see how the combat mechanics work, but if you want "more critters" - ie, anything beyond 'orc', 'kobold', 'goblin', 'giant rat' or 'stirge' - you'd better have your Now I'm just envisioning PCs facing twenty levels of struggle against the Stirge and Giant Rat Empire.
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May 27, 2014 19:27
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HYBRID is an exception due to the fact that it's not an RPG, at all, and its creator does not know what an RPG is. I guess you can say it's an objectively bad RPG, if you also acknowledge TimeCube as objectively bad quantum physics.
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May 27, 2014 19:29
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Now I'm just envisioning PCs facing twenty levels of struggle against the Stirge and Giant Rat Empire. Having just looked up that stirges are basically mutant mosquitos, it sounds like a Low Life or pest control type campaign.
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May 27, 2014 19:33
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Now I'm just envisioning PCs facing twenty levels of struggle against the Stirge and Giant Rat Empire. I'm reminded of way back in 2E when I first started DMing and I flipped through the MM, saw that gibberers could come in packs of up 200 and thought to myself, hey, that'll be a fun high level encounter and not a boring slog nope not at all. In my defense 1) this is before encounter design was invented as something beyond eye-balling and hoping and 2) I was 8.
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May 27, 2014 19:45
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm reminded of way back in 2E when I first started DMing and I flipped through the MM, saw that gibberers could come in packs of up 200 and thought to myself, hey, that'll be a fun high level encounter and not a boring slog nope not at all. I got into D&D pretty young, but even by the time I got up into it, the full AD&D core set was out, and Unearthed Arcana. Of course, us kids didn't always have money for all the books and certainly didn't play RAW. My friend and I had just the Monster Manual at first and we more or less made up stats based on computer games and older sibling games and battled all the monsters in the manual, often by flipping pages and making things up back and forth. Getting the player's handbook was maybe kind of a letdown after that. Also we'd do things like use the 2nd Ed Player's Guide with Fiend Folio and Unearthed Arcana because it had more magic items with prices, which the 2nd ed GM guide didn't do, and--well, them was crazy times. And then Shadowrun and Rifts came out. 
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May 27, 2014 19:53
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What's a Grog Audit Winnie? It sounds exciting. Is it like a crucible?
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May 27, 2014 22:51
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Thanks a lot, I just clicked into g.txt for the first time in over a year.  I was off the wagon for so long...
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May 27, 2014 23:13
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Evil Mastermind posted:Thanks a lot, I just clicked into g.txt for the first time in over a year. Same, we try to get out and they pull us back in.
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May 27, 2014 23:54
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I claim no responsibility.
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May 28, 2014 01:02
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Now I'm just envisioning PCs facing twenty levels of struggle against the Stirge and Giant Rat Empire.
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May 28, 2014 01:16
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So, can someone briefly sum up what the deal with D&D is these days? I last played when AD&D 2ed was out, but we were kids and only had old 1st ED books for the longest time. I guess I heard that at some point the old "D&D" with the race-as-class stuff went away and AD&D became just D&D and there was a 3rd ED but there were some 0.whatever updates? Then there was a 4ed which I guess I read the into rules too but now there is a 5th ed coming out? The Wikipedia article about it is like a billion pages, I just want a elevator speech version tia.
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May 28, 2014 02:24
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D&D Edition History is pretty hosed but: -The game was always two separate lines under TSR, AD&D and D&D. D&D ceased production in 1990. -When TSR folded and Wizards of the Coast bought the license, they published "third edition" - a callback to AD&D second edition - but just called it "D&D", dropping the "Advanced" line. -They published an update to third edition a couple of years into the line and actually, literally, named it "3.5". This was an updated version and was the set standard for five years. -Fourth edition was released and was the set standard for five years, but never did the "x.y" thing because seriously that just seems kinda stupid in retrospect, doesn't it? And that's when this new edition, long marketed as "D&D Next" but basically called "5e" everywhere, comes into play and is being released in a "basic" version for free online - a move which calls back to the discontinued line from way back in 1990 - and a sold version. As in, it's coming out in the next month or two.
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May 28, 2014 02:33
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Also shortly after 4th, the company Paizo basically copied 3.x directly and resold it as Pathfinder.
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May 28, 2014 02:36
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bunnielab posted:So, can someone briefly sum up what the deal with D&D is these days? D&D third edition came out and was playtested fairly weakly, meaning after it was published there were about a billion and one exploits you could use to become an overpowered avatar of death itself, or you could be a fighter and carry everyone's luggage. So they created a sort of "patch" for it, known as 3.5, which purported to fix the issues but honestly wasn't that good at fixing them. After some years of 3.x bumbling around in some form or another, 4th edition came out. It was sleek, it was glossy, it allowed you to hit things with a sword and not loving suck at it. So all the people who'd spent years getting good at figuring out which obscure feats to take in third edition to make the perfect character, they got super mad about how it was now a dumbed-down World of Warcraft ripoff for lovely babies. While everyone was yelling at each other, fourth edition got hooked on feats like third did, and eventually became a bloated waste of space where you needed online tools to not only keep you up to date on the eight thousand feats you could choose from, but also help you pick the right ones to stop your character from being sub-par. At some point they put out Essentials, which took fourth edition's sleek combat engine and pasted a layer of the ol' wizard supremacy over the top. Now they're working on D&D Next, which is sort of like the old AD&D stuff mixed with the even older OD&D stuff, plus some third edition stuff and a handful of other mechanics thrown in to make it seem less derivative of past work. The designers are claiming that all the vast problems currently affecting the system will be solved by something called "modules" which don't exist and probably never will. Next/Fifth will be out fairly shortly (the playtest packets are still freely available), 4th edition is vaguely played still, and third edition is still popular but has started calling itself Pathfinder and is currently published by a company called Paizo instead. Please take all of this with a pinch of salt because I'm not exactly the number one D&D fan.
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May 28, 2014 02:37
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ProfessorCirno posted:Also shortly after 4th, the company Paizo basically copied 3.x directly and resold it as Pathfinder. The reason this could happen, as a note, is because Wizards of the Coast made the decision to release the "Open Game License" which basically gave away freely the right to copy the rules and wording of 3.x, at least as they legally defined their System Reference Document, which didn't include a number of more iconic critters (and some weird other things) but did include a ton of other stuff. The point of this was, at least in the words of one guy involved, to try and drive other systems out of the marketplace by flooding it with supplements from third parties and generally make it very easy to use the D&D ruleset and build brand awareness for D&D and d20 and not other games. It was also, in hindsight, a phenomenally bad idea.
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May 28, 2014 02:44
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Wow, how my little secret nerd shame has grown. I guess it was some D&D Next into stuff that I read then. Some adventure with weird cultists with bio-magic items or something like that? In amy case, if I wanted to try and find an pbp or irc group to play 1st ed AD&D with, in a lovingly nostalgic way, where would I look? I see more current ED games posted here but even relearning 1st ED seems daunting, learning a seemingly more complex version seems impossible.
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May 28, 2014 02:59
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Mors Rattus posted:The point of this was, at least in the words of one guy involved, to try and drive other systems out of the marketplace by flooding it with supplements from third parties and generally make it very easy to use the D&D ruleset and build brand awareness for D&D and d20 and not other games. Which, of course, is why everything then went wrong, when it went from "publish a D20 book and be guaranteed big sales" to "publish a D20 book and be guaranteed to go out of business."
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May 28, 2014 03:28
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Mors Rattus posted:The point of this was, at least in the words of one guy involved, to try and drive other systems out of the marketplace by flooding it with supplements from third parties and generally make it very easy to use the D&D ruleset and build brand awareness for D&D and d20 and not other games. Note how no part of this actually worked the way it was pitched except maybe the "brand awareness" thing because 3.X D&D was a pretty big deal. But as far as turning d20 into a monolithic elfgame juggernaut dominating the hobby with every other game publisher turning their talents towards producing The Complete Book of d20 Rocks, Trees, and Grasses or whatever the idea was, what happened was a bunch of publishers jumped on the d20 bandwagon with the RPG equivalent of shovelware and when the bubble inevitably popped it left a lot of game stores glutted with shelves full of product that they couldn't sell even at discounted prices. The change from 3.0 to 3.5 didn't help a lot of that third-party content either. And obviously D&D3E didn't dominate the hobby either. Paizo's doing pretty well with Pathfinder but by and large I'd say that the state of the RPG hobby is about as diverse as can be expected for what it is...White Wolf basically works through Kickstarter now and Steve Jackson Games focuses mainly on Munchkin, but I'd say the indie and small press RPG scene hasn't ever been this prolific with the rise in do-it-yourself publishing, digital distribution, and social networking/crowdfunding. You still get a lot of dross and projects that fall through but there's a steady stream of hits as well.
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May 28, 2014 03:31
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bunnielab posted:Wow, how my little secret nerd shame has grown. I guess it was some D&D Next into stuff that I read then. Some adventure with weird cultists with bio-magic items or something like that? Ask around in the recruitment thread in the Game Room, and don't worry too much about learning the game. Start at level one and work your way up, the learning curve is built into the game's design.
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May 28, 2014 03:45
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