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Fossilized Rappy posted:As someone who has gotten really into GURPS over the past few months, I can say that Unusual Background definitely still exists, but I can't see anything that would indicate bad GMing tied to it. It's usually referred to in books as a go-to advantage for why you get to have fancy powers almost nobody else does. In my experience, and encounters with it in sourcebooks, it's little more than a handwave tax or a snowflake surcharge. If someone wants to bend the rules a bit and pick up a few more languages or something, he's already paying points for them. If someone wants eyebeams in a game about New York cabbies vs Uber, you ask him to take the cape off and wait for the supers game. In a game where all of the PCs are powered, it's a pointless surcharge: any serious opposition is going to be on the same footing, all of this stuff is supposedly balanced in the first place, and balancing the PCs against mooks is silly. In a campaign where one player wants a weird edge like psi potential or unusual technology, no point tax is going to balance the poo poo he's going to cause. I thought it was a clever little rule for years, even writing up little variants myself, but after trying to balance things like high-TL equipment vs. super powers, or do much of anything with the basic magic system (which I still like as a concept), I finally realized just how arbitrary the whole thing is, and that no amount of point juggling would actually balance anything past the character sheet totals.
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Aug 4, 2015 09:20
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I was honestly pretty surprised when GURPS4 came out and still had Unusual Background in it.Unusual Background posted:Not every unusual character concept merits an Unusual Background. The GM should only charge points when the character enjoys a tangible benefit. For instance, it would be unusual for a human to be raised by wolves, but unless this gave him special capabilities (such as Speak with Animals), it would be background color, worth 0 points. Especially when this Perk also shows up in the book barely five pages later: A "Perk" which is always 1 point posted:Fur Which is still a bullshit tax inflicted by a GM who is too gutless to just say "no" or too hidebound by the fact that, welp, this poo poo's in the book so gently caress you.
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Aug 4, 2015 09:58
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Bieeardo posted:In my experience, and encounters with it in sourcebooks, it's little more than a handwave tax or a snowflake surcharge. If someone wants to bend the rules a bit and pick up a few more languages or something, he's already paying points for them. If someone wants eyebeams in a game about New York cabbies vs Uber, you ask him to take the cape off and wait for the supers game. In a game where all of the PCs are powered, it's a pointless surcharge: any serious opposition is going to be on the same footing, all of this stuff is supposedly balanced in the first place, and balancing the PCs against mooks is silly. In a campaign where one player wants a weird edge like psi potential or unusual technology, no point tax is going to balance the poo poo he's going to cause. Fossilized Rappy fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Aug 4, 2015 |
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Aug 4, 2015 10:07
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Minor grog, from a predictable trainwreck of an RPGnet thread about "What RPG system/setting bores you to tears?"quote:Any system that 'gets out of the way.' Let me know if you have something that adds to a game, instead of aspiring to the lofty goal of failing to subtract.
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Aug 4, 2015 20:38
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Fossilized Rappy posted:Yeah, I get what you're saying now, and I can agree with that. I was just thinking you might have seen something more insidious that I'd somehow managed to miss. Naw, I was just being catty.
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Aug 4, 2015 21:09
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FMguru posted:Minor grog, from a predictable trainwreck of an RPGnet thread about "What RPG system/setting bores you to tears?" Can't this also be looked at as a form of "system matters"? Which is something I agree with. Some people enjoy playing the game like a game. Having knobs and levers to manipulate while playing is fun for some, others want them out of the way.
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Aug 4, 2015 23:44
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starkebn posted:Can't this also be looked at as a form of "system matters"? Which is something I agree with. Grog is about attitude. It's one thing to enjoy the knobs and levers. It's another to flatly state that those that lack them are boring failures.
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Aug 4, 2015 23:52
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Advertising your RPG as having a system that "gets out of the way" has always struck me as dumb ad copy buzz-speak anyway, up there with the games that advertise themselves as giving you "TRUE FREEDOM to do whatever you want!" It tells me nothing about what your system is actually good at except maybe being unnoticeable which isn't really a selling point.
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Aug 4, 2015 23:52
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Grog is about attitude. It's one thing to enjoy the knobs and levers. It's another to flatly state that those that lack them are boring failures. True, but I hardly think that's what's going on in that quote. And, the quote comes from a thread asking for opinions. Don't stop posting grog though, I just can't get enough.
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Aug 5, 2015 00:09
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I still can't get over that reaction to that Jedi picture. It's just so strange. Does it make any more sense in context?
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Aug 5, 2015 00:38
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I've played enough heavy crunch games to entirely understand games that promise to "get out of the way." The caveat is that the game has to actually be rules lite enough to get out of the way.
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Aug 5, 2015 00:48
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mycot posted:I still can't get over that reaction to that Jedi picture. It's just so strange. Does it make any more sense in context? I dunno, makes sense to me. Sperg sees a black girl in his precious nerdtome and starts nitpicking because you'd need to be really dense to think you can just complain about cooties. See also, "Why is my elfgame so POLITICAL now?" Difference is that one is just a lovely opinion hidden behind a lovely concern troll, but the other one is either blatant lying or latent prosopagnosia.
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Aug 5, 2015 00:53
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Crossposting this from the chat thread because of the topic: On Zak S winning an Ennie: Helical Nightmares posted:A Red & Pleasant Land Is a quite original setting. It deserves the awards it got. It's altogether likely that RPGPundit, as is his won't, is trying to make this a far bigger deal than it actually is. He blogged about it, twice. There were more votes for Zak S's work than there were print copies in existence, which meant a significant number of people that voted for him must have done so without ever having read the book (or read it via :files:). This apparently is just more proof of Zak S's complete and utter dominance as a writer that people are willing to vote for him solely on the strength of the name, and not, you know, because of any other possible agenda. There is a small bright spot here, as apparently Zak S's antics are enough that at least one other OSR person is finding it abrasive, when normally the community tends to circle its wagons in much the same way political cartoonists do regardless of ideology.
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Aug 5, 2015 06:25
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Yeah I was hesitant to post all the RPGsite backpatting going on, but I find the most hilarious thing is-quote:Nobody in the hall noticed but Cam Banks and his conservative gamer squad walked out after I won Best Writing. Yes. Conservative. That is what Cam Banks is. But yes, there's a lot of "oh we don't even care about awards but we hurt people's feelings and that's the important part".
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Aug 5, 2015 06:42
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In that thread I also found this:quote:If voting for Red and Pleasant Land made me a Nazi, then where the gently caress is my snazzy uniform, P08 Luger and MP40?
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Aug 5, 2015 07:48
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Zak really enjoyed obsessively following this thread.
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Aug 5, 2015 13:05
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Kibner posted:Zak really enjoyed obsessively following this thread. If recent Google+ conversations are anything to go by, he still does.
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Aug 5, 2015 13:10
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gradenko_2000 posted:There is a small bright spot here, as apparently Zak S's antics are enough that at least one other OSR person is finding it abrasive, when normally the community tends to circle its wagons in much the same way political cartoonists do regardless of ideology. On the other hand, one of the comments on the above link says: quote:Ryan Dancey saved D&D. Seriously. Not only was he a critical part of WotC acquisition of TSR, he champions the OGL. This bright spot you mention seems so tiny right now it might as well be non-existent.
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Aug 5, 2015 13:21
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Kibner posted:Zak really enjoyed obsessively following this thread. Wouldn't this thread be behind the paywall? Or does Zak have an account
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Aug 5, 2015 13:40
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Serf posted:If recent Google+ conversations are anything to go by, he still does. That should have been present tense but phone posting and didn't notice. I just clicked the link on the thread and noticed he edited his post to mention this thread again (with wrong information, of course). I think he got this one and the chat thread confused with each other. Grognards.txt and him have about the same level of interest in each other. 
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Aug 5, 2015 13:45
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Plague of Hats posted:Especially when this Perk also shows up in the book barely five pages later:
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Aug 5, 2015 14:38
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Halloween Jack posted:So you have to buy a trait to justify buying another trait? The grog is built into the book? Even better, poo poo like Damage Resistance and all the other Advantages and widgets talk about in-fiction justification like "you were trained by wizards" or "you have really thick fur" without ever mentioning Unusual Background or "justifying" Perks. The genre-building supplements seem to avoid making use of these asinine taxes. Even in the core book description of Unusual Background, it struggles mightily to justify its own existence. It's so goddamn dumb.
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Aug 5, 2015 15:00
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Kibner posted:I think he got this one and the chat thread confused with each other. In fairness, I sometimes do too, even when they aren't both posting about the same person. I guess what I'm saying is, bring in more dog photos. Grogdog for all.
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Aug 5, 2015 15:08
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Halloween Jack posted:So you have to buy a trait to justify buying another trait? The grog is built into the book? GURPS is point-buy. The idea behind a point-buy system is, roughly, that you can get equal value from an equal investment in points. The problem with GURPS and its point-buy approach is that the actual value of things is outside the control of the book. In a more specific game or setting, like D&D or Vampire: the Masquium, the value of something can be judged by how much of a benefit it is in the expected way to play the game. You can't really do that in GURPS. The value of Talents and Attributes vary based on how many Skills the GM thinks are relevant, to take but one example. It's not like Vampire: the Requiem, where there's 24 skills, all of which probably have some level of relevance to the nightly dealings of being a goth sex criminal. GURPS' solution to this kind of issue is, basically, to add a mechanics-legal way to enforce this. "Beam Weapons are pretty powerful and rare in this setting, making the Beam Weapons Skill worth more than ordinary guns. You need to spend extra points to get Beam Weapons. Here's an Unusual Background you can buy to represent that." Playing detectives solving murder mysteries, and one player has the skill to speak to ghosts? That's worth a lot more in a setting where death matters, than in a game where resurrection is commonplace; pay the extra points for an Unusual Background. It's an inelegant solution. It's an inelegant solution not further helped at all by the fact that the writers themselves often fail to use it "properly", c.f. "Fur".
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Aug 5, 2015 15:32
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I just can't even imagine having quite that level of interest in what people are saying about you. Angrily barging in every time someone says something vaguely critical of you is a good way to make everyone with any sense hate you, and litters the internet with evidence of how big of an rear end in a top hat you are. Anyway, here's some grog: 
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Aug 5, 2015 15:36
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Where does that link regarding RPG.net lead to?
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Aug 5, 2015 15:41
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paradoxGentleman posted:Where does that link regarding RPG.net lead to? At a guess, their rule that you aren't allow to deny the experiences of marginalized groups; e.g. "Oh, but [X form of oppression of Y] doesn't actually happen", in the face of group Y talking about their experiences with X.
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Aug 5, 2015 15:48
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LatwPIAT posted:At a guess, their rule that you aren't allow to deny the experiences of marginalized groups; e.g. "Oh, but [X form of oppression of Y] doesn't actually happen", in the face of group Y talking about their experiences with X. Yeah the experiences that you can't deny aren't all experiences, just the ones they talk about when it comes to misogyny and the like. So when a woman says, "Guy X got into an elevator with me and got real close and did creepy-breathing things down my neck, it loving sucked", you're not allowed to respond with "maybe the dude just has asthma and you are the horrible person in this story!" That sort of stuff happened often enough back in the day that they had to make a rule for it. But of course, the truth isn't nearly as much fun to complain about.
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Aug 5, 2015 16:09
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gradenko_2000 posted:
He's only mad that about the "saved dnd" part and thinks the walkout was a sjw stunt. So it's a pretty dim bright spot.
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Aug 5, 2015 16:14
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paradoxGentleman posted:Where does that link regarding RPG.net lead to?
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Aug 5, 2015 16:18
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Guilty Spork posted:The screencap was something Tracey Hurley posted to Twitter, and I wasn't able to actually find the Reddit threat, possibly because of the poster deleting it. I found it back when it was first posted and the post itself was on KotakuinAction. The link lead me to this image: 
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Aug 5, 2015 16:27
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Yeah, you don't even need encyclopedic familiarity with RPGnet's rules to be able to guess which ones are getting complained about in posts like those. Ugh. MORE quote:
 SOME GIZMO An Old Geezer appears! No, I mean the guy who I guess formerly had that screen name: quote:This is something I never heard of until five years ago. I don't know when it became a concern, but it certainly was not one 1972-1985. quote:Very good, sir. I simply would have said "Waa waa waa loving waa," but your way is far more eloquent. quote:The entire concept of "dead" levels is loving rubbish invented by attention deficit wankers that don't bother roleplaying and only care about new and different buttons to mash on their character console. quote:Think the whinning about "dead levels" is bad? Over on BGG/RPGG a couple of months ago there was a thread complaining about the "dead levels" in... stat bonuses in D&D and how this needed to be "fixed". Jesus, and various other deities and demigods, wept. quote:The dead level concept is tied directly to games that focus on what the PCs CAN do mechanically instead of what the PCs ARE doing in the campaign. SOME COWS (!?) quote:The concept and belief in "Dead Levels" are the result of viewing the progress of a character through the game as an isolated series of mechanics. quote:The problem for OSR games is that to give every class some new ability every level, for many classes you either have to create a bunch of new abilities that are something that only someone with that ability could have any chance of success with or you have to take abilities that realistically anyone should be able to try with some chance of success and declare them impossible unless you have the special ability. Both are against the sensibilities of most players and GMs interested in OSR style games. Fortunately, most people interested in OSR games don't seem to notice, let alone care about dead levels. Just, wow, a stunning lack of creativity. Jesus. quote:Never had a problem with "Dead Levels" in my games. It's a silly term to me.  These people who give so much of a poo poo about the precise contents of their dusty old games give no shits about those contents!?
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Aug 5, 2015 16:30
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quote:From what I've gathered so far, FAR WEST is mostly done by now. Some minor things still need proofing and perhaps even fixing, but all the texts should be written, and even the layout should almost be final. —posted on the fifth day of August in the year 2015 of the Common Era
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Aug 5, 2015 16:38
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The discussion of in-character versus out-of-character knowledge and the Common Sense merit(s) has passed, but I just wanted to add that making players pay a tax for playing in a fictional setting they know little about is super messed up. However, Vampire the Requiem had one good application of it: a Daeva bloodline known as the Asnam, who genuinely believed they were gods manifested on earth, and had the best clan weakness ever. If you play an Asnam, once a session, the GM is obliged to completely lie to you about the wisdom or your chance of success with a course of action. Because your character is just that fuckin' egotistical. "He seems tough. Could I take this guy?" "Definitely. Piece of cake." "Can I make it to that other rooftop?" "With a running start? Easily." "What an rear end in a top hat. I want to heckle the Prince's speech." "Oh, man. Everyone will think you're so funny for doing that."
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Aug 5, 2015 17:52
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LatwPIAT posted:GURPS' solution to this kind of issue is, basically, to add a mechanics-legal way to enforce this. "Beam Weapons are pretty powerful and rare in this setting, making the Beam Weapons Skill worth more than ordinary guns. You need to spend extra points to get Beam Weapons. Here's an Unusual Background you can buy to represent that." Playing detectives solving murder mysteries, and one player has the skill to speak to ghosts? That's worth a lot more in a setting where death matters, than in a game where resurrection is commonplace; pay the extra points for an Unusual Background.
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Aug 5, 2015 17:55
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Halloween Jack posted:That's actually much much better than what a lot of games do, where the skill list is insanely long and insanely specific because it's more "realistic" to divide Science and Art into five sub-skills. I hate that. It encourages a dynamic where players are supposed to be shamed into spending points on skills they may never use. Sometimes books even encourage this instead of fixing their loving skill system. Oh, don't worry, GURPS does that too.
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Aug 5, 2015 18:08
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Oh, don't worry, GURPS does that too. Maybe they need a new, sleek, low impact, clutter free GURPS. in the cloud. iGURPS.
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Aug 5, 2015 18:22
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Halloween Jack posted:That's actually much much better than what a lot of games do, where the skill list is insanely long and insanely specific because it's more "realistic" to divide Science and Art into five sub-skills. I hate that. It encourages a dynamic where players are supposed to be shamed into spending points on skills they may never use. Sometimes books even encourage this instead of fixing their loving skill system. Most GURPS groups I've played with have ignored the rule and just make their characters to follow the GM's campaign frame (it's not like GURPS lacks for character options, after all). But the rule is there if the GM wants to allow you to play a hidden Atlantean sorceror masquerading as a minor Victorian noble or something.
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Aug 5, 2015 18:28
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This sounds more like a dysfunctional aid to GMs who are too chickenshit to say "I don't care if ninja technically existed in the 1790s, you can't play one in our French Revolution game." Now you can say "Whuh-whuh-well you have to p-p-pay 20 points! You'd better not!"
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Aug 5, 2015 18:36
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Yeah, that's like...either you're playing a game where it's okay for PCs to be telepaths, or you aren't. Make up your mind!
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Aug 5, 2015 18:39
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