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Covok posted:Which is? Eyes Wide Shut. I don't know about that movie in particular, but Kubrick was apparently downright abusive to many of his actors and actresses.
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Apr 18, 2017 17:56
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Evil Mastermind posted:He's also the guy who hated Force Awakens because he said Rey was a "Mary Sue". Okay, let me rant about that for a moment. Seriously, I never get this argument. She has just as much development with her abilities as Luke gets in ANH. Do people forget how he went from moisture farmer to swinging across chasms and being an expert, military pilot? Yes, they hinted that he was trying to get into the Academy during the dinner scene so the audience knew he was a pilot, but it was also an off-hand line you could miss. Nothing about him being an acrobat, knowing how to use a turret on a YT-1300 Light Cruiser. We get a little scene with him training with Obi-wan and that's how we know he can pull off the shot at the end. Let's look at the TFA. What does Rey do that's insane? She knows how to use lightsaber, does a lot of acrobatic poo poo, can maintence a ship, and uses the force. Let's break that down
Why then do people say she's a Mary Sue then? Because she's a woman. It's soft sexism.
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Apr 18, 2017 17:57
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My Max Landis experience: I watched the new Dirk Gently thing and it was loving rubbish that uses the whole "holistic" thing as an excuse to string contrived plot developments and seen-a-thousand-times scenes together and arrived at a happy ending apparently entirely by accident, whereupon they did a 180 on it because I guess focus test say shows need a cliffhanger. I'm baffled by how good a reception it's getting. It had some good scenes and interesting characters, that's the worst thing about it. It could have been pretty great.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:20
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Ambi posted:Hey guys, how do I convince my friends that Dogs in the Vineyard is cool and good, actually? To add to what others have said, you can tell your players that Vincent Baker is a recovering ex-Mormon himself, and wrote DitV to be just about the farthest thing from Mormon propaganda: it has deep compassion and sadness for the people who lived under old Mormonism or any other cult or theocracy, but none at all for the structure that warps their behavior in horrible, unforgivable ways. As for their being unable to understand how deeply religious people could assign someone, even an unlikely someone, absolute authority based on faith, uh... Yeah, they're just going to have to do some reading. That's kind of how religions work. And yes, the Dogs do tend to be "violent extremists," but they're also the norm for that culture. You're playing people with the best intentions, but given totally inappropriate tools and complete authority to use those tools as much as you want, as long as you're strong enough to endure the consequences.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:24
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Covok posted:
You're completely right on all of your points. It is just average everyday sexism that makes people think that way. Those same people were angry that the second main character was black and the sub-protagonist was Latinx.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:35
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Plutonis posted:Ah a fellow Woody Allen and Roman Polanski fan huh I was guessing Citizen Kane
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Apr 18, 2017 18:49
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Ambi posted:Hey guys, how do I convince my friends that Dogs in the Vineyard is cool and good, actually? Alright, let me start this off by saying I think your friends are likely great people and I mean them no ill-will. That said, it sounds like a lot of this has to do with their own opinions and beliefs and more than a bit of ignorance on their part. First off, religions have often given teens or young adults absolute authority and people have followed it on faith alone. Priests of any age in medieval society would hold a lot of sway due to their connection to divine. Nuns were considered one of the ways woman could gain power in medieval society since, regardless of age, nuns were feared by kings for their connection to the divine. There are religions were little girls are the embodiment of gods and that just brings up all the government systems (not just theocratic ones) that have given absolute power to children, which in theocratic ones is done on faith alone. I'm sorry, but your friends sound pretty unaware of the majority of human culture and history. Also, it isn't just on faith: it's also on the societal, cultural and political norms that give them that power and they got a gun. Secondly, it sounds like they may be somewhat anti-religious. Like, I'm not saying that because their atheists, but to immediately dismiss this as propaganda suggests a weariness of anything religion based. I say the above mostly because of my next point: the game is actually meant to point out the flaws in such as society. The creator is from an area where local culture kind of did put him in similar shoes to the civilians you interact with in Dogs in the Vineyard and rejected that community. This game was meant as a reflection on their flaws. I imagine a cursory glance wouldn't reveal that so perhaps my prior assertion was a bit unfair. Now then, those three points may not actually be the best way to word things (and point two is definitely something not to say) so try this: "The game isn't Mormon propaganda, the game is an exploration of a society where religious figures are given absolute authority, not an uncommon occurrence in human history, and the hardship, conflicts, and hypocrisy these situations introduce. You could call them 'Violent Extremists' and you'd be right, from a certain point of view, but they are as normal as the police are to these towns. The game is about exploring the issues such a consolidation of religious, political, and martial power brings to a society." Though, to be honest and this is why I brought up point two, they may not be the best group to play the game with. Considering their aversion and the likely reasons for it, it would seem unlikely they would interact with the premise in good faith, if that isn't offensive to say. Covok fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 18:50
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SirPhoebos posted:I was guessing Citizen Kane i have fairly boring taste in cinema but not that boring
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Apr 18, 2017 18:52
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Kestral posted:...
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Apr 18, 2017 19:01
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Man, regretting doing that Alternate Morality system for FFG Star Wars. Someone was asking for it on the official forums so I drafted up a barebones one that'd reward balance, which is what he was asking for. Still getting messages from people about how "that's not how the force works" and etc, etc. Not that they're without merit on some points (they were right it was a mechanically unbalanced system, ironically), but the daily essays on how the force works were a "fun" consolation price.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:01
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Covok posted:Man, regretting doing that Alternate Morality system for FFG Star Wars. Someone was asking for it on the official forums so I drafted up a barebones one that'd reward balance, which is what he was asking for. Still getting messages from people about how "that's not how the force works" and etc, etc. Not that they're without merit on some points (they were right it was a mechanically unbalanced system, ironically), but the daily essays on how the force works were a "fun" consolation price. Just link the new TLJ trailer to them. LUKE SAYS THE JEDI NEED TO END. Watch them sputter in a nerd frenzy.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:02
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Covok posted:Man, regretting doing that Alternate Morality system for FFG Star Wars. Someone was asking for it on the official forums so I drafted up a barebones one that'd reward balance, which is what he was asking for. Still getting messages from people about how "that's not how the force works" and etc, etc. Not that they're without merit on some points (they were right it was a mechanically unbalanced system, ironically), but the daily essays on how the force works were a "fun" consolation price. The Force is a malevolent entity that ruins lives, destroy the Force.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:09
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Kwyndig posted:The Force is a malevolent entity that ruins lives, destroy the Force. Secret Kreia spotted.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:11
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Covok posted:Man, regretting doing that Alternate Morality system for FFG Star Wars. Someone was asking for it on the official forums so I drafted up a barebones one that'd reward balance, which is what he was asking for. Still getting messages from people about how "that's not how the force works" and etc, etc. Not that they're without merit on some points (they were right it was a mechanically unbalanced system, ironically), but the daily essays on how the force works were a "fun" consolation price. No good deed goes unpunished.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:22
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"Mary Sue" has become a reductive term more often than not, so I've stopped using it. There are much better ways to describe problematic characters in genre fiction. In the end, Landis handwringing about a female character having basic heroic competence in a franchise that gave us characters like Kir Kanos and Galen Marek says a lot more about Landis than it does about Rey.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:25
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would Torchbearer run well with 2 PCs? Got a small gaming group and want to play it. edit: doublepost sorry Impermanent fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 19:25
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All Star Wars characters are badly written and are made from a rough template stolen straight up from Campbell. This shocks you!
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Apr 18, 2017 19:26
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Impermanent posted:would Torchbearer run well with 2 PCs? Got a small gaming group and want to play it. Try Scarlet Heroes instead. Same kind of play, designed for solo or very small groups.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:29
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Arivia posted:Just link the new TLJ trailer to them. LUKE SAYS THE JEDI NEED TO END. Watch them sputter in a nerd frenzy. First off, you think people arguing how the Force works weren't watching the The Last Jedi panel at Star Wars 40th celebration lifestreamed on Youtube so they could see the trailer the moment it dropped? (Meant this as a joke, not trying to be an rear end) Secondly, I don't even disagree with them. Like, Star Wars has the most black-and-white heroes and villains. The Jedi in the prequels were corrupted by arrogance, but that in itself isn't a complete rejection of "Light Side=Good, Dark Side=Bad" considering it was followed up by the Dark Side enslaving the entire galaxy under oppressive rule and outright slavery of certain non-humans. That'd be like saying a particular government model is a bit inefficient so you elect in a dictator to rule with an iron fist (topical!). The line "Watch as Bioware (sic) struggles to add a moral grey area to a series with the most obvious heroes and villains" comes to mind. Thirdly, I have chatted with fans about it and the response is mixed. Nucanon has been adding in more and more force traditions and there was always hints in Legends that things may not be so cut-and-dry. However, if it's all EU, it isn't too important. With Legends, a lot of contradictory stuff got in because the oversight was hyper loose. With NuCanon, there is tight oversight and I can even see inklings of them gearing up for an end to the Jedi in their constant shoutouts and cameos to new force traditions, but that's all still EU. The fact, however, that Sith are confirmed 100% dead at the end of RotJ in Nucanon (Kylo and Snoke are confirmed something new) means they are, unlike Legends, willing to end the long line of Jedi/Sith dominating all of the EU. It feels like they are willing to gear up to something new coming out of the Sequel Trilogy and, to be frank, I kind of hope it does for novelty sake. But, it's still a toss-up. The argument it was just trailer-bait is currently impossible to refute and there is validty to the argument that "Jedi, Sith, Mandalorians, Republic, Empire" are hallmarks of the franchise and losing them will make things weird. Though, to the later point, the Sith are gone so that is one sacred cow down and Mandalorians have been significantly altered to much less importance than they were in Legends. Kwyndig posted:The Force is a malevolent entity that ruins lives, destroy the Force. Personally, that is still my least favorite interpretation in the Force. After all, removing the Force would literally kill Star Wars' x-factor. LongDarkNight posted:No good deed goes unpunished. I mean, the system was (like I said some of them had valid points) mechanically unbalanced. Taking "Strain" (basically, mental damage) and Conflict (what moves you along the morality track) as the only cost to using a Dark Side point during a Force check is arguably not enough as it is easy to recover Strain and greatly increase the power of Force Users (it normally also costs a Destiny Point, see Fate point). Still haven't figured a good solution to the "takes from both sides" solution considering the systems restraints. There is good argument to just let those Force Users not have morality (which is how it was before the big Force User supplement, when there were just two universal trees you could take) as the simplest solution. Since I keep mentioning it, this was the system: quote:Gray Morality (Bullet-point summary): Used the Je'daii Order (precursors of the Jedi and Sith in Legends) and the Nightsisers of Dathomir (as described in the Book of Sith) as inspiration for it. Meant it more as an alternate system for particular force traditions, not to replace it for Jedi and Sith. Felt it should be done with the Jedi/Sith/Black&White Force Users using RAW morality and the "Gray"/Balance Force Users using the above system. Of course, as they pointed out, that might lead to balance issues. My justification narratively was that trust in ones abilities is important for the force to work as doubt greatly weakens ones abilities. This is why the Sorcerers of Tund and Paladins of Weik need to do elaborate hand gestures and incantations: that's how they think the force works so that's how it does. So, this system kind of argues (just as the Jedi/Sith do and the Je'daii Order and Nightsisters so) that being in what you think is the best state matters most. If you're like the Je'daii and Nightsisters, you're strongest in balance and, if you're like the Jedi/Sith, you're strong at the extremes. Edit: I can feel the neckbeard spontaneously growing on my face. Covok fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 19:30
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The only notable thing about Max Landis is that he is the son of John Landis. He made an alright movie once that some people like a lot, I'm not one of them, and has been gradually losing whatever he gained from being his father's son over the last couple of years. I imagine he's also a terrible writer to work with because whenever he talks about his scripts, he seems to be outraged that anyone would think of altering them or come up with a better idea. His script for the last Fantastic Four movie was passed early on in the process and that's very telling because I'm pretty sure they would have taken anything judging by the final product. He also doesn't understand what being a screenwriter entails and thinks he should get the same treatment a director gets due to growing up in his father's shadow. Of course he thinks Rey is a Mary Sue, he just wants to get the Internet outrage machine talking about him because if no one talks about him, his career is pretty much over outside of being a mediocre screenwriter. He tried to get positive press going on Red Letter Media and he got nothing.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:01
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He wrote a pretty neat superman story with the joker once and I liked those drunk comic videos he did before the superman one
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Apr 18, 2017 20:04
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Kestral posted:As for their being unable to understand how deeply religious people could assign someone, even an unlikely someone, absolute authority based on faith, uh... Yeah, they're just going to have to do some reading. That's kind of how religions work. And yes, the Dogs do tend to be "violent extremists," but they're also the norm for that culture. You're playing people with the best intentions, but given totally inappropriate tools and complete authority to use those tools as much as you want, as long as you're strong enough to endure the consequences. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the assumptions of the Dogs in the Vinyard setting that the Dogs are 100% correct in their actions? I don't mean culturally, but objectively. Whatever consensus the PCs come to is the will of God. I've never played nor read the game, but that's what my takeaway was from reading about the game back when it was the new hotness. I recall in an online discussion about the game one person bemused himself with the idea that he could use the system to trick his players into essentially playing the role of Pharisees, arranging for the execution of the messiah as a heretic, and he was shouted down because there's no such thing possible with Dogs - if the PCs say that the messiah is a fraud, then that means (s)he's a fraud.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:17
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I think it's more that the Dogs are supposed to act with absolute conviction, because their heartfelt belief is that God would never allow them to do things that were not according to his will. It's an RP thing, not a in-universe law.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:21
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Is Strike! still SA's darling or has it gone the way of 13th Age? If the later, how so?fool_of_sound posted:I think it's more that the Dogs are supposed to act with absolute conviction, because their heartfelt belief is that God would never allow them to do things that were not according to his will. It's an RP thing, not a in-universe law. Yeah, I think that's more on point. It's like how the most dangerous thing about a religious government is the concept of the infallibility of leadership.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:23
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Covok posted:Is Strike! still SA's darling or has it gone the way of 13th Age? If the later, how so? I mean people still play and talk about both so this seems like a weird question.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:26
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Falstaff posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the assumptions of the Dogs in the Vinyard setting that the Dogs are 100% correct in their actions? I don't mean culturally, but objectively. Whatever consensus the PCs come to is the will of God. Not at all and not all NPCs are believers. Most troublesome, some of them run federal prisons. Dogs are correct only in that the not-Mormons happen to run their ecclesiastical courts in a Judge Dredd fashion.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:26
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Kai Tave posted:I mean people still play and talk about both so this seems like a weird question. 13th Age kind of went from the "everything is perfect, successor to 4e's legacy" to "It's an okay game with flaws and I have trouble working myself up to play it" when it comes to general mood. Curious if Strike! is still the former.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:30
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Speaking of Dogs, any rpgs to toy with conflict resolution (as opposed to task resolution) in an interesting manner in the past few years, or did this kind of stuff die along with the forge?
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Apr 18, 2017 20:33
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Covok posted:13th Age kind of went from the "everything is perfect, successor to 4e's legacy" to "It's an okay game with flaws and I have trouble working myself up to play it" when it comes to general mood. Curious if Strike! is still the former. People saying that 13th Age was a "4E successor" were frankly pretty off-base as it isn't even a little bit similar to 4E imo so if anybody approached it thinking "well I liked 4E, clearly I'll enjoy this" and got unenthused for it that could very well be a reason why. I don't really read the 13th Age thread so maybe it's full of people suffering from elfgame malaise but I remember hearing that it had some recent and/or upcoming releases that fans of the game seemed pretty excited about like a Glorantha 13th Age thing.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:35
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The most recent page in the Strike thread had a handful of people posting critiques of the system while saying the ultimately enjoyed their time with it and intend on playing more, so if you found the initial reception overwhelming it definitely isn't that now.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:39
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Covok posted:13th Age kind of went from the "everything is perfect, successor to 4e's legacy" to "It's an okay game with flaws and I have trouble working myself up to play it" when it comes to general mood. Curious if Strike! is still the former. It's still pretty good, especially if you are willing to pick out the alternate rules and systems that you like. I only have a couple of major complaints: I have a hard time getting players to give each other action points, for instance. On the whole though, it has some flaws, but they're mostly minor option imbalances and shortcomings, not core system issues.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:40
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When is that gonna come out?
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Apr 18, 2017 20:39
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Ominous Jazz posted:When is that gonna come out? Oh you meant the Glorantha 13th Age thing, right?
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Apr 18, 2017 20:44
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fool_of_sound posted:It's still pretty good, especially if you are willing to pick out the alternate rules and systems that you like. I only have a couple of major complaints: I have a hard time getting players to give each other action points, for instance. On the whole though, it has some flaws, but they're mostly minor option imbalances and shortcomings, not core system issues. It's a wonderful system but it could get some fixes, yes, but I think Jimbo and Count are working on those, I mean I even got linked some errata before.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:44
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I used Strike for our last Halloween game and we used chocolates for action points. It was a surprisingly effective incentive both to gain them and to use them, cause that's when you were allowed to eat any.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:47
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It's not the perfect tactical grid TRPG with simpler rules than 4E but it's the drat near best you can get to.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:47
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I don't really feel like Strike! scratches the 4E itch for me in all the ways I'd like it scratched but I would absolutely consider it to be a vastly superior "pretty quick-playing game with grid combat rules" to Savage Worlds which I played a shitload of back with my last tabletop gaming group and which I came to find incredibly unsatisfying both due to characters all feeling quite samey and the actual tactical combat portion of things being fairly shallow as well.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:50
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Plutonis posted:It's not the perfect tactical grid TRPG with simpler rules than 4E but it's the drat near best you can get to. I think the soft, "everything is optional and player / GM-defined" out-of-combat stuff in Strike is merely functional at best, but the low-overhead tactical combat is what I came for and that part is great.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:04
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Alien Rope Burn posted:"Mary Sue" has become a reductive term more often than not, so I've stopped using it. There are much better ways to describe problematic characters in genre fiction.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:05
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Yeah, I want a game that handles both combat and not combat with the same level of depth, so Strike actually kind of pisses me off.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:06
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