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Andrast posted:D&D is a strongly focused game spectralent posted:Famously gameplay-agnostic game, D&D.
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Jan 25, 2019 17:04
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I mean, D&D is actually a famously gameplay-agnostic game. What it isn't is a gameplay-agnostic game.
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Jan 25, 2019 18:32
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It's almost as if there was a years-long, industry-wide glut of companies basing their game on D&D rules and finding it to be a complete loving mess. (Unless they hacked it so much it was no longer compatible with anything else.)
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Jan 25, 2019 18:42
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Warthur posted:Tell me more, I was passingly interested in the SubGenius thing back in the day but didn't pay that much attention and felt that, what with all the radio shows and all, that it had hit the point where it actually took entirely too much time and effort to keep up with what was going with it than the joke actually deserved. (Once you put a certain amount of hours in the day for the sake of perpetuating a joke, sooner or later it stops feeling like a joke.) Well, that kind of thing was more community than comedy, for the most part, and it's a question of how much panning you want to do for comedy gold. Ultimately if I did it I'd be laser-focusing on the original Book of the Subgenius- there are enough throwaway references and asides to various sciences and entities and things that would be fun to expand upon for an RPG. My notes from a long, long time ago have subgeniuses seeking out forbidden sciences and strange spaces to fight the conspiracy while trying to avoid the meddling of the elder gods. The early rules I wrote had a lot of RNG shenanigans, with a Luck Plane value that fluctuates and can result in the sudden intervention of various Church deific figures (it looks like I had full tables for the "Bob" and "Anti-Bob", and had planned for others like Connie, JHVH-1, The Devil, etc.). I had too many pools to track, like Slack, Anti-Slack, SKOR, Squirt, various statuses of Hurt, Terror... I had rules for various "flavors" of Subgenius like Rewardian, Emergentile, Rogue... I had also planned for folks to be able to play weird stuff like Jesii or Old-Time Zombies or other weirdness. Huh, it looks like this was a lot more developed than I remembered.
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Jan 25, 2019 18:47
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Well, that kind of thing was more community than comedy, for the most part, and it's a question of how much panning you want to do for comedy gold. Seems like a sound idea, especially sticking to the original Book of the SubGenius (because the horse was at least still semi-alive at that point).
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Jan 25, 2019 19:38
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a computing pun posted:It's also not like SJG has much else to draw on in terms of a brand identity. Like, Wizards has twenty-sided dice, iconic D&D stuff like beholders, MtG imagery like the colour pie, their actual corporate Wizards logo and theme, all the grandfathered Hasbro iconography, etc etc.
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Jan 25, 2019 20:05
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Kai Tave posted:Going by this, mostly a bunch of 3.X d20 poo poo nobody cares about and the Infinity RPG for Mophidus. Wait... Infinity? The Modiphius 2d20 game? That's by Justin "Dissociated Mechanics" Alexander? What? What? Whaaaaaaaaaaat. For those who don't know: In the 2d20 engine you roll a small dice pool to try and get multiple successes. Excess successes you score above the difficulty can be scored in a communal pool called Momentum, which can be spent by you or other party members to get certain benefits, most notably purchasing extra dice for a roll. (There's also something called Heat which is like the inverse, a point of pools the DM gets to use to make bad stuff happen.) This is the game where the mechanics LITERALLY say that because Dave managed to jump over a chasm, Alice can get to be extra accurate with firing her gun five minutes later. But only once because then the Momentum is used up. And also, because of a fluke on a check to resist poison, an enemy might be able to use full auto on his attack next round (because one can generate Heat and the other uses it up). And this is the guy who railed against One-Handed Catch in football games or whatever? For real?
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Jan 25, 2019 20:55
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Sage Genesis posted:Wait... Infinity? The Modiphius 2d20 game? That's by Justin "Dissociated Mechanics" Alexander? What? What? Whaaaaaaaaaaat. Pretty sure the actual 2d20 part was Jay Little (X-Wing Miniatures, Blood Bowl Team Manager, WFRP 3e, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG).
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Jan 25, 2019 21:01
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People were so angry at 4e they came up with entire new theories of game design, that no one ever actually believed, just to have some smart-sounding reason to denounce it.
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Jan 25, 2019 21:02
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homullus posted:Pretty sure the actual 2d20 part was Jay Little (X-Wing Miniatures, Blood Bowl Team Manager, WFRP 3e, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG). Ok, sure. But Justin apparently wrote on the core book and he's also listed as line developer (I checked in my copy). How the balls do you hate dissociated mechanics and yet be line developer of a 2d20 game, which might as well be called Mechanic: the Dissociating? That is a rhetorical question, I know the answer. I guess I'm just taken aback by the chutzpah.
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Jan 25, 2019 21:06
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Halloween Jack posted:People were so angry at 4e they came up with entire new theories of game design, that no one ever actually believed, just to have some smart-sounding reason to denounce it. Some of those theories were actually quite good when taken as cautionary tales, just not in the way they meant.
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Jan 25, 2019 21:17
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Warthur posted:Cool, I'm the idea that people who have literally never tried the hobby at all are somehow going to be able to pick out which strongly focused game experience they actually want in a confused market with no clear point of entry or lead brand. If I've never played a video game, how would I know what to play? What if I play Mario and hate it and swear off videogames forever even though I would have loved StarCraft? Does that sound like a ridiculous worry to you? It does to me. But even if it is a worry... Suppose I'm your theoretical newbie who has never played an RPG before. If I think D&D is the only game in town and I hate it, I absolutely will give up on RPGs forever. If I think there are dozens of cool games and I hate the first one I play, I'm more likely to try another one before I give up. Your idea is that it's helpful for market growth to have a badly designed game dominating the plays of new entries to the market. This idea is bad and dumb. If people into Fury Road and Fallout got into RPGs by playing Apocalypse World and people into Spirited Away and Pokemon got into RPGs through Golden Sky Stories, I bet a lot fewer of them would bounce off the hobby than they would if they tried D&D5e first.
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Jan 25, 2019 21:19
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also I'm the guy who loves at least two editions of D&D and rankles a little when people talk about "D&D brain damage" and then go on to suggest that really, it would be better if nobody even tried to do what D&D stumbles in attempting so when i say "D&D's dominance, and in fact any one game's dominance, is bad" it's not like it's sour grapes over me not being more pandered to. i am being pandered to, more or less. admittedly i'm annoyed by 5th Edition but I'm not mad about tactical combat and dungeon crawling being the most prominent model of play. i'm just saying the struggle to be the only game in town is bad for everyone
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Jan 25, 2019 21:25
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Kwyndig posted:Some of those theories were actually quite good when taken as cautionary tales, just not in the way they meant. GNS theory can be interesting from the perspective of "when designing a game think about how you want the players to interact with it and how your rules encourage/discourage that" but unfortunately it was instead written as "this is the one true way to play, we're defining the GNS terms in a way that inherently demeans all other methods, overlap between the branches is impossible, and we're going to send proselytizers out to other forums to pick fights and then come back here to gloat about it." Instead of helping players/games find each other it tried to "fix" games and, more heinously, fix players. Pretty sure that was pre-4e, but the same sort of flaws as the anti-4e stuff.
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Jan 25, 2019 21:51
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GNS is half-right, they just backed S instead of the objectively correct choice of G 
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Jan 25, 2019 21:53
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FMguru posted:The whole "let's make fun of crazy people and their connect-all-the-dots conspiracy theories" vibe that underlies all of the Illuminatus stuff is a lot less funny here in the Trump/InfoWars/QAnon/mass shooting late 2010s than it was in back in the 70s and 80s. Secret Worlds kinda suffers from this too.
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Jan 25, 2019 22:09
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Halloween Jack posted:People were so angry at 4e they came up with entire new theories of game design, that no one ever actually believed, just to have some smart-sounding reason to denounce it. This is true. I've read a bunch of attempts to 'disprove' 4E but none of them seemed to match either what I read myself or saw in other games.
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Jan 25, 2019 23:19
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Dawgstar posted:This is true. I've read a bunch of attempts to 'disprove' 4E but none of them seemed to match either what I read myself or saw in other games.
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Jan 25, 2019 23:35
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Kai Tave posted:No doubt in my mind at all, I agree, but it's still kind of dumb to act like this is all hidden information. I can believe that D&D's network externalities are a big part of its enduring success as a game while also believing that other games aren't actually languishing in obscurity where only the most dedicated of elfgame savants can find them. People routinely listen to podcasts where nerd celebrities play games that aren't D&D. Twitter, Kickstarter, Facebook, Reddit, even someone who is merely casually online instead of Extremely Online can very easily wind up exposed to a plethora of games and discussion thereof. The tacit assumption here that a "big tent" game is only valuable for newbies I think seems a bit flawed; it's more than that. I'm reminded of Mors Rattus telling me off for being unwilling to settle or adapt to multiple games, and honestly he had a fair point, but it raises a general issue as well. Essentially D&D knows than in a hobby that's critically dependent on social groups, it's not so important to be anyone's first choice, as it is to be a choice for as many people as possible - because getting a game of something that's a choice for everyone is relatively easy, while getting to play your first choice requires either finding a group of people with the exact same first choice (which is unlikely because the vote is massively split) or imposing it on a group.
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Jan 25, 2019 23:44
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Some of them were just pure distilled brainworms. Like Frank Trollman arguing that the wording of "enemy" means you are your enemy, so in 4e you can only stab yourself to death and the game is unplayable. I remember another guy saying that when you jump, you have to jump the maximum possible distance determined by your check. I've never seen people do this with any other game. 4e broke men's souls. It was great.
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Jan 25, 2019 23:48
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FMguru posted:Also, those criticisms are usually equally applicable to earlier versions of D&D. Yeah. It was trippy watching people suddenly decide that only in the Year of our Lord when 4E was released that, like, hit points were a problem. Halloween Jack posted:Some of them were just pure distilled brainworms. Like Frank Trollman arguing that the wording of "enemy" means you are your enemy, so in 4e you can only stab yourself to death and the game is unplayable. I remember another guy saying that when you jump, you have to jump the maximum possible distance determined by your check. I've never seen people do this with any other game. hahahahahahaha what. Oh, Trollman. Dawgstar fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jan 25, 2019 |
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Jan 25, 2019 23:55
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah. It was trippy watching people suddenly decide that only in the Year of our Lord when 4E was released that, like, hit points were a problem. Don't forget the broke-brain concept that surges gave you too much healing. While they actually put a hard cap on the amount of healing you could receive - the first ever in D&D. I do think HP are a problem though, and I so far my clumsiest quick fix would be to allow fighters a chance to instant-kill if you roll a D% under the percentage of remaining HP you inflicted So if your fighter hits an ogre with 30 HP left for 10HP, then rolls a 23 on D%, the ogre is just dead now.
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Jan 26, 2019 00:14
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Kai Tave posted:At any rate, however you slice it, I'm hard-pressed to see how Justin Alexander is a step up from Cam Banks. Even if you don't give a poo poo about 4E or the edition warriors thereof, I'm not seeing how that's an improvement. As someone who is ostensibly a big fan of Alexander's blog, also a huge fan of Banks, and also as someone who doesn't give a poo poo about 4E or edition wars... I don't know that anyone's established it as a step up. I'm actually surprised Atlas was able to get Banks. I think it just goes to show how hard it is to get someone else to pay your paycheck in the RPG business.
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Jan 26, 2019 00:59
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Halloween Jack posted:Some of them were just pure distilled brainworms. Like Frank Trollman arguing that the wording of "enemy" means you are your enemy, so in 4e you can only stab yourself to death and the game is unplayable. I remember another guy saying that when you jump, you have to jump the maximum possible distance determined by your check. I've never seen people do this with any other game. TBF Frank and the Gaming Den were also fans of stretching the rules in 3rd Edition to the most ridiculous conclusions. Like 1st level Elf PCs rolling hundreds of Profession checks since childhood to get starting wealth of thousands of gold pieces.
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Jan 26, 2019 01:23
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hyphz posted:getting to play your first choice requires either finding a group of people with the exact same first choice (which is unlikely because the vote is massively split) or imposing it on a group. This assumes a number of things about how a group works which I think are a bit much. For one thing, people can try new things and decide if they like them or not, and people will enjoy games that other players are passionate about. Secondly, you don't have to play the same game every time - if you're really that split on what better options exist than D&D, you can try a few and decide if any of them are worth a longer game for everyone. Of course, you can also as a group develop a consensus about what kinds of games you all enjoy and over time branch out into other games that fit that style. All it takes is a group being more socially connected than just 'show up and play D&D once a month' - which, honestly, I've never seen the appeal of. No gaming is better than bad gaming, and gaming with friends is much more likely to be good gaming.
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Jan 26, 2019 01:46
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If your friend group that you game with digs their heels in like fussy eaters at the prospect of "hey guys I'd like to give this game that seems neat a try" then the problem isn't really with the game. I haven't enjoyed every RPG I've ever played in my life but I've still been willing to try them because someone else wanted to do so.
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Jan 26, 2019 01:50
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Joe Slowboat posted:This assumes a number of things about how a group works which I think are a bit much. For one thing, people can try new things and decide if they like them or not, and people will enjoy games that other players are passionate about. Secondly, you don't have to play the same game every time - if you're really that split on what better options exist than D&D, you can try a few and decide if any of them are worth a longer game for everyone.
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Jan 26, 2019 01:54
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Kai Tave posted:If your friend group that you game with digs their heels in like fussy eaters at the prospect of "hey guys I'd like to give this game that seems neat a try" then the problem isn't really with the game. I haven't enjoyed every RPG I've ever played in my life but I've still been willing to try them because someone else wanted to do so. Especially if somebody else is GMing. They're doing me a giant favor.
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Jan 26, 2019 02:00
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Does all this boil down to you guys being very insecure that people who are not knowledgeable about your hobby think of it as "Oh, that guy plays D&D"? D&D isn't my favorite system in the world, but it is the one I think almost everyone starts with. After playing some AD&D with some friends in middle school, I thought Oh Wow, role playing is cool. What else is out there? Sone mythical perfect game isn't out there to topple d&d, you just have to beat that drum yourself.
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Jan 26, 2019 02:27
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CitizenKeen posted:As someone who is ostensibly a big fan of Alexander's blog, also a huge fan of Banks, and also as someone who doesn't give a poo poo about 4E or edition wars... I don't know that anyone's established it as a step up. I'm actually surprised Atlas was able to get Banks. I think it just goes to show how hard it is to get someone else to pay your paycheck in the RPG business. You don't care about his 4e rumblings, but how do you feel about the guy using the same strained, self-serving logic to justify deadnaming a trans woman, and expressing no regrets or apologies even after she expressly demands that he correct his articles on her? (Correcting his mistake being the baseline decent thing to do here and obviously minimal effort once he was prodded to.) E- Lord_Hambrose posted:Does all this boil down to you guys being very insecure that people who are not knowledgeable about your hobby think of it as "Oh, that guy plays D&D"? Nobody has said or implied anything close to what you stated. So don't worry, your strange psychoanalysis is wrong. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Jan 26, 2019 |
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Jan 26, 2019 02:27
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Does all this boil down to you guys being very insecure that people who are not knowledgeable about your hobby think of it as "Oh, that guy plays D&D"? No.
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Jan 26, 2019 02:33
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Does all this boil down to you guys being very insecure that people who are not knowledgeable about your hobby think of it as "Oh, that guy plays D&D"? I really wonder what kind of weird parallel this kind of thinking would be with other kinds of hobbies/subcultures. Maybe if ADTRW had some insane backlash against DBZ and the shonen genre as a whole.
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Jan 26, 2019 02:36
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Plutonis posted:I really wonder what kind of weird parallel this kind of thinking would be with other kinds of hobbies/subcultures. Maybe if ADTRW had some insane backlash against DBZ and the shonen genre as a whole. I know that you're really clinging to this idea that everyone here shrieks like a vampire being confronted with a cross at the sight of D&D books but the actual point being argued here is that while D&D is in fact a game that a lot of people get introduced to the RPG hobby with, the idea that D&D is somehow necessary to introduce new players to the hobby because people are too stupid to use a search engine or understand games that aren't D&D is really fuckin weird and dumb. To borrow your analogy it is in fact a bit like somebody going "hey so I'm interested in watching some anime" and someone insisting that the proper way to introduce someone to anime is to sit them down and have them watch DBZ regardless of their interests instead of asking "oh okay, so what sorts of things do you think you'd like to watch?" because there's a shitload of anime out there.
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Jan 26, 2019 02:44
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Also unironic question, are there anime communities out there that genuinely argue that anime peaked with DBZ? I mean I'm sure there must be at least one now that I think about it.
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Jan 26, 2019 02:48
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Kai Tave posted:anime peaked with DBZ 
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Jan 26, 2019 02:50
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All media peaked when you were 14 and has been going steadily downhill ever since.
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Jan 26, 2019 03:12
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i only liked D&D when I was 12 because it was the rpg most like roguelikes, which i had discovered around age 11 and played first, then I liked GURPS more because it was more suited to dumb, nethack style kitchen sink fantasy settings. I got my friends, only one of which had tried rpgs by playing Deadlands in their freshman year of college, to get more into rpgs through apocalypse world.
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Jan 26, 2019 03:33
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And in case there's confusion, none of this is saying you and your friends can't have fun playing D&D if that's what you love. Live your best life, go nuts, whatever. Treating new players like hapless lost sheep that need to be shepherded or else they'll get eaten by someone's copy of Apocalypse World is pretty unnecessary though.
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Jan 26, 2019 03:49
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Nuns with Guns posted:You don't care about his 4e rumblings, but how do you feel about the guy using the same strained, self-serving logic to justify deadnaming a trans woman, and expressing no regrets or apologies even after she expressly demands that he correct his articles on her? (Correcting his mistake being the baseline decent thing to do here and obviously minimal effort once he was prodded to.) I think I'm allowed to be a fan of someone's writing, theory, and contributions to one of my hobbies without having to agree with them on everything they've ever done or standing by every statement they've ever made. I don't know Alexander, I don't have an exhaustive knowledge of his post history or works, but he's written a lot of posts that have made me say "Huh, that interesting..." and many more that have improved my game. I don't agree with everything he's ever written, but I don't think I have to and I don't think I've seen anything so damnable that I have to disavow any iota of respect I have for somebody who had made things I like.
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Jan 26, 2019 03:49
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CitizenKeen posted:I think I'm allowed to be a fan of someone's writing, theory, and contributions to one of my hobbies without having to agree with them on everything they've ever done or standing by every statement they've ever made. I don't know Alexander, I don't have an exhaustive knowledge of his post history or works, but he's written a lot of posts that have made me say "Huh, that interesting..." and many more that have improved my game. I don't agree with everything he's ever written, but I don't think I have to and I don't think I've seen anything so damnable that I have to disavow any iota of respect I have for somebody who had made things I like. i mean, the post was linked literally a page ago and involved him literally saying he would continue to deadname a trans lady if he was discussing anything she made before coming out
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Jan 26, 2019 03:52
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