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Yeah I've bought everything released on gumroad too.
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Jun 23, 2016 01:28
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Carrasco posted:(I mean, everyone does, but like...Haley's early characterization literally included "tee hee" as a catchphrase) That was part of the facade she put up when she still considered herself a hired hand for some schmuck's dungeon crawl instead of an important member of an important team. There was a long plot arc about her completely losing her voice and talking in gibberish as she struggled to grow out of being an emotionally stonewalling treasure hoarder and into a person that opened up to the others around her, fighting against all the fear and distrust her father had trained into her. Not everything is misogyny. That blurb she had with Bandana felt more like a FINE, GOD, SHUT UP ALREADY to his forum than anything relevant to the characters.
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Jun 23, 2016 07:31
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Wulfolme posted:That was part of the facade she put up when she still considered herself a hired hand for some schmuck's dungeon crawl instead of an important member of an important team. There was a long plot arc about her completely losing her voice and talking in gibberish as she struggled to grow out of being an emotionally stonewalling treasure hoarder and into a person that opened up to the others around her, fighting against all the fear and distrust her father had trained into her. Not everything is misogyny. you've correctly identified that the author retconned in a slightly less embarrassing reason for her earlier characterization, but that doesn't really change the fact that she was still getting designated catfights as late as greysky city
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Jun 23, 2016 07:50
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Wulfolme posted:That was part of the facade she put up when she still considered herself a hired hand for some schmuck's dungeon crawl instead of an important member of an important team. There was a long plot arc about her completely losing her voice and talking in gibberish as she struggled to grow out of being an emotionally stonewalling treasure hoarder and into a person that opened up to the others around her, fighting against all the fear and distrust her father had trained into her. Not everything is misogyny. Nah. Rich had some bad ingrained ideas about women early in his career and grew out of them, and his writing reflects that. There is no reason to believe that his forum which he has told to shut the gently caress up and sit down on various occasions since forever, or THE DARK FORCES OF SJW TUMBLR  had anything to do with it.
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Jun 23, 2016 08:01
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Yeah, I'm with DolphinCop and Carrasco on that one, but it's not too harsh a criticism to admit the comic's evolved with the author - some things are cut and dried like the art upgrade, others are more subtle. OotS has been running so long that honestly even pop culture and the internet has moved on quite a bit since 2003, particularly on topics like representation in media. It's an interesting topic for long-running works in general, of which webcomics are a common example, where the author doesn't have everything planned out from the start or their plans change over the course of the story. Unlike one big book you can't just go back and redraft the earlier sections according to your new thinking, so you have to do things within the story and hopefully in a way that feels organic. Like Carrasco said the conversation between Bandana and Haley read as much like an acknowledgement by Rich of his earlier writing's weaknesses as it was Haley acknowledging something about her past and development. It can be a tough line to walk without feeling clumsy or almost 4th-wall-breaking (in the jarring way, not the mugging-for-the-camera metajoke way).
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Jun 23, 2016 08:08
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As long as this comic has been running it'd be more implausible to me than anything that Rich didn't feel embarrassed about some elements of early OotS.
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Jun 23, 2016 08:11
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I, too, demand ideological purity from all the mass media I consume. Especially the free Internet comics.
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Jun 23, 2016 09:01
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Early Oots is bawdy and a bit juvenile. Like oooh idk teenagers sitting around playing d&d. I think the head slapper for him was realising how that was limiting the stories he could tell.
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Jun 23, 2016 09:06
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Vorgen posted:I, too, demand ideological purity from all the mass media I consume. Especially the free Internet comics. I think you're in the wrong thread because sure as poo poo nobody said that here. Unless you're just taking people being happy that Rich is writing women better very strangely.
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Jun 23, 2016 09:13
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Gally posted:I think you're in the wrong thread because sure as poo poo nobody said that here. Just because you're not doing it consciously doesn't mean you're not doing it.
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Jun 23, 2016 10:32
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You realize some of us hate stereotypically-written female characters because we are female people who are stereotyped and it annoys us personally, right? Like, not in the sense that we discovered feminist ideology and went "oh, I should be annoyed by this", but in the sense that we have always been annoyed, on a completely non-ideological level? If I was going to demand "ideological purity" I'd go after D&D for creating an unrealistic class of Randian uber-men who are expected to go out on missions to fight other sentient creatures 
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Jun 23, 2016 13:10
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Tjadeth posted:If I was going to demand "ideological purity" I'd go after D&D for creating an unrealistic class of Randian uber-men who are expected to go out on missions to fight other sentient creatures For real, I'm trying to square some of my beliefs with DnD so I can try and run my first games and it is downright difficult.
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Jun 23, 2016 13:27
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I once ran a game where my players were hired to go after kobold raiders. I seeded the description of the lair and kobolds with little comments hinting at there was more to them than just angry murderous dragon things. The idea was the guy who hired the players was really a slaver and the kobolds escaped from his mine and they've been raiding his wagons that bring in more slaves and occasionally food. Instead they just murdered all of them with no remorse.
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Jun 23, 2016 13:36
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Kobolds should've paid more, then.
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Jun 23, 2016 13:38
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Len posted:I once ran a game where my players were hired to go after kobold raiders. I seeded the description of the lair and kobolds with little comments hinting at there was more to them than just angry murderous dragon things. The idea was the guy who hired the players was really a slaver and the kobolds escaped from his mine and they've been raiding his wagons that bring in more slaves and occasionally food. Instead they just murdered all of them with no remorse. Did you at least get to have the reveal and shaming?
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Jun 23, 2016 13:51
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How do y'all handle different ethnicities in your games? It would be easy to just say humans can be all these colors and leave it at that, yet I doubt that would be sufficient.
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Jun 23, 2016 13:58
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Rygar201 posted:For real, I'm trying to square some of my beliefs with DnD so I can try and run my first games and it is downright difficult. Do you find it problematic that there are entire categories of beings who are intelligent, and capable of making rational decisions that are nevertheless completely devoid of moral agency?
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Jun 23, 2016 14:02
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A.o.D. posted:Do you find it problematic that there are entire categories of beings who are intelligent, and capable of making rational decisions that are nevertheless completely devoid of moral agency? Yep. "Always _______ Evil" indeed. I know they say they're exceptions but that seems mostly for PCs to play a character of that race got an extended PSA on xenophobia and stat bonuses. I guess you could handle it with some poo poo about how literal and active gods can sway societies or something.
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Jun 23, 2016 14:37
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MikeJF posted:Did you at least get to have the reveal and shaming? Sadly no ): the reveal was going to be great though. The guy was going to keep hiring them to go after parts of a Mcguffin and they would of course have to defeat the guardians of each object. Each guardian was going to try and dissuade them and explain that if you get all the bits of this thing it's really a magic wmd and the world could be ended. If they kept just killing the final bad guy was going to be their boss and they were gonna get one last try to not gently caress up. If they did the world was going to end and become Dark Sun. But then we went and graduated high school and got jobs and families and that's never going to happen.
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Jun 23, 2016 14:37
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Pretty much in all my worlds all races are more and less sentient and anytime you're in combat that's your decision. I don't think a lot of modern campaigns just have canon fodder gobbos.
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Jun 23, 2016 14:39
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Rygar201 posted:Yep. "Always _______ Evil" indeed. That's pretty sad. But if that's how you feel just make your own setting. It's what I did as a GM, and what most of my GMs have done when I was a player.
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Jun 23, 2016 14:48
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What annoys me most, is that orcs are by far my favorite fantasy race and pretty much no game has proper stats for making a good orc character.
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Jun 23, 2016 14:59
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It's funny how Half-Orcs tend to be the better choice then pure Orc. Warcraft had an RPG which I imagine did a decent job on Orcs. But by all accounts the Warcraft RPG was terribad. Also fair play to Rich Berlew on how he deals with online fans. The only way I can stay sane on the Internet is to adopt a policy where I automatically assume anyone posting on the Internet who I don't know in real life is a bot and I can completely discount what they say.
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Jun 23, 2016 15:26
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There's plenty of actual monsters in dnd that you don't have to rely on sentient races as antagonists. Like no one is going to shed a tear over that group of cockatrice. And you can still have goblins as enemies, just a group that are actually bad. And then you can have good ones too.
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Jun 23, 2016 15:26
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e X posted:What annoys me most, is that orcs are by far my favorite fantasy race and pretty much no game has proper stats for making a good orc character. May I suggest Burning Wheel? Orcs in that game get an additional stat called Hatred ranging from 0 to 10. You get an initial value by answering a bunch of questions like "has your character ever been tortured?" or "has your character ever attempted to command a unit of goblins in battle?" And then, after, that, your hatred will continue to increase during play whenever a list of appropriate situations are met, (you need bigger and bigger things to continue to level it as you get more and more hateful). Situations range from difficulty 1, "Witnessing murder. Eating the dead. Traveling through the woods. Lying. Cheating. Stealing." all the way up to 10, "Giving in to Hatred and letting it consume you, body and soul. Realizing that there is no hope for you, and in fact, there never was." When your Hatred hits 10 then your character snaps and goes into a violent orgy, attacking everything in sight until he's cut down. Orc campaigns are typically short, ugly, and don't end well! If you like tragedy in your gaming, you can even do an orc campaign about a group of orcs trying to fight back against their inherent nature and be better people, and Hatred makes a wonderful problem to try to struggle against.
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Jun 23, 2016 16:03
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Vorgen posted:I, too, demand ideological purity from all the mass media I consume. Especially the free Internet comics. Reading a comic for years and years despite it's flaws and noting how those flaws were corrected over time is...certainly a unique definition of "demanding ideological purity". Specifically, an objectively incorrect one. But unique!
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Jun 23, 2016 16:28
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greatn posted:There's plenty of actual monsters in dnd that you don't have to rely on sentient races as antagonists. Like no one is going to shed a tear over that group of cockatrice. Basically this. There is no real need to determine your opponents morality through a universal constant, when it would just be enough to do so through their action, which you have to provide anyway, since there wouldn't be an adventure otherwise.
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Jun 23, 2016 16:39
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Rygar201 posted:For real, I'm trying to square some of my beliefs with DnD so I can try and run my first games and it is downright difficult. You really don't have to. The world is whatever you and your players make of it (especially you as the DM since you've got final say). The books are guidelines that you can and should alter to suit your campaign. This is one of my favorite examples from my own gaming group. There was an evil cult known as the Dragon Claw that had discovered the location of an ancient library. It was said to be filled with artifacts and texts that could have world shaking consequence in the wrong hands, and their expedition had a head start. We pursued them into the forest where this library was said to be. It was so dense that barely any light filtered through the branches above. As our eyes adjusted, we realized that we were surrounded by giant spiders. Normally you'd expect this to just be a random encounter to kill quickly and get back on the trail. We tried explaining the situation. It turns out that they were on edge because a group of nasty humans had just been through there attacking anything that got too close. A few heal spells later, they were all too happy to guide us directly to the library. We got there well ahead of the cult, set up an ambush with more allies than we'd originally planned, and took care of the real threat.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:07
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Colonel Cool posted:May I suggest Burning Wheel? That sounds suspiciously Storytellerish.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:11
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I think there's a flat in your plan. Spiders don't talk.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:12
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Rygar201 posted:How do y'all handle different ethnicities in your games? It would be easy to just say humans can be all these colors and leave it at that, yet I doubt that would be sufficient. Typically I just try to keep a wide spread of ethnic backgrounds in play when it makes sense, and given where adventurers tend to congregate, it usually makes sense. For example, port towns or major cities ought to have people from all over the world, especially if the setting is high-fantasy enough that you could hire someone to fly or teleport you somewhere. Conversely, I ran a game once where all of the characters were aged sixteen to twenty, setting out on an adventure from their home village, which was a farm town on the rear end end of nowhere like the Two Rivers in The Wheel of Time. It made sense that they'd all be the same ethnicity. Astribulus posted:You really don't have to. The world is whatever you and your players make of it (especially you as the DM since you've got final say). The books are guidelines that you can and should alter to suit your campaign. Yeah, I don't think people emphasize this enough. The game is built for "hack and slash," but you can play it as morally complex as you like.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:16
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greatn posted:I think there's a flat in your plan. Spiders don't talk. Maybe not Common, but there are ways around that.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:18
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Astribulus posted:Maybe not Common, but there are ways around that. The second problem is that they're still going to be spiders. 
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Jun 23, 2016 17:21
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Spiders are awesome.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:24
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A.o.D. posted:That sounds suspiciously Storytellerish. Insofar as the Storyteller system was written by the same guy who made Shadowrun and Burning Wheel was made by people who played a shitload of Shadowrun, I guess. Dice pool systems.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:30
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I might steal that Hatred mechanic for a CYOA.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:37
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my dad posted:Spiders are awesome. I would burn the gaming table to ash at the mere mention of spiders! 
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Jun 23, 2016 17:37
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Colonel Cool posted:Insofar as the Storyteller system was written by the same guy who made Shadowrun and Burning Wheel was made by people who played a shitload of Shadowrun, I guess. Dice pool systems aren't inherently bad, but boy, Storyteller and Shadowrun are really bottom tier in terms of making any mechanical sense at all.
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Jun 23, 2016 17:41
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Raenir Salazar posted:I would burn the gaming table to ash at the mere mention of spiders! Spiders are useful little things. And they're adorable.  Also, having a spiderweb in a corner somewhere means that when you're woken up by a giant buzzing thing flying in through the open window, you'll soon hear a different kind of buzzing, more panicky in nature, and soon after, complete silence. Which means you can go back to sleep. 
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Jun 23, 2016 17:50
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Android Blues posted:Dice pool systems aren't inherently bad, but boy, Storyteller and Shadowrun are really bottom tier in terms of making any mechanical sense at all. I like the settings but the systems themselves are borderline unplayable, imo. It's kind of funny to note specific rules in Burning Wheel which were obviously added because Shadowrun is so frustrating to play. For example: quote:Let It Ride
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Jun 23, 2016 17:52
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