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It's pretty telling in that whole Twitter thing, if you look at Mearls and Pucifer's likes, they all lead to accounts held by alt-right crazies.
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May 14, 2016 06:32
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I see Defy Media got rid of Tarnowski. Mike either shot his mouth off before reading and made a mistake, or he was going for a little "etat est moi" action as the D&D guy, which he can't really do now since there's Pathfinder. But that thinking is definitely the WotC internal line. Guests really do deserve a little more than a free pass, though in some cases (such as with Paizo staff) one hopes it would be redundant. I applaud all of them for their willingness to be counted and talk. I do three panels at once convention per year, and in one of them, all I do is point at people for Ed Greenwood. Suits me fine. I took a look at the list and recognized slightly more than half the people there. The ones I didn't recognize are mostly because, well, I don't care about Pathfinder that much and don't read a ton of blogs. But all of those people look more than worthy, and I'm pleased there's gender parity. I don't know about "setting guy," vs. "rules guy." That was a popular approach in the 80s and gave us GURPS and Hero. Good for some, but I'm interested in diegetic design and playing with the text loosely, and that approach doesn't cut it. There are outliers though. I think Ken is interested in doing the minimum work necessary to make his ideas gameable, and admit that a lot of designers really don't have the patience for doing setting. It's about finding the right people for the work.
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May 14, 2016 12:10
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MalcolmSheppard posted:I don't know about "setting guy," vs. "rules guy." That was a popular approach in the 80s and gave us GURPS and Hero. Good for some, but I'm interested in diegetic design and playing with the text loosely, and that approach doesn't cut it. What do you mean by "diegetic design"? I know what that means in regards to video games, but I'm not sure RPGs have a direct equivalent to that. Mind, I don't think it's impossible for somebody to be both a setting expert and a rules expert, but that being both is rare. Mind, I think that's mainly because good rules designers are rare in the RPG industry in general; it's just not a skill that's given the credit it deserves.
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May 14, 2016 12:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:What do you mean by "diegetic design"? I know what that means in regards to video games, but I'm not sure RPGs have a direct equivalent to that. IIRC it's that the abilities and powers of the characters are known by the characters - think Disciplines in Vampire.
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May 14, 2016 13:01
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Alien Rope Burn posted:What do you mean by "diegetic design"? I know what that means in regards to video games, but I'm not sure RPGs have a direct equivalent to that. Characters perceive and describe the world using the same rules and nomenclature as the players do. In D&D, things like spell families or class names are diegetic, but levels or saving throws aren't. In VtM, a character knows what generation they are or what disciplines they have, but they don't describe themselves as having dots in an ability or a certain number of Humanity points. The Chairman fucked around with this message at 22:33 on May 15, 2016 |
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May 15, 2016 22:30
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The Chairman posted:Characters perceive and describe the world using the same rules and nomenclature as the players do. In D&D, things like spell families or class names are diegetic, but levels or saving throws aren't. In VtM, a character knows what generation they are or what disciplines they have, but they don't describe themselves as having dots in an ability or a certain number of Humanity points. Well, there are levels of abstraction here; dots in an ability is an abstraction, but it represents an actual physical aspect of the world, as a measure of skill. Something truly non-diegetic would be more like Fate Points in FATE, which often represent narrative convenience rather than anything that's part of the world described in a game of FATE.
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May 15, 2016 23:53
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Easily one of, if not the most diegetic RPGs I have ever seen is the World Tree RPG. Their setting is kinda weird and modeled after common RPG abstractions like hit points and spell points. For example, living beings have weird anatomy (by our standards) such that they don't really have any vital spots which would lead to swift death--you have to kill them by beating them up enough that they die. They actually have a measure for how much abuse you can take, and adventurers have been known to get themselves beaten to measure how many hit points they have. They do this because resurrection is cheap and easy as long as it's done quickly after death. As a result, death is cheaper to them than it would be for us. They actually have a punishment that consists of multiple executions. Their spell points are essentially a measure of how many spells you can cast per day (and everyone gets their spell points restored by the gods at certain times, mostly dawn I think?). There is no distinction in cost based on how powerful a spell is. And you train skills by using them and there actually is a spell with no actual effect that gets used for training because it trains all of the spell nouns/verbs. And magic is a normal part of life--everyone knows at least a minor utility spell, though it's usually specific professions that go beyond minor utility. For example, crafter professions use spells for their profession. Game balance comes from the fact that physical attacks generally do more damage than spells, and there aren't any save-or-death spells (I think? It's been a while since I read it, but it does seem deliberate on this front). Combat spells are mostly used to make it easier to kill enemies--in other words, buffs and debuffs. Kaja Rainbow fucked around with this message at 01:42 on May 16, 2016 |
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May 16, 2016 01:36
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Dunno if you guys are familiar with Erfworld, but it's noteable as a fantasy setting where everyone is in a game, and knows it, and thinks in game-mechanic terms. Like each day each faction gets a turn, and everyone is aware of whose turn it is; they can tell one another's stats, new people spawn, they can stack with one another for combat bonuses, and they think of the landscape in terms of hexes. The basic premise is that maybe this is a real place, or maybe it's a fantasy formed in the mind of the protagonist (who is from the real world), who maybe is in a coma or something. Anyway the point is, you actually could just have a setting where the characters are aware of the mechanics, even while the mechanics consist of various abstractions like hit points and dice pools and maybe even edition changes and the GM.
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May 16, 2016 04:31
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Kaja Rainbow posted:Easily one of, if not the most diegetic RPGs I have ever seen is the World Tree RPG. Their setting is kinda weird and modeled after common RPG abstractions like hit points and spell points. For example, living beings have weird anatomy (by our standards) such that they don't really have any vital spots which would lead to swift death--you have to kill them by beating them up enough that they die. They actually have a measure for how much abuse you can take, and adventurers have been known to get themselves beaten to measure how many hit points they have. Yeah, there's a spell in world tree that always does precisely the same small amount of damage, so that's the unit life is measured in. If you have 20 life points, that means it takes 20 castings of that spell to kill you. Once again the scientific method triumphs!
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May 16, 2016 04:38
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I hate stories where people are aware of the mechanics, not because I think it's inherently bad (in fact I think it's pretty cute), but because it's always, always based on vague old D&D-isms where magic can do whatever the gently caress and having a sword is still just being stronger than average. And they're always so drat on the nose about it too, the casters always lord being a caster over everyone.
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May 16, 2016 04:41
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There's also classic D&D stuff, where people are aware of the rule that getting gold gets you more experience and thus more powerful, so it's an actual in-setting thing that kings grow more powerful because they collect taxes.
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May 16, 2016 06:22
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Kurieg posted:
In TV, the only example we have is Tim Kring. It was a show that was blatantly uncaring about its audience (a guy ran an entire season for Congress. He won. The next season they exclusively called him Senator.) Anyway, he wrote out a character's interesting romantic foil by sending her to an alternate future, then changing the present. When asked if he was ever going to address this plothole, he basically said "No, and fans are stupid for caring. It's just a TV show." No one since has been SO blatantly "gently caress you, I don't care what I'm doing". One gets wistful.
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May 16, 2016 07:37
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George Martin is incredibly dismissive of the TV show and its fans. It's almost as if fantasy literature has this underlying tone that leads authors to loathe their fans. Almost. Countblanc posted:I hate stories where people are aware of the mechanics, not because I think it's inherently bad (in fact I think it's pretty cute), but because it's always, always based on vague old D&D-isms where magic can do whatever the gently caress and having a sword is still just being stronger than average. And they're always so drat on the nose about it too, the casters always lord being a caster over everyone. Fantasy literature in general is stuck in this rut, so it's reflected in gaming. The most common conception of an RPG is a vague mix of D&D and Everquest with a bit of LARPing thrown in. Zurui fucked around with this message at 07:54 on May 16, 2016 |
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May 16, 2016 07:51
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Golden Bee posted:In TV, the only example we have is Tim Kring. It was a show that was blatantly uncaring about its audience (a guy ran an entire season for Congress. He won. The next season they exclusively called him Senator.) How is a character being called a senator mean the writer doesn't care about the audience? Was he running as a representative?
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May 16, 2016 08:13
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When you're elected to Congress, you're a congressman/woman. When you're elected to the Senate, you're a senator.
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May 16, 2016 12:31
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Zurui posted:Fantasy literature in general is stuck in this rut, so it's reflected in gaming. The most common conception of an RPG is a vague mix of D&D and Everquest with a bit of LARPing thrown in. I think like 90% of the problems with fantasy literature could be solved with a couple of changes and then you could be as loving diegetic as you want because you're just judging the conceit on its own merits instead of being mired in the fact that it's fantasy literature. Speaking as someone who's broadly a fan of fantasy as a genre I actually kind of hate most of the fantasy novels I've ever read so maybe I should say I like the idea of fantasy as a genre better than the execution. First off, move away from "vaguely medieval Western Europe except pretty much just England and maybe a touch of rural Germany." There might be a bit more there to mine from the setting but strip mining is generally bad for the environment. There are lots of other cultures in the world with interesting mythologies; poo poo, there's even a bunch of poo poo in the rest of loving Europe that gets almost completely ignored. There's no real reason to keep dicking around in Tolkien's Nutsack any more except that the sort of people who write fantasy novels, for all that the whole concept of "fantasy" by its very definition involves escapism and leaving the familiar behind or at least looking at the familiar in a new way, really really hate to leave their comfort zones. Second off, if you yourself are writing a fantasy story of some kind, check and make sure that you have a sense of humor. Or at the very least a sense of humanity, if humor is out of your reach. This will be difficult; many people who don't have senses of humor are exceptionally proud of their sense of humor. Resist the urge to skip this step. Really look deep inside yourself for it. So many of the fantasy books I've read in my life have been really, really dry, and stolid, and sometimes even turgid, and they're just this huge chore to read; because it was written by someone who wouldn't know a joke if it came up and pied 'em in the face. Nothing described as "escapism" should be less lively and engaging than the technical manual of my tool set but this is the fate of so many loving stories about mighty wizards and bad-rear end fighters and rad dragons and poo poo. Next, make your story about people. "But Dr. Buttass," says the whiny strawman I made up so I could do this in one go instead of hoping someone in the audience says it, "why would I write a story about boring old humans when I have beautiful unicorns and fantastical magics and kickawesome dragons to write about?" Because when your characters are just there to cart the viewpoint around to look at all these other neat things that are way more interesting than they are, you don't have an exciting tale of adventure and magic and poo poo; you have a guided tour with some dinner theater thrown in (ironically one of the funnier books I've read was the guidebook to this theoretical tour, which may actually prove my point, meaning I was wrong and it's not actually ironic...). Also, people doesn't have to mean humans. Dwarfs are people. Elves are people. Weird furries like gnolls or kobolds are people. Dragons might be people, I've seen it done both ways. The things that make stories exciting and engaging are how much we give a poo poo about the people they're happening to. This actually doesn't just apply to fantasy; pretty much any story is only as good as its characters. I've heard it said that a story is only as good as its conflict but I've read lots of stories with fairly petty conflicts that were way better than stories with deeper and more theoretically interesting conflicts because the characters carrying it were better. Characters make the conflict, really. While we're talking about people, and this might be a minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things but it hacks me right off, avoid certain creatures always being evil. If orcs are always evil then there's no real conflict and they're not really evil. They're just doing what orcs do, kinda like cockroaches and rats and other things people really hate for doing what they do. Evil includes, by necessity, the choice to do good instead (and vice versa; this is why Undertale worked as well as it did, even if you never touched the "fight" button the fact that it was there made your choice to not use it significant), and once you start getting up into species-type numbers there's no such thing as a group of people who all, without exception, make the exact same choice about how to live their lives. On top of that declaring certain creatures as unilaterally evil never sat well with me; it sits less and less the older I get, and it makes sudden, visible progress towards standing and walking right out the door every time I have to hear about how George Zimmerman barely escaped with his life. It's a very close relative of regular old real-life racism, and even when the story manages to maintain some kind of pretense that it's not just a direct allegory for how the author feels about minorities it's usually a red flag of same. Orcs can have a violent, punchy culture without being evil, gnolls can be whatever they are in your favorite setting without being evil, ekcetra and so forth. A villain who stands against your heroes because of who she is and what her own unique goals are is like a hojillion times more interesting than a villain who stands against your heroes because he's a goblin and he's going to stand against them no matter what his actual goals are because they're Good and he's Evil. Teal deer: Stop sucking Tolkien's dick.
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May 16, 2016 12:31
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Fuego Fish posted:When you're elected to Congress, you're a congressman/woman. When you're elected to the Senate, you're a senator. ...the Senate is part of Congress in the US. All US Senators are also US Congressmen/women. Maybe you're thinking of the House of Representatives? (US Representatives are also also US Congressmen/women.)
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May 16, 2016 13:13
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double post 
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May 16, 2016 13:13
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What do I know, I'm British.
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May 16, 2016 13:38
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Besesoth posted:...the Senate is part of Congress in the US. All US Senators are also US Congressmen/women. Yeah, but there's a different level of prestige for each house of Congress, that is more or less than the prestige of being in Congress as a whole. So Representatives like being called Congressman/Congresswoman, but Senators like to be called Senator.
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May 16, 2016 13:48
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OK so. The US Congress is composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives,. The word Congress generally refers to the whole US Federal legislature. Members of the House are typically addressed as Congressman, Congresswoman, or Representative. Members of the Senate are usually addressed as Senator almost exclusively. Technically, both Congressmen. There are 2 Senators per state. Both are elected by state wide elections. There are 435 Congressmen apportioned by state population and then further apportioned into districts of roughly equal population size. Each district elects a Congressman.
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May 16, 2016 13:54
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Dr. Buttass posted:Teal deer: Stop sucking Tolkien's dick.
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May 16, 2016 14:22
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Yeah, but there's a different level of prestige for each house of Congress, that is more or less than the prestige of being in Congress as a whole. So Representatives like being called Congressman/Congresswoman, but Senators like to be called Senator. Golden Bee was complaining about someone successfully running for Congress and then being called "Senator" as though it were a continuity error.
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May 16, 2016 14:26
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Dr. Buttass posted:While we're talking about people, and this might be a minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things but it hacks me right off, avoid certain creatures always being evil. If orcs are always evil then there's no real conflict and they're not really evil. They're just doing what orcs do,
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May 16, 2016 14:31
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It's not hard to find non-tolkieny fantasy. You've got urban fantasy, pulpy epics that inspired dnd more than lotr such as Moorcock and Vance, doorstopper fantasy series with 50 books and an author who goes nuts with their own mythos, soft sci-fi and stuff from other countries and cultures.
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May 16, 2016 14:35
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Yeah, and you could also (shameless self-promotion in action) buy my books 
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May 16, 2016 14:39
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Things would be a lot better if people were actually copying Tolkien (I mean, have you read the Silmarillion?) instead of copying the absolute shallowest possible surface aesthetic elements of Lord of the Rings.
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May 16, 2016 14:48
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Gygax liked The Hobbit but really didn't care for Lord of the Rings, which is probably where a lot of that got started.
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May 16, 2016 15:04
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Yeah, "no characters who aren't worthy of empathy" is basically a rule for me at this point.
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May 16, 2016 15:15
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Fuego Fish posted:Yeah, and you could also (shameless self-promotion in action) buy my books You really should, by the way. Izzy Hartley and the Luminal Magnifier is probably my favorite debut novel of all time. I'm usually more of an urban fantasy and soft SF guy myself, which of course annoys the hell out of me when I fire up my kindle and see so much terrible garbage in the former. At least the only urban fantasy RPG with any kind of market penetration into the elfgame zeitgeist are Shadowrun and Dresden Files.
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May 16, 2016 16:59
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Rand Brittain posted:Yeah, "no characters who aren't worthy of empathy" is basically a rule for me at this point. This is a good phrasing of the rule, because it doesn't actually rule out entities that are akin to the orcs of Tolkien; it just forces you to make them marginally interesting and sympathetic even if you're using them as stock villains.
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May 16, 2016 17:02
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Kwyndig posted:You really should, by the way. Izzy Hartley and the Luminal Magnifier is probably my favorite debut novel of all time. Aw shucks  I've been working hard on Izzy Hartley and the Impossible Bridge, so you'll get to find out what happens!
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May 16, 2016 17:21
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Sell me on this book of yours, please. I might be interested.
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May 16, 2016 17:29
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Halloween Jack posted:Gygax liked The Hobbit but really didn't care for Lord of the Rings, which is probably where a lot of that got started. Which is weird, because AD&D is totally the LotR to the B/X Hobbit.
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May 16, 2016 18:02
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paradoxGentleman posted:Sell me on this book of yours, please. I might be interested. Joanna King is a former schoolteacher in a mid-20th-century Earth that has a history similar to, but pointedly different to our own. If you listen to Joanna's new employer, genius inventor (and American teenager) Izzy Hartley, it's all because of time travel gone wrong - or right, depending on your point of view. But more importantly than that, Izzy has invented a device called the Luminal Magnifier. It is beyond the ultimate in telescopes, able to perceive any point in the cosmos in perfect clarity. Not to mention in real time, regardless of what the speed of light says, thanks to a particular quirk of physics that means Albert Einstein owes her a soda. As you might expect, the ultimate spying tool is bound to attract a lot of attention from the wrong people, and that's not even mentioning what it might see out there in the far-flung reaches of the opposite side of the universe. Meanwhile, Joanna's just trying her best to stop Izzy from eating nothing but junk food. If that sounds interesting to you, maybe check it out.
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May 16, 2016 18:10
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homullus posted:Which is weird, because AD&D is totally the LotR to the B/X Hobbit. To a great extent this is probably emergent rather than deliberate. If his grasp of their writing styles is any indication, Gygax didn't understand Smith's narrative style or Vance's dialogue. He liked the sesquipedalian vocabulary and imitated it, naked of context, in his own writing.
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May 16, 2016 19:17
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Mind, I think that's mainly because good rules designers are rare in the RPG industry in general; it's just not a skill that's given the credit it deserves. Seriously? I'd say the opposite. Setting design has been denigrated since 3e, was said to be an obsession of "failed writers" and there hasn't been much development on that front in around 20 years. The most popular recent game setting is Golarion, where the goal was to create a place you can throw your modules because it would indulge hoary cliches. Hell, over in the OSR the sentiment is that nobody should have ever designed settings to begin with. There are upcoming exceptions like Edrigohr but mostly, rules are doing fine. In fact, I think we're reaching a stage where game designers feel the need to dazzle you with some convoluted innovation that is novel, but not necessarily better than already-existing functional methods. I've felt this pressure myself. People love to lionize game system design because it has the superficial appearance of having objective standards and for the most part, the average gamer can feel like they have some expertise via indoctrination into their favourite games' rules. So at the extreme end you have The Gaming Den which is filled with self-appointed experts who draw their knowledge from the 80s-90s period of AD&D "realism" house ruling and simming, and Shadowrun. Setting's appeal is more a matter of feeling and at best, gamers feel they can only exert authority via raw factual knowledge, so the counterpart of the rules lawyer is the rear end in a top hat LARPer who uses his knowledge of Vampire minutiae to treat you like poo poo because it's "true to the setting." Nevertheless, the fact remains that there's some actual greatness above the sum of its inspirations in, say, V:TM's setting, and in Unknown Armies' world, and there are points of mechanical integration I don't think happen when we spin responsibilities neatly into two buckets.
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May 16, 2016 20:08
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The point about urban fantasy and stuff is valid, although some of those doorstoppers are what I had in mind when I said "check that you actually have a sense of humor before you start." Some of that stuff is even more loving impenetrable than Lord of the Rings (The Hobbit I actually got through okay).Evil Mastermind posted:Alternate teal dear: Throw away the Tolkien and Martin and read Terry Pratchett. Yes, but also, find some new stuff. A fair amount of early Pratchett is dedicated to directly lampooning the tropes I was just railing against, and while those are pretty good, and it grew into something great, I think if he were alive today and gave half a poo poo about some American schmuck's opinions he'd probably agree with me that if variety is the spice of life then a whole curry is much better than just a heaping tablespoon of cumin. Halloween Jack posted:The thing is, AD&D played straight, using 100% of the rules, is much more like the weird wide pulp fantasy worlds of Smith or Vance than LotR. The random encounter tables alone repudiate expectations of Good creatures and Evil creatures being basically allied and taking sides in an ongoing war. I'm going to admit here that I've never heard of Smith, and I never bothered with Vance because I knew he had a fairly significant influence on DnD, so I assumed it was going to be more of what I didn't like about most of the fantasy I've read up to now. I guess I should be giving him a shot after all?
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May 16, 2016 20:09
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LatwPIAT posted:Well, there are levels of abstraction here; dots in an ability is an abstraction, but it represents an actual physical aspect of the world, as a measure of skill. Something truly non-diegetic would be more like Fate Points in FATE, which often represent narrative convenience rather than anything that's part of the world described in a game of FATE. Yeah. The goal isn't 100% diegetic fidelity, which is impossible anyway, World Tree's weirdness aside.
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May 16, 2016 20:12
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Vance is definitely worth a go, especially the stories that don't have wizards as protagonists.
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May 16, 2016 20:14
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