Grognards.txt NEXT: Goodnight, Sweet Wince

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Grognards.txt NEXT: Goodnight, Sweet Wince

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Plague of Hats posted:

"5etards" huh?

There, that's better!

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.

who can even stand to read that? Half of it is made-up nerd epithets and the other half is forums drama

# ? May 7, 2015 21:10

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# ? Jun 2, 2024 04:45

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

It's amazing how Frank has never been moderated against in good faith! What a poor sweet summer child, eternally banned from pretty much literally everywhere he's posted because of that strange coincidence of everyone there forming a mysterious grudge against him!

# ? May 7, 2015 21:11

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Plus I think 5ive Turkeys is really what we need to call the big fans of that edition. 5etards is just terrible.

# ? May 7, 2015 21:14

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

theironjef posted:

Plus I think 5ive Turkeys is really what we need to call the big fans of that edition. 5etards is just terrible.

I would legit love being called a 5ive turkey.

# ? May 7, 2015 21:15

chin up everything sucks: Jan 29, 2012

dwarf74 posted:

Wait, which one? I might want to sell all of a sudden.

The Career Compendium, which only had limited print runs before FFG got permission to start on WFRP 3e.

# ? May 7, 2015 21:18

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

So, I get the feeling that lately, TTRPGs are moving away from having their mechanics inform their world - inasmuch as they ever did, like Shadowrun and Earthdawn (which is famed for it). Instead they want their games to break the rules of their world, which is touted as being 'good for the hobby' and to follow patterns like John Woo films, in which people do superhuman - but, important, not necessarily INHUMAN - stunts. What I want to know is:

WHY?

Why would you not want your mechanics to inform your world and thus work together and remove the need for willing suspension of disbelief? Why would you not want a world where everyone works on the same set of rules - for certain values of same, certainly. Not that Wizards aren't using different rules than Peasants, but Wizards have more rules than the peasants do, rather than less, and in the superficial they are most certainly using the same rules (breathing, movement, hitpoints, BAB) - it's just the Wizard also gets the rules that tell him how to cast a spell, and that works.

These "High Drama" games where people get to play out being a John Woo protagonist where doves inexplicably fly out of their rear end when they do something marginally interesting are telling people that it's okay to have mechanics that completely destroy verisimilitude. They waste so much page space telling you that you can do the Awesome that they forget to include the Awesome baked into the loving ruleset.

In these games, anyone not a PC is a loving Nodwick. Inexplicable and there only for exposition, or to provide a comparison point/sympathy lever. These people don't have loving lives when they leave the PC's worldview; these games suggest a solipsism so intense that, quite literally, when you're not looking at something it ceases to loving exist.

Whether or not the rules that provide the backdrop for the world make sense or not is, unfortunately, unimportant - it would be nice if they did, but including them at all is better than not having them, so you have a frame of reference for everything loving else. You can argue that the Big Three requirements of publishing an RPG - Core book, Monstrous Manual, and Campaign Setting - are where these things come from, but they're actually supposed to be baked into the rules. Without them the entire loving framework comes tumbling down.

So, why are games moving away from marrying fluff and mechanics, in your opinion? Is it the difficulty of doing so? Do they just not see it as important? Are they literal mouthbreathing paint-chip-eating morons? Or are they just ignorant?

quote:

I think it has to do with a mislead mindset, where they want to get away from the clutter of Old Famous RPG's collecting gallons of rules for decades. However they feel to do so, they must reject having rules as they can, and must go Rules-lite. Despite of course, even a "rules-heavy" game done correctly, would actually have the parse and page count to rival, if not put so many rules lite game products to shame.

Correctly such as not "paying per page/wordcount", so the book can be optimized for small page count, and thusly brevity in various stat lines and rules. As well as only having rules necessary for the stories/genre the game wishes to emulate, and not including in Legacy BS, or REALIZARM (whom most people don't understand very well translating it to rules in a game)

So I'm not so sure people understand this mindset, industry pay standard encourages bloat, and lack of design capability may also lead to them writing overly wordy rules, or rules that ask more questions than it solves.

Although in the Fantasy case, would ye have problem with monsters having different rules for how they're created? Since the idea of Monster roles is a good one, and definitely something fantasy should implement going forward.

Hm, yes, all those writers just adding a few tens of thousands of words to a manuscript, with all the work that entails, including convincing whoever contracted you, so that six months to a year later they can get an extra $50 and buy I dunno a video game they had their eye on a year earlier.

quote:

quote:
would ye have problem with monsters having different rules for how they're created

Only if those rules resulted in something that operates on a ruleset completely different from the PCs, at which point they've broken the world, broken WSoD and broken any trust in the MC. Otherwise, use whatever the gently caress you want to generate your monsters, but they better operate on the same conceptual rulespace as the PCs, even if those rulesets are things they can't access. (Wizard v Peasant sort of divide is fine, Godschlong Solipsism PCs vs Don't-Exist-Unless-Interacted-With NPCs is not)

quote:

For a lot of people, they're just playing a game, like it's monopoly or chess or whatever and the story and world or whatever is barely even a thing. The 4e D&D design team completely rejected the notion that background abilities and emergent stories are needed for even a game like D&D.

But 4e, like all of the other games which say that, are poo poo and do not sell. Because for most people it's not quite the same game as others and the whole "making sense" thing is actually pretty cool, even if they don't want to hear it during a game. More like talking poo poo between sessions and the GM can totally just point out why something worked that way on the day (not "the rules"), and then everyone's happy.

It's actually quite a problem, and the main reason Fighters can't have nice things.

quote:

When you look at a game like Shadowrun, you see that people can quite easily live in this world without being super hosed over - day jobs and lifestyle rules, not to mention the unholy act of signing on with a megacorp that the Neo-Anarchist PCs don't do and hate people who do.

In D&D 3.5, you see rules for making money using Profession (X). The rules are poo poo, but they give us a basis for seeing how crap daily life is in a D&D world.

Now, no game needs to make this the focus of their ruleset - it just has to be there, somewhere, so you have a baseline of comparison. That's part and parcel of putting "the Awesome" into your ruleset - having a "Life sucks then you die" portion for most of the world to be living in. You can even suggest that the PCs are part of that part of the ruleset before they become PCs.

What you can't do is say "The world works like this for everyone but because you are PCs you move on a completely different set of rules, right down to the basic crap of daily life". Because once you put the PCs on a pedestal to the point that the world itself works differently for them, and they're not even interacting with the world in any way that could make sense to the NPCs in the world, then you've got a borked setting.

quote:

"I hate games where doves fly all over the place from nowhere" is the central point. Profession/Upkeep aka NPC lives outside the PC's purview is just the most visible aspect of a design that leaves out details that don't cover anything outside of the PCs. 4E design is the one that does this the worst as it only concerns itself with the combat mechanics which leaves you basically no mechanics for a world to operate off of.

quote:

Verisimilitude is important to me, so I prefer a point where PCs were once 'regular people', but I don't think it's always a problem when it doesn't work that way. Superhero genre, for instance, gets a pass. The PCs are just functioning in a different world and regular people are just background - or at least, they can be. Peter Parker's problems with his boss is a story you can still tell even if you can punch a galaxy eating super-villain. But I digress.

Making PCs 'special' is easier than making all the rules work for all situations. This is the 'exception based design' that 4th edition touted. It is crap. It doesn't work. But from a design perspective, it looks like it could, so people keep doing it.

But having rules that apply to more people opens up more play space. Not everyone wants to play rat-catchers, but having that option is good.

These last few posts go really well together with the "writers pad books with cruft to fleece publishers and consumers out of sub-sub-sub-minimum wage ducats."

quote:

I think the thing to really get upset about is poo poo like the 5e Kraken. It's supposed to be a big kaiju that stomps up rivers and molesters cities and poo poo. In reality, the city guard of a small town can take it out with minimal losses. This is a problem. It's like that because 5e's rules aren't very good and the authors didn't put very much work into their text or their ramifications.

Whether doves fly around is at best a distraction. If the game is supposed to have doves fly around and it does, that's good design. If it's supposed to not have doves fly around but it does, that's bad design. And vice versa. If the fluff matches the results generated by the crunch, that's well done. Whether you like that particular fluff or crunch is irrelevant.

The issue with 4e's "dissociated mechanics" wasn't that the things that happened in the fluff and the crunch were stupid (although of course, they were), it was that there wasn't any fluff explanation at all for why most of the game effects happened. There was never any explanation for why ice got slipperier if higher level characters looked at it.

Now granted a lot of people struggle to describe what exactly is so lovely and terrible about all of this, but it's not like hogarth hasn't had this crap explained to him a couple dozen times already. He's just doing his "intentionally thick rear end in a top hat" routine. It's actually quite tiresome.

-Frank

This is nearly the end of the thread, but it still feels like it goes on forever.

# ? May 7, 2015 21:48

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

"We must end the need for suspension of disbelief" is the most D&D fuckin' thing that's ever been said.

# ? May 7, 2015 22:26

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

quote:

In D&D 3.5, you see rules for making money using Profession (X). The rules are poo poo, but they give us a basis for seeing how crap daily life is in a D&D world.

This hotel is way worse than the last hotel! Not one piece of poo poo in my bed at all! I know it wasn't a huge poo poo at the last hotel, and it was a little dry, but I am used to poo poo in my bed and demand it now!

# ? May 7, 2015 22:36

Evrart Claire: Jan 11, 2008

Plague of Hats posted:

I would legit love being called a 5ive turkey.

If 5ive turkey caught on I'd be real tempted to start playing 5e.

# ? May 7, 2015 22:37

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I play Feng Shui. I am 100% okay with things going John Woo out of nowhere all the goddamn time.

# ? May 7, 2015 23:20

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

ProfessorCirno posted:

"We must end the need for suspension of disbelief" is the most D&D fuckin' thing that's ever been said.

Bertolt Brecht is the savior of gaming.

# ? May 7, 2015 23:40

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Plague of Hats posted:

"5etards" huh?

I'd say the joke was that 5e is so much like 3e, but it's Frank so that wouldn't make any sense.

# ? May 8, 2015 00:04

Ronwayne: Nov 20, 2007; That warm and fuzzy feeling.

Ah, for the more innocent days of 3tards vs 4rries.

# ? May 8, 2015 00:16

Rulebook Heavily: Sep 18, 2010; by FactsAreUseless

2roglodytes never caught on.

# ? May 8, 2015 00:22

Mewnie: Apr 2, 2011; clean dogge
is a
happy dogge

Well, I was threatened to be kicked out of the pubby guild I'm in, in Guild Wars 2.

Over 4e vs 5e chat. I was the side that dared to say I liked 4e.

Highlights:

"I don't like healing surges because they take away of the job of clerics. Also it makes natural healing useless and thus makes everything too easy."

"Eldritch Knights are super cheese and can break the game."

:siren:

"I just read the 4e rules and I knew the game was poo poo." :siren:

# ? May 8, 2015 00:58

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Mewnie posted:

Well, I was threatened to be kicked out of the pubby guild I'm in, in Guild Wars 2.

Over 4e vs 5e chat. I was the side that dared to say I liked 4e.

Highlights:

"I don't like healing surges because they take away of the job of clerics. Also it makes natural healing useless and thus makes everything too easy."

"Eldritch Knights are super cheese and can break the game."

"I just read the 4e rules and I knew the game was poo poo."

Huh, I thought Eldritch Knights were a Pathfinder thing.

# ? May 8, 2015 02:04

GrizzlyCow: May 30, 2011

Please post more. I want to bask in these people's bad opinions!

# ? May 8, 2015 02:10

Nihilarian: Oct 2, 2013

theironjef posted:

Huh, I thought Eldritch Knights were a Pathfinder thing.

Eldritch Knights are originally a 3.5 thing.

# ? May 8, 2015 02:39

Mewnie: Apr 2, 2011; clean dogge
is a
happy dogge

theironjef posted:

Huh, I thought Eldritch Knights were a Pathfinder thing.

They were talking about the 5e Eldritch Knight, which is pretty :lol:

# ? May 8, 2015 02:40

Doodmons: Jan 17, 2009

gtrmp posted:

The first Blade movie lifted its entire setting and plot from VtM, though. Like, the only thing in the movie that actually comes from the comics is the basic concept of "there's a black guy named Blade who fights vampires, and the head vampire he fights is named Deacon Frost", and even then, both characters are radically different in the comics than they are in the movie. In particular, the comics version of Deacon Frost is a geriatric alchemist whose magic bite creates clones of people, whereas in the movie he's a sleazy young-looking guy who wears expensive designer outfits, spends half his time in sexy gothic nightclubs and the other half in isolated million-dollar penthouse suites, and has a master plan that builds up to awakening a~~n Antediluvian~~ Blood God via the secrets hidden in the Book of ~~Nod~~ Erebus.

This is from a couple of pages ago, but in the couple of years after the first Underworld movie, the majority of White Wolf as a company's income came from suing the creators of Underworld for copyright infringement and then having it settled out of court. That's either a damning critique of how much money can be made from suing people or a wake up call that RPGs don't make any loving money.

# ? May 8, 2015 04:19

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Did Uncle Nintendo tell you that?

# ? May 8, 2015 05:44

PantsOptional: Dec 27, 2012; All I wanna do is make you bounce

To be fair, WW did file suit, but that's about the only thing that's true in that statement. The suit ended in a confidential settlement so everything outside of "they sued and it was settled" is Uncle Nintendo territory.

# ? May 8, 2015 06:04

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

The Forge claimed that D&D was supposed to be "Gamist" (which style was also obviously not their preferred style, and barely a step removed from an insult). They suggested that anything in D&D that wasn't just about the 'gamist' style was a sign of "incoherence" and made the game worse.
Some idiots believed them, believed the lies that this was all D&D could possibly be or do, and went on to (for the first time ever) actually make D&D what only its detractors had ever claimed it actually was.

I predicted, when it became clear what 4e was, that it would cause a loss of at least two-thirds of its player base (the natural consequence of going from what the Forge absurdly labelled "incoherent" to just reflecting one style of the flawed "GNS" theory). Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.

quote:

quote:
quote:
Except that D&D did appeal to "all tastes" ("all" in this case meaning all that would reasonably be inclined to play D&D in the first place) for most of its editions. It was only 4e that intentionally said "we're supposed to be 'gamist' because forge-theory says so and thus we are going to shut out those who don't want that type of game".

Witness the astounding success of 5e when it turned back toward a broad-spectrum of appeal.

I'm curious, do you have any source for this?

you just have to look at how they made 4e, what it looks like. And especially how much the forgist/storygame crowd approved of it (I won't say loved it or played it, but of course that was never the point: the storygamers didn't want to see a D&D they'd actually play, they just wanted a D&D they could say is 'gamist' and then nudge it off to some little corner to die). And likewise, how much they disapprove of 5e.

Anything else I could say is under NDA, and I suspect you know that.

# ? May 8, 2015 07:35

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I wonder what James Wyatt (a creator of both 4e and 5e) thinks of opinions like that coming from his partner Mearls' shitmouth friends? Or did Wyatt get shuffled off, too?

# ? May 8, 2015 07:56

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Plague of Hats posted:

I wonder what James Wyatt (a creator of both 4e and 5e) thinks of opinions like that coming from his partner Mearls' shitmouth friends? Or did Wyatt get shuffled off, too?

Someone should ask him.

# ? May 8, 2015 08:00

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

Ask him about Pundit's harassing of Cook and why Cook decided to leave and Pundit got to stay, while you're at it.

Or accept that question's existence as probably the answer to your own. He knows who Mearls would side with.

# ? May 8, 2015 08:03

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

There's a certain Ur-Fascist vibe to "The Forge" both being influential enough to actually drive the development of an entire edition of Dungeons and Dragons into a certain direction, yet also incompetent enough that the direction caused 4e's "failure"

# ? May 8, 2015 08:07

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

gradenko_2000 posted:

There's a certain Ur-Fascist vibe to "The Forge" both being influential enough to actually drive the development of an entire edition of Dungeons and Dragons into a certain direction, yet also incompetent enough that the direction caused 4e's "failure"

We've always been at war with grognardia

# ? May 8, 2015 08:09

El Estrago Bonito: Dec 17, 2010; Scout Finch Bitch

PantsOptional posted:

To be fair, WW did file suit, but that's about the only thing that's true in that statement. The suit ended in a confidential settlement so everything outside of "they sued and it was settled" is Uncle Nintendo territory.

It was followed by WW greenlighting a whole bunch of stupid poo poo and vanity projects but that could also be just typical WW stupidity rather than them actually being flush with cash. WW was almost at a current-GW level when it came to not knowing what the gently caress people wanted to buy from them. For instance they planned Scion as a three book limited run because "who would want a cool urban fantasy game with a flexible yet unique setting?" and it came out at the absolute fever pitch of the popularity of teen urban fantasy novels and sold bonkers. It's one of the mechanically worst games they've ever written and the book is laid out insanely poorly (core rules are in sidebars! SIDEBARS.). They managed to regroup and recover but by then it was too late and the book they pressed into print was about WWII for some reason (it's totally awesome yet not really in step with what people wanted to buy). To be fair to them they basically had the same thing happen with Changeling but they actually managed to greenlight enough new content and have enough stuff in the pipeline to save themselves and make probably their best game ever (even if the art direction is 90% "magic combat hobo").

Anyways the reason they got the Underworld settlement was actually pretty solid from what I understand: Underworld had used some random terms that WW had the copyrights on and had used in their TV show (Kindred the Embraced, which was baaaad) and they had (probably coincidentally) used a plot that was very similar to a book WW had published in the early 90's.

But really it was probably an homage and WW shouldn't have been such dicks about it. You don't see AEG getting their panties in a bunch over Disney having a 7th Sea homage in the second Pirates film (the bad guy Mercer is an homage to a 7th Sea villain of the same name).

# ? May 8, 2015 08:24

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I'm dubious about your theory, not least because it requires a very specific outcome from a closed settlement, impacting a very particular version of White Wolf's finances that we can't really hope to know. Their release schedule in the wake of the lawsuit wasn't a huge departure from what they'd been doing for over a decade, and that was also during the last industry boom and the nascent CCP merger. The experiments they dabbled with really picked up alongside and after the merger, which was years after the settlement, as the boom was making GBS threads itself and CCP began to cannibalize TG folks for their own doomed purposes. I'd be careful of development lead times here, but even with a full year of nothing but dev (which I doubt) Promethean was 2 years, and Changeling and Scion 3+ years after the settlement. Any clown cars full of money that White Wolf got were long gone by then. Maybe it sustained them in the meantime, but then dev lead times come back around to indicate they had a pretty significant schedule set up before they could have sanely banked on any theoretical Sony money.

# ? May 8, 2015 09:31

Guilty Spork: Feb 26, 2011; Thunder rolled. It rolled a six.

gradenko_2000 posted:

quote:
you just have to look at how they made 4e, what it looks like. And especially how much the forgist/storygame crowd approved of it (I won't say loved it or played it, but of course that was never the point: the storygamers didn't want to see a D&D they'd actually play, they just wanted a D&D they could say is 'gamist' and then nudge it off to some little corner to die). And likewise, how much they disapprove of 5e.

Anything else I could say is under NDA, and I suspect you know that.

The bit about storygamers being fans of 4e is flatly untrue by the way. A few liked it (and a tiny handful made stuff for it), but by and large they were at best lukewarm on it. There definitely wasn't any sense of having won by subverting D&D with GNS theory (which by then people had mostly abandoned), not that that stops pundy from tilting at that windmill.

# ? May 8, 2015 16:00

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

quote:
There is nothing about a game that's improv (and it's not like there's absolutely nothing decided until the moment it happens) that takes away from consistency or the ability to build dramatic turns. As the story starts to come together, pushed by the players from the inciting incident, details start to become clear ahead of time.

You seem to be arguing that because one way works for you and another doesn't, that everyone should have the same experience.

You're simply wrong.

Let's flip this around: have YOU done non-improv properly? The whole "this is the campaign world" *puts down pile of paper so massive it makes the table shake" nine yards?

If not, I'd say you don't know enough about the alternatives to make that call.

I guess all those years of ~~obsessive busywork~~prep I did with poo poo like MERP and Rolemaster were my finest, now long past.

# ? May 9, 2015 07:31

paradoxGentleman: Dec 10, 2013; wheres the jester, I could do with some pointless nonsense right about now

Why was the GNS theory abandoned? It's a generalization, sure, but it does convey the type of experience you can expect from certain games.

# ? May 9, 2015 09:31

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

paradoxGentleman posted:

Why was the GNS theory abandoned? It's a generalization, sure, but it does convey the type of experience you can expect from certain games.

It was poorly thought out and explained, and Edwards has some weird natural instinct towards trolling. He may have some good basic ideas, but he often bolts on as much jargon and personal bias as he possibly can, which might not have been as colossally bad if he weren't such an unmitigated turd about it. (See "White Wolf gave a generation of gamers literal brain damage, no I'm serious, literally. I'll also go ahead and compare it to sexual assault to cover all my bases.")

When that's your starting point, your idea is not going to go nearly as far as it could.

# ? May 9, 2015 09:54

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

GNS is a useful generalization, but it's not really anything to base entire swathes of game design around, either.

Also yeah people got weird about it and Edwards keeps perpetuating the whole Forgist vs RPGPundit slapfight as much as the other guy does. Its double down all the way down.

# ? May 9, 2015 09:58

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

I think the main thing is that Edwards later went back and stated it was flawed and no longer useful, and the weird anti-Forge zealots sorta missed that and still rant about it.

# ? May 9, 2015 10:02

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

You see, I personally think that as a VAH/low-grade DMF jumping on the back of a dragon and stabbing it is retarded. It's retarded in the same way as people doing combat rolls in fist-fights. If I was running a freeform or rules-light game and the VAH/DMF outlined that plan, I'd give it as much in-game effectiveness as a rat-flail.

In fact, you know the only situation in which I as the DM would allow a plan like that to work? If the player could point to a set of rules or precedents where I would be forced to accept it. Like, say, 'here's my loving Jump check, here's my Balance/Ride check; suck it dry, DOUCHEMASTER'. But in a system without strong rules? If they just looked up at me with puppy-dog eyes and asked me pretty-please to sign off on their faux-cool plan because they worked really hard on it, I'd have the dragon casually whip them off and/or breath a huge cloud of fire and fly through.

"Jumping on a dragon to stab it is for sissy anime power fantasies. I hate it, it's loving dumb. However, if you can show me rules that allow it I will wither like a frog on an Arizona highway."

Just in case you think he's being a tool toward low level fighters only:

quote:

Y'see, what separates Naruto and Goku from being able to fight a dragon by jumping onto it is that they have narrative justification for it. We can buy Goku, even comparatively low-level and young Goku being able to ride a dragon because not only is he super-strong as a little kid but he can ride on a loving cloud and do crazy stunts. Low-level Naruto is a little bit harder to buy, but after we've seen him ride a giant frog, stick to the underside of a tree branch, and walk on water he has enough narrative bullshit to justify the stunt.

In absence of sufficiently convincing narrative justification, I'd need a hard rules cite. I'll even accept Captain Hobo bullshit, but if you don't have even that? Then, no, Batman does not dodge the Omega beams. Madmartigan does not jump on the dragon's back and cling to it. Benoist's archer team does not rout the dragon nor does it find the hideout hidden in the mountains. Not when I'm GMing.

Jump on a big thing and stab it? Why, only a magical combat god could do such a thing! In any game, apparently.

# ? May 9, 2015 10:30

MiltonSlavemasta: Feb 12, 2009; And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
"When you coming home, dad?"
"I don't know when
We'll get together then son you know we'll have a good time then."

El Estrago Bonito posted:

Anyways the reason they got the Underworld settlement was actually pretty solid from what I understand: Underworld had used some random terms that WW had the copyrights on and had used in their TV show (Kindred the Embraced, which was baaaad) and they had (probably coincidentally) used a plot that was very similar to a book WW had published in the early 90's.

But really it was probably an homage and WW shouldn't have been such dicks about it. You don't see AEG getting their panties in a bunch over Disney having a 7th Sea homage in the second Pirates film (the bad guy Mercer is an homage to a 7th Sea villain of the same name).

I read the legal complaint, and this isn't exactly correct.

1. Nancy Collins (genre fiction author, created Sonja Blue) and White Wolf alleged that the plot of the movie was a rip-off of her 1994 short story The Love of Monsters, published through White Wolf in the Dark Destiny anthology. This seems like the less important of the two allegations, as very little time is spent on it and it really relies on the second one to have any weight.

2. White Wolf alleged that the Underworld film was essentially set in the World of Darkness. In addition to the obvious similarities, there are some weird points of similarity you wouldn't think would come up unless you were copying things wholesale (i.e. having a vampire/werewolf hybrid specifically called an Abomination, Silver Nitrate anti-werewolf bullets, elders being in torpor forever and woken up w/ vampire blood, poo poo like that.) Also, it was important the things that WEREN'T present in the Underworld movie: Major pieces of vampire/werewolf lore that weren't in the World of Darkness but typically are in Vampire/Werewolf stories were left out of the movie (vampires cast reflections normally, Werewolves just transform whenever).

3. White Wolf also alleged that Kate Beckinsale's character is a clear ripoff of Lucita, whoever that is.

# ? May 9, 2015 16:42

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

I remember being told that Sony denied that Underworld had anything to do with the WoD and that they had never even heard of White Wolf and after all vampires and werewolves had been around for centuries and the case was completely ridiculous - until WW produced a tape of the film's crew at a Comic Con panel going on and on about what a key influence the WoD was for their movie and how they had Vampire books on set. A settlement, dropped suit, and non-disclosure agreement soon followed (translation: WW got paid).

# ? May 9, 2015 17:41

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# ? Jun 2, 2024 04:45

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Plague of Hats posted:

"Jumping on a dragon to stab it is for sissy anime power fantasies. I hate it, it's loving dumb. However, if you can show me rules that allow it I will wither like a frog on an Arizona highway."

Just in case you think he's being a tool toward low level fighters only:

Jump on a big thing and stab it? Why, only a magical combat god could do such a thing! In any game, apparently.

Man, this guy really hates Monster Hunter 4.

# ? May 9, 2015 17:41

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Grognards.txt NEXT: Goodnight, Sweet Wince

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