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Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

Tulpa posted:

I'll second Patricia McKillip's stuff. In addition to her Riddle-Master books, the Forgotten Beasts of Eld is absolutely brilliant and probably represents this sub-genre in its best possible light

Winter Rose is another good choice for a one-and-done romantic fantasy novel. Od Magic too, which stars Od, she's a wizard and a giant. McKilip is the best, is what I'm getting at.

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Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

gradenko_2000 posted:

* "Scholastic" magic, or perhaps one might even say Vancian magic, usually appears as a tool of the villain and is a corrupting force. The protagonists do use magic, but their is a more intrinsic form of magic that they can control and invoke by mere force of will. Evil Wizard versus Good Sorcerer? Evil Wizard versus Good Psionic? I get that vibe.

In fairness, outside of D&D, I cannot think of a genre of fantasy where profligate and constant use of magic by wizards is portrayed as a good thing. D&D is one of the only places I've encountered where magic is taken lightly and totally fine to always muck about with for personal gain.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

Night10194 posted:

Sometimes, I think one of the key problems with this hobby is the insane idea that the Dungeon Master is a mighty, privileged position of power that lets him rain down poo poo on everyone else. The whole 'I am the DM, I get to choose exactly what happens all the time!' mindset needs to die more than anything else. You're playing a game with your friends, damnit! You're making up poo poo together and trying to make it fun. It's not Great God-King Bob and The 4 Captive Idiots Who Amuse Him.
It's a little-known fact that "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" was based on an AD&D campaign.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Night10194 posted:

In fairness, outside of D&D, I cannot think of a genre of fantasy where profligate and constant use of magic by wizards is portrayed as a good thing. D&D is one of the only places I've encountered where magic is taken lightly and totally fine to always muck about with for personal gain.
Ars Magica? But even there it's more like "a wizard will obviously work hard to be good at magic."

Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

Night10194 posted:

In fairness, outside of D&D, I cannot think of a genre of fantasy where profligate and constant use of magic by wizards is portrayed as a good thing. D&D is one of the only places I've encountered where magic is taken lightly and totally fine to always muck about with for personal gain.

The closest thing I can think of off the top of my head are superhero sorcerers like Dr. Strange and Dr. Fate, and even then magic is shown to have a cost. It strikes me that most of the designers of D&D assumed that most of the people playing the game were familiar with the type of fantasy that it was based on, and would be able to decide for themselves how to treat the price of magic.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

Lightning Lord posted:

The closest thing I can think of off the top of my head are superhero sorcerers like Dr. Strange and Dr. Fate, and even then magic is shown to have a cost. It strikes me that most of the designers of D&D assumed that most of the people playing the game were familiar with the type of fantasy that it was based on, and would be able to decide for themselves how to treat the price of magic.

Yea the typical use of 'wizard poo poo' outside of D&D is either 'no I spent my LIFE reading these arcane tomes, I can do nearly nothing but magic and I'm a weird rear end hermit dude' or 'yea I can use this stuff but it costs me a lot so I'm not super eager to cast fireball at every rear end in a top hat who gives me guff'.

Nihilarian
Oct 2, 2013


gently caress, I remember a story I read about Merlin where he had seven "miracles" (spells) - not seven known, or seven per day, seven spells period. I think he blew one to do a long jump or something, and it was called something like "leap of the trout".

A big problem is that an old dude in a bathrobe who refuses to actually cast spells he knows isn't really a player thing*, it's more a DM thing.

*I say even though I tried to make a character based on exactly this concept before I found out Reserve Feats sucked.

chin up everything sucks
Jan 29, 2012

Nessus posted:

Ars Magica? But even there it's more like "a wizard will obviously work hard to be good at magic."

Ars Magica, mages stay the hell away from cities because having magic means you give off a 'this dude is creepy/evil/disturbing' vibe.

TheBlandName
Feb 5, 2012

Night10194 posted:

In fairness, outside of D&D, I cannot think of a genre of fantasy where profligate and constant use of magic by wizards is portrayed as a good thing. D&D is one of the only places I've encountered where magic is taken lightly and totally fine to always muck about with for personal gain.

I'm pretty sure that's the case in Western literature because the dominant Western religions have been pretty staunchly anti-magic for nearly two thousand years. Combined with the prolific backlash against belief in the promise of technology caused by the world wars and you'll find that many fiction writers haven't been so big on glorifying the accumulation of knowledge through the efforts of slightly anti-social dreamers.

That said, if you accept the premise that science fiction and fantasy fall under the same umbrella then you'll find plenty of examples where the constant use and advancement of sufficiently advanced technology is a good thing. In such literature it's often stagnancy and embracing the way things have always been done that's a villainous trait.

Skellybones
May 31, 2011




Fun Shoe
It's been brought up a lot how wizard vs warrior can fall to grog nerd bias; mages are frail, misunderstood scholastic types who through great mental acuity come to command incredible powers, while fighters are jocks with swords who hit things and that's more or less all they ever can do.

Is there any grog on how D&D-style sorcerers work for example? Rather than spellcasters who earn their power through intellectual effort, they sort of fall rear end-backwards into it through a curse or bloodline inheritance. Plus they use Charisma instead of Intelligence. Is that a thing?

Daeren
Aug 18, 2009

YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Shadeoses posted:

It's been brought up a lot how wizard vs warrior can fall to grog nerd bias; mages are frail, misunderstood scholastic types who through great mental acuity come to command incredible powers, while fighters are jocks with swords who hit things and that's more or less all they ever can do.

Is there any grog on how D&D-style sorcerers work for example? Rather than spellcasters who earn their power through intellectual effort, they sort of fall rear end-backwards into it through a curse or bloodline inheritance. Plus they use Charisma instead of Intelligence. Is that a thing?

Boy howdy is there. Go look at the mechanical difference between them and wizards in most iterations of 3.x to see what most people think about sorcerers.

(Hint: the sorcerer almost always sucks)

senrath
Nov 4, 2009

Look Professor, a destruct switch!


Yeah, that grog was deliberately built into the 3.X system by the designers.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

Night10194 posted:

In fairness, outside of D&D, I cannot think of a genre of fantasy where profligate and constant use of magic by wizards is portrayed as a good thing. D&D is one of the only places I've encountered where magic is taken lightly and totally fine to always muck about with for personal gain.

It doesn't even apply inside D&D consistently. All of the big D&D novels (with the exception of RA Salvatore's stuff, since magic is a backdrop to Drizzt in his stories) emphasize misuse and abuse of magic as a bad thing. That's like literally every Elminster story ever, and the War of the Twins from Hickman and Weis.

It's only not thought out by crappy game designers pushing out 3e's kind of shlock.

JackMann
Aug 11, 2010

Secure. Contain. Protect.
Fallen Rib
I think a lot of it comes from D&D's wargaming roots. In a wargame, it doesn't matter if your wizard's fireball required pacts with dark powers, or the blood of innocents, or somehow twisted his mind in attaining it. It only matters that it did ten damage to your opponent's pikemen, and he can do it two more times.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Night10194 posted:

In fairness, outside of D&D, I cannot think of a genre of fantasy where profligate and constant use of magic by wizards is portrayed as a good thing. D&D is one of the only places I've encountered where magic is taken lightly and totally fine to always muck about with for personal gain.

I agree. I recall playing the LOTR games and even there Gandalf was a sword-and-staff melee smashing dude, and most other CRPGs portray spellcasters as far more focused in what types of magic they know at any one time: you can be an elementalist, or an illusionist, or a warlock, or a necromancer, but never all at the same time.

JackMann posted:

I think a lot of it comes from D&D's wargaming roots. In a wargame, it doesn't matter if your wizard's fireball required pacts with dark powers, or the blood of innocents, or somehow twisted his mind in attaining it. It only matters that it did ten damage to your opponent's pikemen, and he can do it two more times.

Certainly I found it surprising that in Chainmail, D&D's wargame progenitor, Wizard spellcasting used a 2d6 roll that resembled PBTA or maybe Squad Leader.

Ronwayne
Nov 20, 2007

That warm and fuzzy feeling.

Alien Rope Burn posted:



To nitpick, that's precisely what didn't happen. In fact, their "training camps" in Arcadia where they tried to brainwash people into being lawful good caused an entire chunk of that plane to fall off and crash into Mechanus because that region had become a lot more lawful than good, along with a lot of the Harmonium. It was easily the greatest planar disaster in the Planescape metaplot and a sign of just how far from good the Harmonium had strayed.

Nice. Is that from Faction War? Because if so that's the only decent piece of fluff from there I've heard of.

moths
Aug 25, 2004

I would also still appreciate some danger.



Shadeoses posted:

Is there any grog on how D&D-style sorcerers work for example? Rather than spellcasters who earn their power through intellectual effort, they sort of fall rear end-backwards into it through a curse or bloodline inheritance. Plus they use Charisma instead of Intelligence. Is that a thing?

Sorcerers are the gifted kids who don't even need to study math magic books. (Before they fail complicated classes because they've never developed good study habits.)

Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

Ronwayne posted:

Nice. Is that from Faction War? Because if so that's the only decent piece of fluff from there I've heard of.

I believe it was in the Planes of Law boxed set.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
I asked a question about kender last night and got a huge response, but would you like to see kender added to the next source book as a playable race?

quote:

You really don't know how to admit defeat, do you? If your academic record is as good as you claim, I would think you would be used to the idea that you can be wrong.
You opened a poll to try to find consensus for your opinion, only to find out that you were totally wrong.
If you would just be reasonable instead of insisting on assigning Kender stupidly overpowered abilities, you could take a good look at the Halfling stats in 5E and notice that other than /maybe/ a subrace ability, it fits pretty spot on.
Nimble, Lucky and Brave. That's totally in line with what you want for Kender, just-- balanced.
Other than a culture note and a slight physical description change, the Lightfoot Halfling works perfectly for a Kender. Seriously, just try the lightfoot halfling with a background that gives you Sleight of Hand as your stats for your Kender character before you knock it or declare it impossible.
As for actually having it printed in official sources-- Dragonlance ought to get its special write up sometime. It has its own subraces for Elf (Gray Elves), Dwarves (Gully Dwarfs) and Halflings (Kender) as well as their own version of Dragonborn (Draconians) and a very different take on Minotaurs that does deserve to be its own race.
But there are too many other things that are a part of almost all settings that still don't have proper PC write-ups that deserve priority. Chief among those are Aasimars, Gith, Gnolls, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Kobolds, Lizardfolk and Orcs.
There are also setting-specific races that are more unique. Warforged, Changelings, Shifters, Shadarkai and Thri-kreen are notable there.
And then there are the things the furries want... Catfolk and Kenku.
So it is really a matter of the facts that Kender are pretty much identical to Lightfoot Halfling in all the ways that matter mechanically and there are too many other races that are more deserving of inclusion to see it in the NEXT player guide.

This next block was all from the same guy, all within about an hour, in a row

quote:

I did admit my opinion was against the grain and went with kender are halflings if u would read my statements....the second poll was if anyone would want them to be included in another sourcebook. For such an educated man like yourself who doesn't even take time to read before talking non sense, I'm glad I went to college and didn't stop at middle school like your apparent reading and writing level suggests. I don't normally do this but you attacked my character and integrity. Listen, read and get the whole story before you talk and those stats came from a reliable source who is doing playtesting on the next sourcebook for players.

quote:

those are what wotc are currently playtesting with. ..take it up with them and kender steal loads...u wanna take what makes kender kender away from them

quote:

Not immune to
Thri-keen, kobolds, shadarkai, then kenku who can't dungeon crawl and catfolk who are a final fantasy race dnd took that isn't much more than rat folk and aaracrocki are kenku without the warrior history. Raven loft has had shifters and changlings, for years but call them aflicted. Warforged are golems. Weird how every race u wanna play has been detailed to death in eberron and darksun. Thri-keen can be found in the shining plains of faurun with wemics worshiping nobanion. Trading with high dwarves. Gully dwarves are a mix of gnome and dwarf. Thonio, are humongous walrus men barbarians. Irda are uncurrupted ogres with affinity for sorcerer. Shadow people are an unknown commodity to me in krynn. And magic is rare as water in dark sun. If u really want to detail some cool races. Wemics, loxxo, dambrath halfdrow, star elves from aglarond, saurials, no dragon born please since we all know wotc stole the best evil creature and balanced it out to stick in all worlds. Kalashar are more interesting in eberron. Grey Orcs near thay, smarter version. Love another horde out of the wastes to sack cormyr again. Detail zakahara or halruu after the collapse. Bet all kind of magically beast appeared. Balance the duerger and derro too fear like in 2e...but they do have advantage. And the taunt has been nerfed, plus in a crowded cite you have a 1 n 4 chance of coming up with an item you need. Dex 2,Int 1.....what is overpowered

quote:

Dude. I always play elvish bladesingers of some form or shape. I just enjoy kender antics. You really are an ignorant bigot. All you do is insult without even having your facts straight. Are you employed as a Clown

quote:

All races now get one big state increase and the subrace part gets a plus 1....compared to genasi, or the deep gnomes....or even high elves....kender are below par...are you really this in knowledgeable about the rules...you do know the number one rule is to have fun and this debate was supposed to be fun and now you are suckling the life out because of some silly agenda...I could careless if we get kender. Much rather have wemic or loxxo

quote:

The taunt causes a negative 2 to attack rolls against the kender usable once till rest....you get a saving throw. Sleep and command are much more deadly

quote:

And charm person is still 1rst....clerics have a taunt basically too..it's the opposite of bless and I'm not sure it has a save

quote:

Oh...let's ban gnomes.....they have an unfair advantage in illusion spells...and teiflings...omg....they shouldn't be npc only with all their abilities. ..Halforcs and dwarves have a multitude of racial abilities...can them too...he'll only thing we need is humans +Andrew Fergus now I'm on your level of hate....bet you are a star wars freak who is pissed jedi ain't in the realms

quote:

Having advantage against frightened isn't the same as having advantage against fear...and a cha based single target ability....I'd much rather have the dragon born breath weapons or the fire genasi burning hands...and if it's so broken...why don't more people play bards....hmm...been a dm for 21 years and if it was broke like the 2e one level ranger, then multiclass into any other class for free dual welding, tracking, traps, hated enemy for 1000 xp and got 1d10...that was broke. Thri-keen are broke, irda are broke...and drow should be but someone always wants to be dritz, so they destroyed the race exempt for thematic elements to cater to your age group

quote:

Thri-keen, kobolds, shadarkai, then kenku who can't dungeon crawl and catfolk who are a final fantasy race dnd took that isn't much more than rat folk and aaracrocki are kenku without the warrior history. Raven loft has had shifters and changlings, for years but call them aflicted. Warforged are golems. Weird how every race u wanna play has been detailed to death in eberron and darksun. Thri-keen can be found in the shining plains of faurun with wemics worshiping nobanion. Trading with high dwarves. Gully dwarves are a mix of gnome and dwarf. Thonio, are humongous walrus men barbarians. Irda are uncurrupted ogres with affinity for sorcerer. Shadow people are an unknown commodity to me in krynn. And magic is rare as water in dark sun. If u really want to detail some cool races. Wemics, loxxo, dambrath halfdrow, star elves from aglarond, saurials, no dragon born please since we all know wotc stole the best evil creature and balanced it out to stick in all worlds. Kalashar are more interesting in eberron. Grey Orcs near thay, smarter version. Love another horde out of the wastes to sack cormyr again. Detail zakahara or halruu after the collapse. Bet all kind of magically beast appeared. Balance the duerger and derro too

quote:

in one of the baldurs gates I believe u meet a kender....plus I killed dritz and took his armor and twinkle

quote:

I don't know but it got there ho.eland kendermore burnt to the ground by a dragon overlord and that is when the afflicted started appearing.

quote:

Afflicted are kender who have felt magical fear and aren't happy, curious or adventurous anymore. See I can talk to u like this and tbh, I heard kender might make it into the next source book is why I posed that question.

quote:

I'd rather heard about loxxo and we mic fighting loviatar worshiping half drow in the shining plains

quote:

Half you read chronicles and legends. Considered 2 of the best 3 trilogies in dnd fiction.

quote:

it's nit the hair trigger so much but I felt like you were attacking my integrity by saying these playtests were 2 years old and that basically called me a liar. In my work, your word is all you have. I have a dual degree in history and social work. So the kender stuff you could have smashed and swore they were asexual for all I care. In the southern us, being called a liar or insinuating it is about as bad an insult as it gets. You probably didn't know what you did or I imagine you wouldn't of said it.


quote:

U seem to be a smart person who was just overzealous in Makin a point like we all get sometimes

Serf
May 5, 2011


"Are you employed as a clown" is my new go-to internet burn

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
How can people care so loving much about this :psyduck:

quote:

If one feels that Kender are nothing more than a Halfling reskinned, they're perfectly fine to feel that way, but the inability to distinguish the differences as described by numerous novels and manuals throughout the editions of the game doesn't make those differences disappear or become at all irrelevant. So should all small agile races just be Halflings? Kender are the anti Halflings. Halflings aren't like Humans, they aren't diverse like that. To feel that the differences aren't important or that the differences aren't great, is an opinion at best. It's not being right or proving a point. It's just an opinion. Frankly dismissing the Kender differences so lightly to me is a role play flaw, an inability to see beyond the numbers, but that's my opinion. Tasselhoff was not a Halfling, Regis was Halfling. The race goes beyond the numbers and simple mechanics. But no-one is going to "convince" the other that they're right, anymore than a question like this has a "winner". Statements about someone having lost with this question elevates the level of the discussion to that of a 4yr old. That WotC are currently play testing the race shows that it's coming, but this poll shows that many don't want it in the next manual, some, by the sounds of it, don't want it at all. Personally I'd like to see a list of other races presented before the Kender. In fact I'd rather see a DL setting book, then we'd get Kender and everything else.

quote:

That's the problem, in order for Kender to be nothing more than another variation on the Halfling you have to result to breaking it down to just the easy to understand game rules. In doing so we miss the mark entirely. Kender are not another variation on the Halfling or Hobbit like your examples of the dark sun race, dark sun Halflings are a different race of Halflings. Just because they have strong similarities doesn't make them a Halfling. A Drow is still an elf. Kender don't have hairy feet nor are they just a simple lightfoot kleptomaniac. Everyone is free to see them that way, but it is an oversimplification. An oversimplification that is needed in order to view Kender as just another Halfling.

quote:

I didn't I say I was basing the differences off those two differences only. They were two example, so why even make a statement like that, since I'm sure you know that those aren't the only two differences. I just compared the Kender to the Halfling descriptions. If you only look at the stat blocks and go by nothing else the Kender and Halfling are 2/3rds similar/identical to 1/3 different. But if that's your only criteria, then having also just compared the Dwarf and Gnome they too have nearly the same similarity/differences breakdown. Remember, the only things being considered here are the clear, easy to understand game rules, which I'm understanding as the stats of the race. If this is how you quantify things then yes, the Kender is nothing more than another flavor of Halfling. But then again so is the Gnome just a different take on the Dwarf.

I'm not simplifying it to that point, removing the rest of the races descriptions. I don't only consider the game stats. Therefore, when looking at the Kender, as a whole, they are not a Halfling. Similar, yes. Do they occupy the same niche, yes. Neither of those two facts is enough to "make" them a Halfling. The closest actual comparison could be the Drow and other Elves if the Kender were physically more similar to Halflings. If after reading the descriptions of Kender and the examples of Tasselhoff in the DL novels and you still fest they're just Halflings, then that's your choice. I still feel that if you've done that and still feel they're Halflings that you've missed it. Oh, disclaimer, I used 3.0 descriptions of the races, since Kender aren't a 5e race yet to compare, and I recognize 4th as a different game.
Sick stealth burn at the end there

quote:

Kender are virtually identical to Halflings the same that Elves are virtually identical to Humans. Kender are taller and heavier not to mention they age faster. My contrast is based on actual race descriptions which I've expressed, actual substance to back up my position, not statements alone. Your comment about people complaining that Halflings in 3.0 were too much like Kender shows that people were upset that the Halfling was being made into too much of a Kender like race. That only serves my point that Kender are not just another Halfling subrace. Not only have I provided details but you yourself now demonstrate that people want the differences between Halflings and Kender to remain. My premise is spot on, demonstrated and now supported by others complaining that they don't want the Halfling to be a Kender.

Mormon Star Wars
Aug 13, 2005
It's a minotaur race...

Force and Destiny has some great grog. Here is a guy who is upset because people told him that The Force Unleashed was a bad inspiration for power levels of starting force users (because the EU is full of escalating absurd wizardry):

quote:

Canon preachers are nothing but back bencher, fairweather fans, absent during the lean years when being a Star Wars fan wasnt "cool" and now coming out and telling everyone else, whats right, whats wrong and how to play by their rules. Well Frak you and the starfighter you rode in on. I've been a Star Wars fan since day one and saw "A new hope" first released in the late 70's in the theaters five times before it was renamed episode 4 A New Hope, so my own council will I keep on what is and what is not in my fandom. You should know there never was a canon EU distinction with the exception of the comics, and when Timothy Zahn wrote the Thrawn Trilogy Lucas himself endorsed it. This canon crap didnt really start gaining ground until the special editions and the prequels were released. I'm not making the case the "EU" was all great, some of it was, some of it was crap.
Dont get all high and mighty oh honorable canon judge because you were too lazy to take the time to read actual books like most of us did. The only difference between your opinion and a bag of dog excrement is the bag as far as I'm concerned and that goes for Disney the Megacorp too.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Night10194 posted:

In fairness, outside of D&D, I cannot think of a genre of fantasy where profligate and constant use of magic by wizards is portrayed as a good thing. D&D is one of the only places I've encountered where magic is taken lightly and totally fine to always muck about with for personal gain.

YA fiction, especially Harry Potter. Actually just kid stuff in general. The historic Merlin may not have cast a lot of spells, but Merlin from the Sword in the Stone was like shrinking his plates to move and turning kids into fish for a day to get through one law of thermodynamics sort of. I mean, I guess it's possible to say that in both example there are a lot of people that don't like magic in the story, but as readers/viewers you're given repeated examples that the haters are stupid and wrong. Muggles don't like all this magic but they're fat idiots, right dear reader?

theironjef fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jul 22, 2015

Daeren
Aug 18, 2009

YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

theironjef posted:

YA fiction, especially Harry Potter. Actually just kid stuff in general. The historic Merlin may not have cast a lot of spells, but Merlin from the Sword in the Stone was like shrinking his plates to move and turning kids into fish for a day to get through one law of thermodynamics sort of. I mean, I guess it's possible to say that in both example there are a lot of people that don't like magic in the story, but as readers/viewers you're given repeated examples that the haters are stupid and wrong. Muggles don't like all this magic but they're fat idiots, right dear reader?

While that's the case for a lot of Harry Potter, by the end it becomes pretty clear that magic isn't quite superior to normality. A lot of hate for magic comes from dumb places, yeah, and magic can do some impressive/powerful poo poo, but the entire reason wizards keep their poo poo on the down-low is that one dude with a .38 is more than capable of killing the gently caress out of Merlin. Remember, one of the most evil and forbidden spells in the world is effectively the same as just shooting them, and another can be replicated with a car battery and jumper cables.

Also, one major character has a lot of page count and characterization dedicated to using him as an example that some wizards are so far off the plot that even something like a car is loving mystifying to them.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
It's sad watching grown men realize with horror that they've devoted themselves to a commercial property owned by somebody else.

Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jul 22, 2015

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

theironjef posted:

YA fiction, especially Harry Potter. Actually just kid stuff in general. The historic Merlin may not have cast a lot of spells, but Merlin from the Sword in the Stone was like shrinking his plates to move and turning kids into fish for a day to get through one law of thermodynamics sort of. I mean, I guess it's possible to say that in both example there are a lot of people that don't like magic in the story, but as readers/viewers you're given repeated examples that the haters are stupid and wrong. Muggles don't like all this magic but they're fat idiots, right dear reader?

There's still usually a message of 'Magic is awesome but it is also a responsibility that should be used for the general good and treated with some respect' and/or it's being used to teach magical life lessons, like that Magic Man is an rear end in a top hat and should not be trusted because he'll turn you into a foot.

That Old Tree
Jun 24, 2012

nah


On the last episode of Grogs.txt, there was a shitstorm of suddenly caring that the OSR didn't get much coverage in Shannon Appelcline's RPG history books. The usual suspects immediately toileted what was honestly a chill enough discussion, but regardless Shannon is going to go ahead and write some articles about OSR history. He has reached out, and one of those people he e-mailed paraded their response around RPGSite because gently caress YOU DAD!

quote:

Hi Shannon

I recall our previous correspondence when I had a concern about the moderation of your forums at rpg.net, so I was interested to receive your message.

In the light of your attitude and response at that time, I will never share any information with you or help you in any way. If you do publish an unauthorised history of OSRIC I will do my absolute best to discredit it.

Have a nice day

quote:

Well, my position is that Shannon Appelcline can't possibly write a decent history of OSRIC because he doesn't have the necessary knowledge, and he'll never get it.

Now, as a mildly bright spot, the ensuing thread seems about half full of people who think regardless of your opinions on RPGnet or Shannon, this dude is being a petty dick and at best is acting as bad as they think RPGnet is.

quote:

Why does this exchange make me think of the one between Chun Li and M. Bison in the Street fighter movie. He probably didn't even remember what he'd done to offend you.
https://youtu.be/iVzAMmpMra8

Anyway, that's not what this thread is for!

quote:

Hitler could probably write a pretty good history of Auschwitz, but I'm sure Anne Frank would tell him to gently caress off if he asked for details.

And, yes, I just brought up Hitler on the first page. Might as well!

quote:

It's obvious RPG.net is nothing more than a vehicle to push certain publisher's products. I don't have a problem with that, but I wish they'd stop acting as if the board is really about all roleplaying games instead of just whatever Onyx Path and Evil Hat have churned out recently.

quote:

He's got a voice and he's allowed to quote things he disagrees with and reply to them, even if those things were written by a mod. So yeah: infinitely better-treated. The experience of trying to have an intelligent discussion on a forum moderated by someone like Ettin would be valuable learning for ShannonA, I think.

I'm not averse to the idea that one day OSRIC's history could be written based on conversations and documents from the period, ideally by one of the people who was on Gary Gygax's email groups in 2005-6 and will therefore be able to make sense of some of the emails in context. I'm not looking for a whitewash.

quote:

What I want is to exactly mimic the effect of the rpg.net infractions board: to put what ought to be private communications in the public eye.

Obviously, if it really mimicked the effect of that board then ShannonA would have no right of reply and communications disagreeing with me would be summarily deleted...

For those unfamiliar, Infractions is a locked forum that displays warnings and bannings with cited posts and mod commentary. I suppose if anything in there "should've been private communication" it would mean this rear end in a top hat got banned for being a poo poo in PMs and his bullshit got quoted in the infraction. Usually, this is because someone goes off on a mod about the fascist injustice of a lighter warning or brief ban.

quote:

If you aren't interested in reading P&P's contribution to the public record here, don't read it and click on another topic or start a topic of your own.

Nothing about theRPGsite or the way you want to use it has been in any way affected by the fact that P&P has used a thread to record Shannon's continued evasiveness.

P&P unequivocally did the right thing. Sticking around to complain that he did the right thing in a place where you don't want to read about it smacks of masochism.

—ZakS, Truest Grogs.txt Poster of Them All

quote:

The excitement seems to be over and I can no longer see any Shannon Appleclines on my targeting computer, so it remains for me to say thank you to Pundit and RPGsite staff for hosting this thread. If it had appeared on Dragonsfoot or K&KA I would have had to delete it because of the site rules. I don't particularly like you, Pundit, nor do I agree with very many of your opinions, but I'm grateful that you operate a place that'll host this kind of thing.

Yeah, I was petty to ShannonA. I'm not a forgiving man, nor a nice one, and I was held up to public ridicule by the drooling poltroons who moderate his forum. I don't mind being thought petty if I can subject him to the same experience. I hope it was salutory.

And yep, if he does publish a history of the OSR it's going to be based on rpgnet threads. Since it's not possible to speak the truth in that place, his "history" will be about as reliable as the Daily Mail. If there's a word of truth in it then it'll be a happy accident.

quote:

quote:

Is that what you annoyance with the site is about? That forum is public so that people who have been banned came come back and read their infractions. If that's an issue, we can dig for alternatives.
Yeah: that filthy baboon Ettin posted sneering lies about me in that forum and deleted my responses out of hand. You refused point blank to do anything about it. Those lies were up there for years and I could do nothing. Since then your moderation staff have lied, lied, and lied again about the OSR and you're responsible for what they say.

I've waited about five years for someone from rpg.net to need something from me.

:stare:

And then the thread went down the GamerGate toilet.

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops
Wait, is the OSR someone's personal IP? I thought OSR was an independent renaissance of people rediscovering old-school games. If it isn't a specific person's product, how can you write an unauthorised entry on it?

Darwinism
Jan 6, 2008


Plague of Hats posted:


I've waited about five years for someone from rpg.net to need something from me.

:stare:

I think my favorite part is that he admits that he's a lovely, petty, angry person, but there's no possible way that any ban of his could've been legit!

That Old Tree
Jun 24, 2012

nah


Darwinism posted:

I think my favorite part is that he admits that he's a lovely, petty, angry person, but there's no possible way that any ban of his could've been legit!

Nah, not even that. He's mad, as far as he says, about how his infraction was publicly posted. I don't think it was even PM content or anything; he just thinks mod finger-wagging shouldn't be public, I guess.

So he posted Shannon's (inoffensive, nearly content-less) private correspondence in public. That'll show him!

spectralent posted:

Wait, is the OSR someone's personal IP? I thought OSR was an independent renaissance of people rediscovering old-school games. If it isn't a specific person's product, how can you write an unauthorised entry on it?

Shannon was soliciting information from a guy who maintains a specific product that helped create/sustain the OSR. That product, OSRIC, from a little browsing seems to be kind of an SRD for old-school D&D.

At last, the guy who created OSRIC would have his long-awaited revenge. His petty, dumb, amazingly petty, just oh my god petty…revenge.

That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Jul 23, 2015

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually
I just love the notion that writing about OSRIC - a low-effort copy/paste of an old D&D ruleset - could only be done after spending years sifting through stacks of emails from 2006 to 2008 and only by someone who meets the sacred criteria of purity, like it's an anthropological dissertation about mystery cults of the Yanomani Indians and not, you know, just some nerds slapping each others' dicks about how great B1 IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN was back in eighth grade.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually
Sorry, Shannon - you may have written the definitive four-volume history of the RPG hobby, but I don't think you've got what it takes to properly understand the thinking behind my note for note copy of the B/X ruleset. :smug:

Boing
Jul 12, 2005

trapped in custom title factory, send help
In my party we have a rule to where if you don't have your hand up (either in a similar fashion to swearing on the bible or on your forehead) you're assumed to either be saying what your character is saying or you're saying what your character is doing. This way the hand signal is sort of an "out-of-character" button. As a group of 6 or so guys tends to do, we joke around a lot and also as a group of guys we tend to forget some things. As you can imagine this has lead to some hilarious moments.

One such example was when our party was hired by a Mage's College to find some missing students. We were following the Headmaster into his office when our druid blurted out "I CAST DETECT PANTIES." Needless to say the Headmaster was shocked and almost disgusted. In order to salvage the social situation, our 8 charisma druid thought that it might help if he pretended to have a panic attack and fell down the stairs. He then shouted "PANTY RAID" and fell down 3 flights of stairs, taking 11 damage.

Anyways, does anyone else use this rule?

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually
I've spent the last fourteen years of life working on a close textual-linguistic analysis of Module X2 CASTLE AMBER and you think you can just breeze in here and "understand" the OSR by asking a couple of questions? Heh, think again, boy.

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!
The actual funniest thing about this was the whole stink started because Shannon's book didn't have a section on the OSR due to it being too recent and not having enough information. A few people pestered her, demanding to know why he didn't write about it.

All they've done is given him a real easy answer.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
For real, this is incredible.

"How come the OSR isn't mentioned in Designers & Dragons!"

"Well the OSR was still pretty new when I wrote it and I wasn't sure what parts of it would be noteworthy, but I'll go ahead and write some about it now. What can you tell me about this game?"

"gently caress you! I'm not telling you anything ever since you banned me from an internet forum five years ago, and this is my revenge!"

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.
Reading the rest of that thread.

God drat, Ettin really is some sort of boogeyman for them, isn't he? I think he's mentioned at least as often as ShannonA, who is the subject of the thread.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
OSRIC would have been relevant to a history of the hobby because it was the first* of the retroclones: it used the terms of WOTC's OGL and SRD to make a "close-enough" reproduction** of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition that people could play in the face of the originals being out of print.

* Technically the very first would have been HackMaster, but HackMaster did not use the OGL/SRD and instead skated by as an imitation of AD&D on the condition that it be satirical.

** If you want to get nitpicky, OSRIC has actually has a lot of small subtle changes when closely compared to AD&D 1e, partly because AD&D 1e has enough purple prose that you're bound to "misinterpret" something Gygax wrote when you're restating something for clarity in modern technical writing, and also because of the terms of the OGL regarding what you can and cannot talk about obliged the writers to make deliberate changes to make it different enough from the originals.

I think that's pretty much all you'd need to know about it from a high-level perspective, and Appelcline is a better man than I if his writing about the OSR won't just contain "this is a community of whiny idiot manbabies", repeated to a 3000-word article.

Slimnoid
Sep 6, 2012

Does that mean I don't get the job?

Lemniscate Blue posted:

Reading the rest of that thread.

God drat, Ettin really is some sort of boogeyman for them, isn't he? I think he's mentioned at least as often as ShannonA, who is the subject of the thread.

They think EVERY mod on RPGnet personally kicked their dog and pissed in the mother's mouth.

Coincidentally, the ones spewing the most bile were warned or banned for being shitbabies.

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Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

I really like how his "revenge," in addition to being unthinkably petty, is also self-defeating. "Oho, so My Hated Enemy wants to write a history of my RPG movement? I'll deny him any information so he can't write about my contributions! This will prevent my work from being memorialized and also... hurt him... somehow!"

  • Locked thread