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quote:The Sabbat are actually worse than ISIS in most regards, in fact the Sabbat is worse than just about any human group. For some reason, players just can't seem to treat the Sabbat (or numerous fictional evil groups) in a serious manner. If comparing them to real world violent groups, which we do take very seriously, can help get ourselves in the right mindset of thinking of the Sabbat as terrible, then all the better. For some reason players don't take a faction seriously when they create members in late-night horror movie fashion, then play "football" like a GTA kidnapping and destroy supermarkets with elaborately juvenile games of "Cowboys & Indians"!?!!?!!!?! Anyway, Sean K Reynolds has been rehired by Wizards to help manage lore and stuff on D&D and derivatives. Obviously, this means: quote:Anyone they hire that goes against absolutes is a good thing. Unless that lack of absolutes is absolute. Oh wait... That last part almost makes me feel sorry for the guy. quote:Not a fan. Thought his Reaalms and especially his GH work was poor. I wasnt happy to see him laid off, but I was glad he wasnt going o be writing lore/modules. I hope the new gig keeps him from doing the same. Not this guy, though.
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# ? May 5, 2015 13:54 |
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# ? Jun 2, 2024 03:51 |
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Far West!quote:Ben -- there will be material coming this week. Literally months of "still working on chapter 12" and then "still working on layout", and "daily" updates turning into "about three or four times a week" updates. At the time he posted this comment, he'd made six updates over 14 days. Anyway, looking forward to Far West's release on stardate 419586.98.
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# ? May 5, 2015 14:11 |
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Well, it's like the story of the scorpion and the frog, only in the end the scorpion stings the frog and says, "Well, you see, I was never contractually obligated not to sting you." Honestly, part of it is that I'm also trying to be nice. One of the posts about this was a guy saying that there's no way he could have produced a bad draft because he'd almost finished a 4 year English degree at a good university! In the case of Dead Reign nobody either side disputes that the game was substantially rewritten (see Joshua Hilden--not the guy who complained about his almost-BA skills--at http://joshhilden.com/universal-josh/2014/9/18/shoot-for-the-head-part-5-zombies-in-print). Nevertheless, I don't think KS is without stain of sin. I think it's lousy that the payment terms are shaky and there seems to be something missing in Palladium's production process. Over at Onyx Path the outline comes first, with wordcount, content and organization set. Everybody knows what the expectations are. There's a style guide that covers everything from preferred style and usage to document formatting. Sometimes this is challenging for newcomers to get--I helped out some new writers on a project with a tutorial about that stuff last year, for instance--but once they do, it makes things easier for everyone. I strongly suspect that the Rifter's low bar to entry is accompanied by substantial editorial rewrites and a different set of expectations than for sourcebooks. In every freelance case I've read it's been someone with repeat articles in the Rifter running into trouble after being hired for a sourcebook. Obviously something bad's happening in that transition.
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# ? May 5, 2015 15:40 |
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Plague of Hats posted:Far West! Not to take anything away from the hilarity that is Far West, but expecting daily updates is absurd. Nobody works on a thing 7 days a week. That he promised daily updates is as absurd as the idea that anyone would believe him.
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# ? May 5, 2015 18:50 |
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Well of course. We already made fun of his ridiculous promise when he made it.
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# ? May 5, 2015 21:13 |
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I have played D&D since 1978. I am familiar with all the different versions of the game. To put it simply, I am NOT a fan of the new version 5. The Advantage/Disadvantage is a TERRIBLE game mechanic. D&D used to be a game that encouraged reading, strategy, tactics, teamwork and mathematics. Now it has been simplified to accommodate the current generation of kids that are enamored with video games and instant gratification. Thinking, math and problem solving have been expertly excised from the game. Too bad really. In my opinion, these were D&D’s greatest strengths. I feel WotC has dropped the ball, again, and D&D Next (5E) is doomed to fail. The Open d20 license system upon which D&D 3x, Pathfinder, d20 Modern and a multitude of spin-offs are founded makes for a better game and an abundance of excellent source material can be easily found to support it.
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# ? May 5, 2015 21:15 |
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Every grog believes that "video games have ruined the minds of children/anyone younger than me by even a second, this is why every RPG other than the ones I like are bad" is a refreshing and interesting opinion, it's really quite cute.
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# ? May 5, 2015 22:12 |
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Kids these days can't do X. Why, back in my day, you had to do X or else
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# ? May 5, 2015 22:46 |
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Mewnie posted:I have played D&D since 1978. I am familiar with all the different versions of the game. To put it simply, I am NOT a fan of the new version 5. The Advantage/Disadvantage is a TERRIBLE game mechanic.
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# ? May 6, 2015 00:00 |
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Honestly, part of it is that I'm also trying to be nice. One of the posts about this was a guy saying that there's no way he could have produced a bad draft because he'd almost finished a 4 year English degree at a good university! In the case of Dead Reign nobody either side disputes that the game was substantially rewritten (see Joshua Hilden--not the guy who complained about his almost-BA skills--at http://joshhilden.com/universal-josh/2014/9/18/shoot-for-the-head-part-5-zombies-in-print). Yeah, I get that. Not everybody that's taken a shot at Palladium has been standing on firm ground, to be honest. On the other hand, as far as Palladium goes, I'm going to just quote a goon who worked there from the Palladium thread- CroatianAlzheimers posted:Yeah, the "editing" is a joke. If Kevin writes it, Alex and Julius (both of whom are incredible sperglords and total yes-men) "edit" it, all the while telling Kevin that it's awesome and the best thing they've ever read. If someone else writes it, then Kevin re-writes it, gives it to Alex and Julius who then "edit" the manuscript, all the while telling Kevin that it's awesome and the best thing they've ever read and only he could have fixed the obviously deeply flawed original manuscript. MalcolmSheppard posted:I strongly suspect that the Rifter's low bar to entry is accompanied by substantial editorial rewrites and a different set of expectations than for sourcebooks. In every freelance case I've read it's been someone with repeat articles in the Rifter running into trouble after being hired for a sourcebook. Obviously something bad's happening in that transition. I think the main "low bar to entry" is that "Kevin doesn't worry The Rifter so much". The Rifter is really the baby of Palladium staffer Wayne Smith, who's willing to stuff those pages with whatever he has to make sure it comes out four times a year- that's not to say it doesn't have standards, but he has to work with what he has to work with sometimes- and Siembieda is much, much more focused on making sure the RPG books are focused on his vision. Mind, he isn't entirely clear with to writers as to what that might be until he's got a manuscript in his lap. I mean, I just started poking at my F&F writeup for Rifts Underseas, and that was a book that got to the manuscript stage before Kevin sighed, realized he didn't care for it very much, and had to roll up his sleeves and write it himself. (Thankfully, CJ Carella was on-hand at the time to help fill it with enough material and get it out the door on time.) Dead Reign is one thing but it's mostly just part of a larger pattern. Though Bill Coffin's infamous rant no doubt went too far, he also complained about the same issue, and you see in the intro to some Palladium Books a variation of "well, this book is late because the writer just didn't have that Rifts zazz, so I had to pitch in... nothing personal against them, but..."
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# ? May 6, 2015 00:40 |
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quote:I've often heard the GM advice that players shouldn't die because of a single bad roll, and I know it's common for there to be complaints that PCs died while unable to do anything about it. So what is the acceptable situation for a PC to die? If they can't do anything to save themselves, they lacked agency. If they could and did try to do something to save themselves, and failed a roll, they died from a bad roll. If they could and did try to do something to save themselves, and made the roll and/or didn't save themselves, then they didn't die. If they die from a bad series of rolls.. well, that never really goes down well, because the last one counts as the "single bad roll" from the player's POV (given that the previous rolls are now water under the bridge). So are people saying that PCs should never actually die? This person joined RPGnet in 2002 and has made over 2200 posts. I assume trolling.
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# ? May 6, 2015 05:32 |
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quote:Exactly. They are guidelines for a starting point, and additional criteria such as knowledge of players, their characters and intuition by the DM part are still required as usual. 1. that you couldn't (or deliberately didn't) design an RPG with predictable enough factors and variables that encounter building guidelines (not rules!) would always produce a difficulty level that you wanted 2. that even if you did, it wouldn't be an RPG anymore.
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# ? May 6, 2015 13:28 |
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So, how about Savage Worlds?DhAkael posted:Not really caring one toss. *shrug* If it helps keep TRUE Rifts(tm) afloat and help in sales of TRUE Rifts(tm) products published by PBooks to those RP'rs who want to see the original game...great.
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# ? May 6, 2015 19:16 |
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quote:I don't have much to say here except to agree heartily with the concerns brought up by the OP. Obviously, it's cool to like whatever basic resolution mechanic you like, but this post just reeks of a fear of improvisation that makes me wonder how on Earth he plays a game that doesn't give you a bunch of guidelines exactly like *World does. I mean, loving LOL, "I am a vocal opponent of fail forward PS I guess I might mean something else." Bonus: This guy's signature is an ad for his blog and Kickstarter. The guy's Kickstarter looks decent enough and seems like it might even deliver on time, though the system is called "DicePunk." The most recent thing on his blog is a six thousand word whinge about his LARP group's drama and falling attendance. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 02:16 on May 7, 2015 |
# ? May 7, 2015 02:11 |
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Here are some answers submitted on Quora: In D&D 3.5, which of the core classes is more powerful? quote:As has been pointed out here, this fluctuates somewhat by level and tier. Once Wizard-types gain access to the Polymorph and Teleport trees, they surely rank at or among the highest power-levels in the entire game. Prior to this, I'd say the edge goes to a carefully-built Cleric or Druid; the Wild-Shape and Natural-Spell combo is like something out of an EverQuest or World-of-Warcraft MMO, as evidenced by subsequent editions ruling "no, you can't do that anymore." How can I be a great Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons 4e? quote:I say, "Make your players work for their treasure." 4e is notoriously easy on player characters as far as abilities and advancement goes. If you are playing 4e, your party will likely be as confoundingly diverse as the Cantina on Tatooine and full up of superpowers that would shame the Justice League. So don't just spoon feed them xp and loot. quote:Play a different system. In role-playing game books, why isn't the spell's damage, range and duration listed immediately after the spell name? Do the writers of role-playing game books not realize these are the most sought-after spell stats? Why do they keep burying the spell stats inside the long description (spell description)? quote:You seem to be confusing role playing and munchkinism. In 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, should I let my players randomly generate stats by rolling dice, or use the point buy system? quote:I would be apt to either roll 4 xd6 or 5 xd6 and drop the lowest (1 or 2). I think the point buy system makes all the characters super heroes to the point that abnormally high to monsters and NPC's of similar level.
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# ? May 7, 2015 06:12 |
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In which a moron is very angry about failforwarding through a timeloop mystery!quote:Archive Link to the G+ Post https://archive.today/04XXW
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# ? May 7, 2015 08:51 |
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It takes a certain dedication to cultivating your insufferability and lack of self-awareness to reach the stage where you can unironically describe something as a "social justice whinority" and not immediately be overcome by crippling shame.
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# ? May 7, 2015 09:10 |
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Kai Tave posted:It takes a certain dedication to cultivating your insufferability and lack of self-awareness to reach the stage where you can unironically describe something as a "social justice whinority" and not immediately be overcome by crippling shame. And of course Tabletop games are literally the same as videogames! Color me educated.
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# ? May 7, 2015 09:20 |
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quote:
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# ? May 7, 2015 09:47 |
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Error 404 posted:And of course Tabletop games are literally the same as videogames! Color me educated. Really, it's perfect that he brings up oldschool point-and-click adventure games as a counterexample for why fail-forward is for social justice whinetards or whatever because adventure games are more or less the literal opposite of fail-forward gaming. If you don't know the one specific puzzle solution involving making a moustache out of cat hair in order to progress then the game just grinds to a halt until you brute force your way through it. There's a reason adventure games are a mostly dead genre these days and it's because people largely got tired of poo poo like that.
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# ? May 7, 2015 09:48 |
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quote:I mean holy poo poo, it'd be like playing God of War, only when a QTE triggers any button you press keeps the event going. I played Sleeping Dogs recently: there are regular in-combat QTEs, and the difference whether you make it or not is you get out of the opponent's grip or you take a hit before the fight carries on.
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# ? May 7, 2015 13:20 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:Dungeon world was marketed in such a way as to make it seem like it was an old-school game, to the point that some people bought it under those false pretenses. It was also a major shift-moment for the storygames movement, where instead of collectively thumbing their noses at the type of games the 'great unwashed' play in order to keep promoting their games about sexually-frustrated victorian professors or girls smoking outside a mcdonalds or whatever, they started to try to hitch onto the OSR's success in pushing for more mainstream games with a very different tone and style than the ones they previously promoted. In one sense, it was a tactic, in another, a tacit admission of the collapse of their movement. Meanwhile in real life Sage and Adam made a game they thought would be fun to make and play, and that's pretty much it. Also by and large indie types (including Ron Edwards) are generally really positive about old-school D&D, but Pundowski has never let reality get in the way of his dumb narrative before, and isn't about to start now. (Oh, and pretending that Nicotine Girls and The Shab-al-Hiri Roach are the big games indie people are promoting.)
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# ? May 7, 2015 15:40 |
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Kai Tave posted:Really, it's perfect that he brings up oldschool point-and-click adventure games as a counterexample for why fail-forward is for social justice whinetards or whatever because adventure games are more or less the literal opposite of fail-forward gaming. If you don't know the one specific puzzle solution involving making a moustache out of cat hair in order to progress then the game just grinds to a halt until you brute force your way through it. There's a reason adventure games are a mostly dead genre these days and it's because people largely got tired of poo poo like that. D'awww someone's played Gabriel Knight 3.
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# ? May 7, 2015 16:18 |
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Kai Tave posted:Really, it's perfect that he brings up oldschool point-and-click adventure games as a counterexample for why fail-forward is for social justice whinetards or whatever because adventure games are more or less the literal opposite of fail-forward gaming. If you don't know the one specific puzzle solution involving making a moustache out of cat hair in order to progress then the game just grinds to a halt until you brute force your way through it. There's a reason adventure games are a mostly dead genre these days and it's because people largely got tired of poo poo like that. Wasn't "pixelbitching" a TRPG term as much as a computer adventure game one, even?
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# ? May 7, 2015 16:28 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:Wasn't "pixelbitching" a TRPG term as much as a computer adventure game one, even?
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# ? May 7, 2015 16:42 |
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theironjef posted:D'awww someone's played Gabriel Knight 3. I miss Old Man Murray.
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# ? May 7, 2015 16:44 |
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Also, one of grognard.txt's early superstars just showed up in the Game Industry thread in response to something of his that I re-quoted to say he totally stands by his statement that there's no such thing as inflation and $35 now is the same as $35 twenty years ago.
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# ? May 7, 2015 16:49 |
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His point was a little more convoluted than that. I honestly didn't really understand it, since I have not experienced the fluctuation in the value of the dollar in the USA and also wasn't alive back then, but maybe it has more insight than that:quote:Actually that grog.txt post was from me and I still pretty much stand by it.
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# ? May 7, 2015 17:51 |
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Isn't the reason something like Deathwatch is 60 bucks that it's all you need to play, where 5th ultimately requires something like 90-120 bucks before you're playing?
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# ? May 7, 2015 18:22 |
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People will pay $90 - $120 for D&D.
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# ? May 7, 2015 18:42 |
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moths posted:People will pay $90 - $120 for D&D. Ah, I just read the guy wrong. I read 5th as 5th edition D&D and not 5th edition Call of Cthuhlu.
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# ? May 7, 2015 18:45 |
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moths posted:People will pay $90 - $120 for D&D. I paid $150 for one out of print book for WFRP 2e. I am one of those people. *sob*
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# ? May 7, 2015 18:45 |
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It's a special kind of grog who will blatantly disregard the whole of economic theory just to defend their $35 purchase.
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# ? May 7, 2015 18:49 |
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FireSight posted:I paid $150 for one out of print book for WFRP 2e. I am one of those people. *sob* Don't feel bad, I just spent 70 bucks on Synnibarr and I don't even want to play it.
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# ? May 7, 2015 18:51 |
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Serf posted:It's a special kind of grog who will blatantly disregard the whole of economic theory just to defend their $35 purchase. He's also an example of one of my other favorite kinds of econo-grog - the person who goes out of their way to tell you how cheap they are and how they don't spend money on anything and they buy gas station coffee instead of starbucks and clip coupons and wait for sales and buy used when they can, and then wonders why no company out there is going out of their way to cater to them.
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# ? May 7, 2015 19:11 |
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quote:What is Dungeon World about? Honest question, I have no idea - I rail against Fail Forward as a GMing philosophy.
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# ? May 7, 2015 20:39 |
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FireSight posted:I paid $150 for one out of print book for WFRP 2e. I am one of those people. *sob*
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# ? May 7, 2015 20:50 |
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Kai Tave posted:It takes a certain dedication to cultivating your insufferability and lack of self-awareness to reach the stage where you can unironically describe something as a "social justice whinority" and not immediately be overcome by crippling shame. It takes an even bigger dedication, I think, to use it on something that has nothing to do with social justice at all. We're literally living in Stewart Lee's political correctness gone mad routine.
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# ? May 7, 2015 20:58 |
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quote:I'm a bit surprised at the tepidness of the 5e defenders. Back when 4e was coming in, 4vengers were out in force to tell us that everyone who didn't immediately embrace 4e was an out-of-touch neckbeard who was going to be cast aside by history and so on and so forth.Saying not-nice things about 4th edition when it came out caused 4rries to pop out of the woodwork and flip the gently caress out. Hell, it got me banned from Dumpshock, a forum that was a fansite for Shadowrun. "5etards" huh? quote:As in, 5uckers are way more rare and also individually seem less vociferous than 4rries. There, that's better! quote:But in answer to the question you apparently meant to ask... the thing to remember is that Bull is a poo poo stain who is always wrong about absolutely everything. Everything. So despite the fact that Bull was a quite proud supporter of the "D20 Gives You Cancer" catchphrase back when 3rd edition D&D was big and popular and good and strong, but as soon as 4th edition D&D (the edition that sucked and everyone hated), he jumped onboard. Yeah, I bet Frank was all "Beep boop, that's not optimal, end of statement" like he always is and his ban was 100% capricious.
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# ? May 7, 2015 21:02 |
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# ? Jun 2, 2024 03:51 |
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Plague of Hats posted:Yeah, I bet Frank was all "Beep boop, that's not optimal, end of statement" like he always is and his ban was 100% capricious. It's funny that people would defend one edition vociferously but not another one. What could be the meaning of this? The editions are different with different stuff in them, could that have something to do with it? Nah, I'm just going around in circles! I could crack this case if only Bugs Meany wasn't banning me from the forums. Turn to the end of this book to see how Encyclopedia Frank solved the mystery!
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# ? May 7, 2015 21:08 |