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FMguru posted:It's really just "Ha ha! I caught them out in a plot hole! Look smart I am and how dumb they are!" which is just a tremendously impoverished way to engage the world. AKA half of Cinemasins' MO. (The other half is popping a boner literally anytime a woman is on screen. Not even like scantily clad or doing a sexy thing. Just a woman.)
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Dec 2, 2016 01:33
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Evil Mastermind posted:The only game I've ever seen that handles the decker/everyone else problem well is, believe it or not, Torg. They establish that time in the GodNet operates at more or less the same speed as the real world, so a hacker moving from one node to another or attacking some ICE is just "an action", then you go and see what everyone else is doing. The explanation was that it was so people could use the GodNet for long periods without having to worry about them going nuts due to the extreme time dilation.
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Dec 2, 2016 01:34
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FMguru posted:Torg's GodNet also bypasses all the tricky questions about the interaction between cyberspace and realspace because it's literally an alternate dimension with its own rules and if you die in cyberspace you die in real life because that's just how it works. Also you can be attacked by literal demons when you're in the GodNet, or be sucked physically into it and emerge somewhere else, or just about anything else cool you can imagine because it's not an interface to a series of networked servers, it's an actual magical sub-dimension, and your efforts to try and rationalize things about it just don't register. The funniest thing about this is that it's one of the few times Torg just says "it is what it is" and doesn't go into ridiculously unnecessary explanations about anything. (If you know what the next chapter in the Aysle book is, you know what I'm talking about...)
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Dec 2, 2016 01:47
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Honestly going full Tron seems like the best way to do Cyberspace stuff. gently caress assembling computers and special programs, you're in VR, everything has weird glowing lines and you just roll with the regular stats.
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Dec 2, 2016 02:02
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unseenlibrarian posted:Honestly going full Tron seems like the best way to do Cyberspace stuff. gently caress assembling computers and special programs, you're in VR, everything has weird glowing lines and you just roll with the regular stats. I played a Warhammer 40k Operator, and even in grimdark techno-god facilities I got to use my tech skills to form a lasgun while jacked into a computer. I then started shooting viruses while a nearby servitor tore them apart with its cyber-dog avatar.
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Dec 2, 2016 02:07
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Haven't recent editions of Shadowrun reduced netrunning to a single roll or two to break into a system? I thought that happened a while back.
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Dec 2, 2016 02:22
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Night10194 posted:
The Commando supplement (it covered mercenary and military actions) for the 80's Top Secret/ SI game from TSR had a mechanic called Friction that affected mission performance. Have to do a parachute insertion? Add to the Friction. Extremely Hot/Cold/Wet environment? Add to the Friction. In mission planning the PCs had a good idea what the mission Friction rating would be and could plan accordingly to be able to minimize its effects.
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Dec 2, 2016 03:15
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:The Commando supplement (it covered mercenary and military actions) for the 80's Top Secret/ SI game from TSR had a mechanic called Friction that affected mission performance. Have to do a parachute insertion? Add to the Friction. Extremely Hot/Cold/Wet environment? Add to the Friction. See, that's a good way to umbrella cover those kinds of situations.
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Dec 2, 2016 03:41
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Waffleman_ posted:AKA half of Cinemasins' MO. (The other half is popping a boner literally anytime a woman is on screen. Not even like scantily clad or doing a sexy thing. Just a woman.) And even when Cinema Sins is pointing out plot holes, a lot of that time the guy is just wrong and wasn't paying attention to the plot of the movie or the character arcs.
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Dec 2, 2016 04:39
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He's literally admitted that he writes them while scrubbing through the movie.
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Dec 2, 2016 04:56
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Waffleman_ posted:He's literally admitted that he writes them while scrubbing through the movie. I think we're agreeing that Cinema Sins is emblematic of Nerd Plot Hole Culture.
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Dec 2, 2016 04:59
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I think part of it is that nerd media makes everything that's metaphor in other literature literal, nerds can't deal with metaphor or uncertainty. D&D's math and physics obsession being injected into the culture early on didn't help. I'm pure anti 'logic', 'realism' and 'consistency', which is why I prefer oMage - my ideal form of reality is a purely fluid, mind-based one. Anyway here's Film Critic Hulk taking down the idea of 'plot holes' and maybe ending this derail: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/10/30/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs.-plot-holes-and-movie-logic
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Dec 2, 2016 05:07
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Wow, never seen this blog before, and yet I think I've said everything he's said at least once or twice. I'm an immediate fan.
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Dec 2, 2016 05:15
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Count Chocula posted:I think part of it is that nerd media makes everything that's metaphor in other literature literal, This is utterly not true. Like there are a thousand critiques of sci fi and fantasy poo poo you can make, but everything from Evangelion to A Scanner Darkley to Dune to loving Star Trek deal in metaphor. Clumsy and obvious metaphor, but that is what normal schlock media falls to if it bothers to rise to those contemptible heights
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Dec 2, 2016 05:18
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theironjef posted:Wow, never seen this blog before, and yet I think I've said everything he's said at least once or twice. I'm an immediate fan. Well, drat, I'll have to start updating again.
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Dec 2, 2016 05:41
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Evil Mastermind posted:Haven't recent editions of Shadowrun reduced netrunning to a single roll or two to break into a system? I thought that happened a while back. To some degree, yes, to other degrees, no. It's still very much a thing for the decker to say "well, I need to do X on the matrix" and for that to be 40 minutes of him rolling dice while the other players do nothing, because he has to jump grids, break into a host, sneak around, find a file, examine it for a data bomb, remove the bomb, crack it, copy it, and maybe do several rounds of combat in the process. And that's assuming he doesn't run into any problems (which he might), he never has to jack out and try again (which he probably will), and he doesn't dick around stealing paydata and causing trouble purely out of spite (which he absolutely will). Obviously the GM can cut back to other PCs along the way, but all of the above poo poo occurs over the course of like 10 seconds real time, and can probably be done at 3AM from a parked van, if not from the decker's bathroom. Shadowrun has done a few things to mitigate this; for instance, hacking is easier if you have physical proximity (so that it makes sense to drag the decker into combat), and there are some limited ways for non-deckers to assist in the matrix. But it's definitely still a problem. Personally, I think a major step towards a fix would be to require physical proximity; you can communicate across the globe, of course, but <insert technobabble here> so obviously the only way to crack into a system and do illegal stuff now is to be within bluetooth range of the target. Of course, that only upgrades him from the Netrunner Problem to the normal Rogue Problem, but it's a start.
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Dec 2, 2016 06:14
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Evil Mastermind posted:The only game I've ever seen that handles the decker/everyone else problem well is, believe it or not, Torg. They establish that time in the GodNet operates at more or less the same speed as the real world, so a hacker moving from one node to another or attacking some ICE is just "an action", then you go and see what everyone else is doing. The explanation was that it was so people could use the GodNet for long periods without having to worry about them going nuts due to the extreme time dilation. The other thing is that most of your skills could also be used in GodNet as well, since it was that alternate dimension. Like, if you fought with entities and security programs in GodNet, you used your combat skills, with programs giving you a bonus to those . The only "net" skills was for interacting with specifically GodNet environments, such as searching and accessing nodes. I believe other players could even piggyback and provide support for net runs. Evil Mastermind posted:Haven't recent editions of Shadowrun reduced netrunning to a single roll or two to break into a system? I thought that happened a while back. In fourth edition SR, they introduced the concept of the "Internet Of Things", where most objects, everything from consumer electronics to cars and industrial equipment, had a Device rating, was wireless, and could be hacked. You didn't have to have the GM come up with elaborate network topology for one player anymore, if they needed to access a door, they could simply hack the door instead of having to run through the corporate extranet, to their intranet, to the building's net to pop the door lock. You could still do the elaborate topologies for more dedicated data runs, but spoofing a wireless connection, hacking a Device, etc. within Bluetooth range could also allow them to get all that paydata. I've heard people complain that it was super-easy to hack cars in SR4, that a lot of jobs were solved by hacking a Ford Americar and driving it into a target.
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Dec 2, 2016 07:02
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The problem with combat hacking in recent SR editions in my experience is it either: 1) Takes too much time for less effect than just shooting the guy if you have to spend a turn or two just to shut down a gun they have... And then they just pull out a secondary weapon. 2) Is used to trash gear the PCs spent huge amounts of resources on and can't get back, leaving them in an advancement hole. Mind you, I've used and seen used strategic scale hacking to great effect. Although that did result in the final part of my SR campaign run in Strike ending in the PCs doing a ritual spell to locate the McGuffin the villains needed about three sessions early and then just hitting the warehouse it was sitting in with remote controlled vehicles, drones with bombs, a bound spirit, and finally an orbital weapon they convinced the NSA to fire at it (long story). Queue me just telling them to narrate the result since I had no way I could think of out of it and the final plot ending halfway through the first session of it with no actual fights.
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Dec 2, 2016 07:18
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unseenlibrarian posted:I am reminded of Anima: Beyond Fantasy, where every single power system works differently; ki is nothing like psychics is nothing like magic is nothing like summoning with entirely different ways of building and employing powers for each version. I can only imagine if they'd ever done a sourcebook for the secret supertech rulers of reality where you had to deal with hackers. Did it?  Anima has sort of become my own personal Necronomicon. I've tried, oh, three or four times, including once for an earlier F&F, to make sense of it, and it has defeated me every time.
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Dec 2, 2016 07:51
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Young Freud posted:In fourth edition SR, they introduced the concept of the "Internet Of Things", where most objects, everything from consumer electronics to cars and industrial equipment, had a Device rating, was wireless, and could be hacked. You didn't have to have the GM come up with elaborate network topology for one player anymore, if they needed to access a door, they could simply hack the door instead of having to run through the corporate extranet, to their intranet, to the building's net to pop the door lock. You could still do the elaborate topologies for more dedicated data runs, but spoofing a wireless connection, hacking a Device, etc. within Bluetooth range could also allow them to get all that paydata. I've heard people complain that it was super-easy to hack cars in SR4, that a lot of jobs were solved by hacking a Ford Americar and driving it into a target.  https://twitter.com/internetofshit/status/803593204088049664
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Dec 2, 2016 09:11
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While it feels a little unfair, I think part of the Rogue/Decker Problem is that 90% of games are enamored with blow-by-blow action. This is already kind of bullshit just in any given scenario, but when you start overlapping tasks that have different kinds of pacing for one reason or another, it inevitably becomes a train wreck.
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Dec 2, 2016 09:45
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ZeeToo posted:Did it? Haha, no, I'm just kidding. It had 3 different competing factions of supertech secret rulers of reality.
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Dec 2, 2016 10:55
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I dunno, I think for every nerd you have who points out plot holes based on realism in a movie not trying for that, you have another nerd who insists that a weak plot doesn't matter if a movie is "fun and cool", and a third who's smugly insisting that everyone just didn't get the totally deep metaphor that was going on. Meanwhile, I'm usually in the corner, futilely mumbling about how media isn't a zero sum game, and that you can have a tight plot, interesting ideas, and cool stuff all happen in the same film.
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Dec 2, 2016 14:10
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Siivola posted:And then they got rid of that because it's obviously ~not realistic~ to connect your kitchen utensils or whatever the gently caress to the wi-fi. I'm surprised you pulled that and not the pre-election DDOS attack that used a backdoor into IoT devices like smart fridges and security cameras to turn them into a massive botnet. And speaking of wifi security cameras, the way SR4 handled it made it easier to run into such things dealing with criminal groups, since the off-the-shelf solution would be wireless security devices. It might even be up to the middle-tier in Net/Matrix/Grid security because running wired connections is a pain and just placing wireless security and getting good encryption and monitor the drat things for potential intrusion is easier than doing that and networking it all together. It just tells me that there was a lack of imagination on the line developers and gamers who replaced SR4's Adam Jury and Rob Boyle (who went to Posthuman Studios and did Eclipse Phase, which has an almost similar ruleset and philosophy for their internet stuff).
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Dec 2, 2016 15:45
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Halloween Jack posted:You don't say. The big changes that I can recall off the top of my head is the Underchasm and Mulhorand. The Underchasm was a gigantic hole leading down into the Underdark which was supposed to provide an impetus for why there were more free drow on the surface. Of course this demystified the Underdark so in the leadup fiction to 5e one of the characters looks outside, sees that the underchasm has been fixed by some unknown deity, and is filled with a sense that "this is right and just." Mulhorand is a racist caricature of ancient Egyptian culture because it was founded by people abducted from Ancient Egypt, the 4e devs were basically "Holy poo poo this is impossibly racist" and dropped a continent on it. The 5e devs made the continent go away and oh look there's all these people who have been living in hiding and mantaining the ancient ways ready to move back in to not-egypt. They also had a dragonborn nation teleport in and remove racist not-aztec-amazon from the map which was quietly undone with no real fanfare. Green Intern posted:And even when Cinema Sins is pointing out plot holes, a lot of that time the guy is just wrong and wasn't paying attention to the plot of the movie or the character arcs. He reviewed i-Robot earlier this week and kept complaining about "plot holes" that were actually quite explicitly explained, while also missing the hilariously blatant Converse product placement, the comments tore him apart. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 17:01
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Mulhorand, Unther, and I think Chessenta were artifacts of 1st Edition Forgotten Realms, which were literally realms that Earth had forgotten how to get to (Except for Elminster's bestest drinking buddy Ed Greenwood), hence the abducted ancient cultures. I guess that was more acceptable in the late '80's. The worst part is that southern Faerun got blown the gently caress up because -nobody was doing anything with it!- So they decided to turn the area upside down and put some interesting and more dynamic stuff there, which 5th Edition reversed for the purpose of...more faffing about the Sword Coast, got it.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:19
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Kavak posted:The worst part is that southern Faerun got blown the gently caress up because -nobody was doing anything with it!- So they decided to turn the area upside down and put some interesting and more dynamic stuff there, which 5th Edition reversed for the purpose of...more faffing about the Sword Coast, got it. which painfully reminds me of how pre nu52 that editors and writers of DC looked at everything created since the 80s, the readers who grew up with Wally, Kyle/Jon/etc, and non-Kryptonian Supergirl, and killed them to replace them with their Silver Age versions that THEY grew up with, gently caress the current fans.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:24
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It's kinda sad that GW's not-Egypt was noticably less racist than Forgotten Realm's and GW was the company that had "pygmy" as a minis line.Robindaybird posted:which painfully reminds me of how pre nu52 that editors and writers of DC looked at everything created since the 80s, the readers who grew up with Wally, Kyle/Jon/etc, and non-Kryptonian Supergirl, and killed them to replace them with their Silver Age versions that THEY grew up with, gently caress the current fans.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:28
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gourdcaptain posted:The problem with combat hacking in recent SR editions in my experience is it either: ZeeToo posted:Anima has sort of become my own personal Necronomicon. I've tried, oh, three or four times, including once for an earlier F&F, to make sense of it, and it has defeated me every time. I can do it. I can gently caress anything. Desiden posted:I dunno, I think for every nerd you have who points out plot holes based on realism in a movie not trying for that, you have another nerd who insists that a weak plot doesn't matter if a movie is "fun and cool", and a third who's smugly insisting that everyone just didn't get the totally deep metaphor that was going on. What actually happens is that people form strong opinions quickly and for dumb reasons, and will then expend way to much effort to either pick apart a thing they didn't like, or shout down anyone who actually tries to critique it for "hating fun" or whatever. The truth is that there is a difference between good things and bad things, and each artwork is made up of many things. Kavak posted:The worst part is that southern Faerun got blown the gently caress up because -nobody was doing anything with it!- So they decided to turn the area upside down and put some interesting and more dynamic stuff there, which 5th Edition reversed for the purpose of...more faffing about the Sword Coast, got it. I'm not a FR guy, and it's weird to me that like 90% of everything ever published for FR focuses on this one northwestern coastal region.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:32
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Kavak posted:The worst part is that southern Faerun got blown the gently caress up because -nobody was doing anything with it!- So they decided to turn the area upside down and put some interesting and more dynamic stuff there, which 5th Edition reversed for the purpose of...more faffing about the Sword Coast, got it. It's particularly irritating because they made FR the de-facto setting compared to 3.5 which was Grayhawk and no one is super invested in what happens in Grayhawk. or 4e where the default setting was a blank map with HIC SUNT DRACONES scrawled on it in adventurer blood. But there's a lot of FR fans who are heavily invested in barely anything changing at all and it's hilarious that the latest monster manual has a section in it that basically says "If you want to do something different by all means. In fact please do something different. This is a goddamn game."
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Dec 2, 2016 17:34
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Ah, Maztica. Complete with Helmite conquistadors. Ah, Kara-Tur. Complete with boxed set and adventure series starring invading not-Mongols. I used to like the Realms, because it was absurd. I swear, there were sedimentary layers of ancient magic and garbage, weird lore and things buried. There was a sense of fantastic history there. That other poo poo they added later, imported Egyptians and an eighth grader's conception of Cortez? That wasn't history, that was stasis. And gently caress, if you really want pastiches of real world cultures, kept in temporal Tupperware for your friends to run roughshod over? The BD&D Hollow World content did it far better.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:36
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Robindaybird posted:which painfully reminds me of how pre nu52 that editors and writers of DC looked at everything created since the 80s, the readers who grew up with Wally, Kyle/Jon/etc, and non-Kryptonian Supergirl, and killed them to replace them with their Silver Age versions that THEY grew up with, gently caress the current fans.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:37
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Terrible Opinions posted:It's kinda sad that GW's not-Egypt was noticably less racist than Forgotten Realm's and GW was the company that had "pygmy" as a minis line. The Tomb Kings are the best, and one of the genuinely original things in the Old World. A bunch of Undead who are absolutely not bad guys and at worst, want you to get off their lawns and stop trying to steal their treasure? Yes.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:40
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The Classes in Anima: Beyond Fantasy aren't even all that...classy. It's more like "You pick a class, and then that determines how much you spend for things in the point buy system everything is -actually- built on." and maybe get some bonuses related to the name of your class. It's basically someone's Rolemaster house rules. (An example: There's a Paladin class and a "Dark Paladin" class and the main difference is that paladins can buy the summoner skill to banish stuff cheaply and get a bonus to it, and Dark paladins get the ability to summon and control things for a lower cost instead.) unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 17:44
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unseenlibrarian posted:The Classes in Anima: Beyond Fantasy aren't even all that...classy. It's more like "You pick a class, and then that determines how much you spend for things in the point buy system everything is -actually- built on." and maybe get some bonuses related to the name of your class. Oh god. Only War had that kind of system in 40kRP and it was so bad.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:46
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't know why Mulhorand was racist, but I never read deeply on it. I played a cleric from there once. "Oh, this place is obviously Not Ancient Greece. And right next to it is a country of people who got magicked from ancient Egypt and still worship Osiris. Sure." Yeah, I'd like to see some examples, because it doesn't sound that bad (He says, putting some salt on those words for later) The Amnian conquistadors, though? Holy poo poo, I hope they got slaughtered while they were in whatever otherworld Maztica went to.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:51
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Bieeardo posted:Ah, Maztica. Complete with Helmite conquistadors. Particularly since the original D&D had poo poo like aliens and cyborgs in it cause the governing creed was "is it fun? Sure, why not." It's really obvious with the Video Games, NWN takes place exclusively in the sword coast, but the expansions move from the sword coast into this giant desert full of ancient ruins and the plane of shadow, or deep into the underdark and then the nine hells. NWN2 is mostly sword coast stuff but the expansions move you to Rashemen and Thay (In the north-EAST, holy poo poo!) and Chult. But then Neverwinter was based almost exclusively in and around Neverwinter, the next FR Book was "Here's what you do in Neverwinter only play in neveriwnter never leave neverwinter" and 5e is drat near married to the sword coast.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:52
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unseenlibrarian posted:Honestly going full Tron seems like the best way to do Cyberspace stuff. gently caress assembling computers and special programs, you're in VR, everything has weird glowing lines and you just roll with the regular stats. I love the idea of a Muscle Hacker who creates backdoors through virtual headbutts. megane posted:To some degree, yes, to other degrees, no. It's still very much a thing for the decker to say "well, I need to do X on the matrix" and for that to be 40 minutes of him rolling dice while the other players do nothing, because he has to jump grids, break into a host, sneak around, find a file, examine it for a data bomb, remove the bomb, crack it, copy it, and maybe do several rounds of combat in the process. And that's assuming he doesn't run into any problems (which he might), he never has to jack out and try again (which he probably will), and he doesn't dick around stealing paydata and causing trouble purely out of spite (which he absolutely will). Obviously the GM can cut back to other PCs along the way, but all of the above poo poo occurs over the course of like 10 seconds real time, and can probably be done at 3AM from a parked van, if not from the decker's bathroom. I'd say the main issue is that Shadowrun tries to have this absurdly intrigate hacking system that is at least as deep and complex as combat, yet forgot hat it's not Hacker: The Hackening, but a game where the majority of the party will usually consists of guys with guns and katanas. Desiden posted:I dunno, I think for every nerd you have who points out plot holes based on realism in a movie not trying for that, you have another nerd who insists that a weak plot doesn't matter if a movie is "fun and cool", and a third who's smugly insisting that everyone just didn't get the totally deep metaphor that was going on. I believe the latter is the worst by far. Nothing quite ruins discussions like Mr. 2deep4you. Robindaybird posted:which painfully reminds me of how pre nu52 that editors and writers of DC looked at everything created since the 80s, the readers who grew up with Wally, Kyle/Jon/etc, and non-Kryptonian Supergirl, and killed them to replace them with their Silver Age versions that THEY grew up with, gently caress the current fans. And then they get replaced by a new batch of geeks-turned-editors and the cycle continues. (I also loved how their reaction to the popularity of the Teen Titans cartoon for their reboot was "The original Titans have broken up ages ago. Or maybe they never formed a team to begin with. We're not quite sure at the moment.") Doresh fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 17:52
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Night10194 posted:Oh god. Only War had that kind of system in 40kRP and it was so bad. Well, at least they still ALLOWED choice, but the "suggested advancement" list was basically the simplest way to progress in a basic class.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:53
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Night10194 posted:The Tomb Kings are the best, and one of the genuinely original things in the Old World. A bunch of Undead who are absolutely not bad guys and at worst, want you to get off their lawns and stop trying to steal their treasure? Yes.
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Dec 2, 2016 17:53
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