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Pack it in folks, human GMing is deadTunicate posted:https://aiweirdness.com/post/189511103367/play-ai-dungeon-2-become-a-dragon-eat-the-moon
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Dec 8, 2019 15:32
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Lemon-Lime posted:The OSR started out as "what if we had rules-light RPGs (which we misremember AD&D as being), and put roleplay front and centre" and within about a picosecond of its birth got co-opted by Nazis and backslid into "woman and immigrants ruined society forever with their political correctness, which is why AD&D is the only real elfgame."
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Dec 8, 2019 17:18
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:This is pretty dumb and wrong. I realize I'm speaking to a forum full of shellshocked edition war veterans but "co-opted by nazis" is laughable - wtf led you to conclude that? Maybe all the Nazis?
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Dec 8, 2019 17:19
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theironjef posted:I would only recommend people ignore old rules to start having fun again if they dislike rules in general. Per the original request from some guy who wanted to play D&D the way he remembered, but he didn't remember all the rules. Undeniably, some old rules are just plain awkward. Even among the most grognardly OSR types, you can get people who when you put their feet to the fire will grudgingly confess that ascending AC is actually a lot more convenient in many ways. But the car analogy assumes that when later games tossed out old rules and adopted new standards and fashions, they gave those old rules a careful analysis and make a reasoned judgement call about which rules were still fit for purpose and which could go on the junkheap. I will now pause, point you to your podcast and the number of episodes you've produced so far, and suggest that you ought to know goddamn well that that isn't actually the case. New car technology gets rigorously tested to make sure that it is a) fit for purpose and b) actually delivers enough of a benefit to be worth the expense of retooling everything to use it. The RPG market doesn't work like that; in fact, it doesn't work like that so hard that the original Vampire became a commercial phenomenon despite the fact that from a rules design perspective it's absolute dogshit, with howlers that even, say, basic-era D&D manages to avoid. If OD&D is a Model T Ford, the original Storyteller system is a dangerously flawed prototype which it isn't remotely safe to drive because it will disintegrate around you once you drive it out of the showroom. So the idea that RPG design fashions might have thrown the baby out with the bathwater at some points isn't completely implausible, because it's clear that neither game publishers nor a sizeable, profitable segment of the market regard rules rigour as a high priority. The good thing the OSR did, and the good thing that SwordDream sorts and other types who are looking at old RPGs without getting OSR ideological about it, is giving those old rules another look and considering whether there's instances where you would genuinely want to use them in favour of more modern rules. I'd further point out that even among people who do care about rules, not everyone regards them as a technological means to achieve an effect - some people consider them artistic techniques, where the specific rules you use to give rise to a result are important, even though actually the outcome is basically the same as what you'd arrive at with a different technique. An analogy: with any game with a success/fail dice-rolling mechanic, you could just mathematically work out the percentage chances of success or failure and roll percentiles appropriately. (Heck, you could even make a spreadsheet to do the calculation nice and quickly for you so it isn't even difficult to do so.) Maybe the percentile chance will be off by a few points of a percent, but anyone who genuinely believes that a few points of a percent matter that much in a single success/fail roll in an RPG is, to put it charitably, being completely loving absurd (and you can more roll percentile dice to get the points of a percent if it really matters to you that much). Every RPG could therefore just be converted to percentile rolls; you could even make a percentiliser app where you feed in your character sheet for a particular game and the target number and it automatically provides you with the percentile result you need to roll. Nonetheless, rolling percentile dice - even if you're just typing the dice-rolling formula into Roll20 or something - feels intrinsically different from, say, just rolling a D20, or rolling a big dice pool in Shadowrun, or whatever. So maybe you want to use a particular rule because you like the aesthetic effect of it - like the difference between doing a woodcut of a landscape and doing a watercolour painting or taking a photograph. All three give you a picture of the same landscape, but the technique you chose is highly relevant. Casting aside particular techniques simply because they are old might make sense from a technological perspective - in an industry which applied more rules design rigour than the industry actually applies - but it's foolish from an artistic perspective. Warthur fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 17:22
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I blame the "they're an important part of the OSR why judge their politics?" collaborators and enablers.
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Dec 8, 2019 17:23
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:This is pretty dumb and wrong. I realize I'm speaking to a forum full of shellshocked edition war veterans but "co-opted by nazis" is laughable - wtf led you to conclude that? That one time in November last year where the guy who designed that OSR logo asked that people just not use it if the book was going to have hate speech or hateful content in it and forums erupted defending the inalienable rights of all creeps to put hate speech in their retroclones AND use whatever logo they want. Warthur posted:So the idea that RPG design fashions might have thrown the baby out with the bathwater at some points isn't completely implausible, because it's clear that neither game publishers nor a sizeable, profitable segment of the market regard rules rigour as a high priority. The good thing the OSR did, and the good thing that SwordDream sorts and other types who are looking at old RPGs without getting OSR ideological about it, is giving those old rules another look and considering whether there's instances where you would genuinely want to use them in favour of more modern rules. I virtually never see any OSR stuff that sells itself as "a reasoned evaluation of older rules" because the market seems pretty fat with "More crit fail charts and hex grids! Your players will definitely die! Drawings remind one of Erol Otus!" Though I admit the Sword Dream thing is pretty intriguing and I want to look into it further. theironjef fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 18:38
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So co-opted by nazis means "the logo creator says no hate speech and some assholes complained"? I mean, I've not seen these "forums" of people but I'll take your word they exist - do you really think the complainers are more representative of the overall attitudes in the OSR than the logo creator declaring "no hate speech"? "The community uses copyright law to cast off hateful content" sounds like evidence of the opposite to me, even if there are some folks who will protest.
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Dec 8, 2019 18:50
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:So co-opted by nazis means "the logo creator says no hate speech and some assholes complained"? I mean, I've not seen these "forums" of people but I'll take your word they exist - do you really think the complainers are more representative of the overall attitudes in the OSR than the logo creator declaring "no hate speech"? "The community uses copyright law to cast off hateful content" sounds like evidence of the opposite to me, even if there are some folks who will protest. Sounds like you’re one of those folks who are emotionally invested in defending the Nazis.
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Dec 8, 2019 19:07
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Warthur posted:
I would very much be interested in examples of people using D&D-derived mechanics for artistic or presentational reasons, as pretty much every OSR or other associated retrocloner I am familiar with either uses it for nostalgia, as a ideological statement of opposition to “modern games” and/or “storygames”, believes game mechanics are a necessary evil and uses it because it’s what they know, or explicitly does it for marketing purposes (“the world’s greatest RPG”, “compatible with decades of gaming content”). For example, I have seen RPG.net posts from Kevin Crawford where he is explicit that he uses the D&D cover band framework specifically to maximize his potential audience. Actually, I can think of a few “artistic uses” of D&D mechanics/notation, but they’re all satirical— Power Kill, Violence, and the “Freebase” portion of HoL, all of which predate the OSR and associated movements by many years. Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 19:19
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Warthur posted:I'd further point out that even among people who do care about rules, not everyone regards them as a technological means to achieve an effect - some people consider them artistic techniques, where the specific rules you use to give rise to a result are important, even though actually the outcome is basically the same as what you'd arrive at with a different technique. Splicer fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 20:32
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Parkreiner posted:I would very much be interested in examples of people using D&D-derived mechanics for artistic or presentational reasons, as pretty much every OSR or other associated retrocloner I am familiar with either uses it for nostalgia, as a ideological statement of opposition to “modern games” and/or “storygames”, believes game mechanics are a necessary evil and uses it because it’s what they know, or explicitly does it for marketing purposes (“the world’s greatest RPG”, “compatible with decades of gaming content”). For example, I have seen RPG.net posts from Kevin Crawford where he is explicit that he uses the D&D cover band framework specifically to maximize his potential audience. e: Or, again, tesla's stupid polygon truck Splicer fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 20:39
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Splicer posted:Pack it in folks, human GMing is dead Was not expecting to see Monte Cooke vore. Not My Style.
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Dec 8, 2019 20:43
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:So co-opted by nazis means "the logo creator says no hate speech and some assholes complained"? I mean, I've not seen these "forums" of people but I'll take your word they exist - do you really think the complainers are more representative of the overall attitudes in the OSR than the logo creator declaring "no hate speech"? "The community uses copyright law to cast off hateful content" sounds like evidence of the opposite to me, even if there are some folks who will protest. Why are you even bothering to try arguing in good faith here lol
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Dec 8, 2019 20:45
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The OSR kidnapped Liam Neeson's daughter yet again
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Dec 8, 2019 22:29
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I, for one, welcome SwordDream and their message of "gently caress Nazis."
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Dec 8, 2019 22:46
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:So co-opted by nazis means "the logo creator says no hate speech and some assholes complained"? I mean, I've not seen these "forums" of people but I'll take your word they exist - do you really think the complainers are more representative of the overall attitudes in the OSR than the logo creator declaring "no hate speech"? "The community uses copyright law to cast off hateful content" sounds like evidence of the opposite to me, even if there are some folks who will protest. Macris, the creator of Adventurer Conqueror King asked Vox Day to design one of his classes for an upcoming rulebook. When people complained he admitted that fans of Vox's novels contributed a substantial portion of backers for his KickStarter (second post in the thread). While we have no hard and fast data on the political beliefs of the average ACKS player, Vox Day's blog is full of things like speaking positively of the alt-right including repeating the 14 words mantra, alleging that it would be a net positive to expel the United States' black population and uses the triple parenthesis logo around people he doesn't like. He's also the person who masterminded the Sad Puppies fiasco, so it's not like he was an obscure name at the time whose background couldn't have been found with a quick Google search. Given that Vox's claim to fame in the wider sphere of geek culture is hateful rhetoric, this means that if you sit down and game at an ACKS table there's a chance that one or more players are the types of people who believe that whites are the Master Race if we go by Autarch's own words on proportion of KickStarter backers. Macris' promotion of his work on the RPG Site after getting in a forum war with the Gaming Den over the latters' anger at his association with racists like Yiannopoulos, along with several of those RPG Siter's trotting out phrases like "chimping out" in said forum war, is not a good look for the company Autarch keeps or wants to bring in as fandom. Of course the OSR does not begin and end with ACKS, but this is but one example of many of the OSR's toxic communities. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 23:02
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Libertad! posted:Macris, the creator of Adventurer Conqueror King asked Vox Day to design one of his classes for an upcoming rulebook. When people complained he admitted that fans of Vox's novels contributed a substantial portion of backers for his KickStarter (second post in the thread). While we have no hard and fast data on the political beliefs of the average ACKS player, Vox Day's blog is full of things like speaking positively of the alt-right including repeating the 14 words mantra, alleging that it would be a net positive to expel the United States' black population and uses the triple parenthesis logo around people he doesn't like. He's also the person who masterminded the Sad Puppies fiasco, so it's not like he was an obscure name at the time whose background couldn't have been found with a quick Google search. Before that, it was commonly recommended both here and on RPGnet. I don't know where you'd find many people encouraging others to play that system nowadays outside actual fascist havens.
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Dec 8, 2019 23:21
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theironjef posted:I virtually never see any OSR stuff that sells itself as "a reasoned evaluation of older rules" because the market seems pretty fat with "More crit fail charts and hex grids! Your players will definitely die! Drawings remind one of Erol Otus!"
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Dec 8, 2019 23:24
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dwarf74 posted:There has been a marked and dramatic decline in support for ACKS since Macris's alt-right bullshit was shown to the world. It's worth mentioning that ACKS' selling point as a retroclone (good support for domain-level play) was eclipsed by Kevin Crawford's "An Echo, Resounding" so that's not a reason to play it. There's a Labyrinth Lord edition of Dwimmermount, if you want to do that. There's really not any good reason to play ACKS at all besides Nazis, even less than the good adventures for LotFP.
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Dec 8, 2019 23:39
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dwarf74 posted:There has been a marked and dramatic decline in support for ACKS since Macris's alt-right bullshit was shown to the world. My post was in response to whether or not there were forums' worth of fascists playing with OSR games, which to me looked as questioning the validity of their existence and visibility unless I misread the post. But this is good news to hear that ACKS is getting less popular now. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 23:42
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dwarf74 posted:There has been a marked and dramatic decline in support for ACKS since Macris's alt-right bullshit was shown to the world. It is a shame that the guys at Autarch ended up being CHUDS, cause ACKS is still one of the better OSR systems mechanically in many regards, oh well can always just steal some of the better ideas for use in a less controversial system anyways(besides ACKS has a really bad character creation system anyways)
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Dec 8, 2019 23:42
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Libertad! posted:Macris, the creator of Adventurer Conqueror King asked Vox Day to design one of his classes for an upcoming rulebook. When people complained he admitted that fans of Vox's novels contributed a substantial portion of backers for his KickStarter (second post in the thread). While we have no hard and fast data on the political beliefs of the average ACKS player, Vox Day's blog is full of things like speaking positively of the alt-right including repeating the 14 words mantra, alleging that it would be a net positive to expel the United States' black population and uses the triple parenthesis logo around people he doesn't like. He's also the person who masterminded the Sad Puppies fiasco, so it's not like he was an obscure name at the time whose background couldn't have been found with a quick Google search.
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Dec 9, 2019 00:01
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Like I said before, ACKS isn't the only bad example. It's not so much one bad incident that gave me and others distance, but more multiple ones which add up over time. It's good that there's pushback with SWORD DREAM, but for many it feels too little too late and I'll personally wait and see how things change long-run before going back if I do.
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Dec 9, 2019 00:10
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Splicer posted:Pack it in folks, human GMing is dead It got taken down due to interest. Anyone know where you can download a working copy?
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Dec 9, 2019 00:18
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Warthur posted:New car technology gets rigorously tested to make sure that it is a) fit for purpose and b) actually delivers enough of a benefit to be worth the expense of retooling everything to use it. The RPG market doesn't work like that; in fact, it doesn't work like that so hard that the original Vampire became a commercial phenomenon despite the fact that from a rules design perspective it's absolute dogshit, with howlers that even, say, basic-era D&D manages to avoid. If OD&D is a Model T Ford, the original Storyteller system is a dangerously flawed prototype which it isn't remotely safe to drive because it will disintegrate around you once you drive it out of the showroom.
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Dec 9, 2019 00:34
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Catfishenfuego posted:So you're saying Vampire is a Tesla?
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Dec 9, 2019 00:39
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Libertad! posted:My post was in response to whether or not there were forums' worth of fascists playing with OSR games, which to me looked as questioning the validity of their existence and visibility unless I misread the post. Oh I don't think anyone doubts they exist. But the decline of ACKS points to how the OSR isn't completely overrun by fascists. And remember, nearly every single Stormfront heartbreaker is some d20 derivative.
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Dec 9, 2019 00:59
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Warthur posted:Not had enough experience with them to say, but the new Tesla truck is definitely analogous to Shadowrun 6th Edition in the "disintegrates during an event supposed to show off its potential" stakes (I'm thinking specifically of that Actual Play web series which gave up trying to play Shadowrun 6th because it was too irreversibly janked). Holy poo poo, burying the lead here. An actual play tried to play SR6th? How did it even go, spill the deets.
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Dec 9, 2019 01:23
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kingcom posted:Holy poo poo, burying the lead here. An actual play tried to play SR6th? How did it even go, spill the deets. No need for me to do that when the AP cast did a 2 hour video outlining how poo poo SR6E is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn1cYgG0bQw I love how they're trying to be as professional and polite as they can without actively misrepresenting the situation, but still end up outright ripping the entire thing to shreds.
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Dec 9, 2019 01:29
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I have a sale/bundle called Supernatural Strangeness available on itch right now for two of my games, specifically those dealing with the supernatural, mystery, and horror! It's 10% off individually in the sale ($2.25 individually), or 20% off for both games as a bundle ($4 together). The games included are: A 1-page GMless game of found-footage weird horror that doubles as a world-building tool that you can incorporate into longer games! Create a story that starts grounded in reality, then slowly descends into abnormality and insanity through a series of fragmentary Tapes that never quite answer all the mysteries they create. If you want to see how the game runs and what it can do, you've got multiple different options:
 A GMless map-game of supernatural submarine tragedy! Explore the seabed around a mysterious wreck while listening to the echoes of the ghosts of those who died there. Piece together the truth of the sinking from their words and the clues left behind, and lay their spirits to rest before returning to the surface. I'm tooting my own horn here, but: I think the ecto-sonar mechanics that help you build an elevation map of the sea floor, then chase down the ghosts, are pretty neat, concise, and atmospheric! Note: SONAR GHOSTS is currently marked as 'in playtest'. The game is mechanically complete and ready to play, but the file lacks art and fancy formatting - basically an ashcan version. It'll be updated early next year and switched from playtest to fully-released, and, as with The Cromlech Archives, buying the game before then will give you access to the updated, higher-priced version at no extra cost. The bundle lasts until the end of the the decade! If you're counting the start of 2020 as the start of the next decade, that is. It currently has a $25.00 target - we'll see how that goes. TK_Nyarlathotep posted:Grabbed it! Looking forward to digging in.
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Dec 9, 2019 01:52
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Warthur posted:No need for me to do that when the AP cast did a 2 hour video outlining how poo poo SR6E is. Hook this to my veins.
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Dec 9, 2019 01:52
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Warthur posted:No need for me to do that when the AP cast did a 2 hour video outlining how poo poo SR6E is.
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Dec 9, 2019 02:44
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UnCO3 posted:I have a sale/bundle called Supernatural Strangeness available on itch right now for two of my games, specifically those dealing with the supernatural, mystery, and horror! It's 10% off individually in the sale ($2.25 individually), or 20% off for both games as a bundle ($4 together). The games included are: These both sound rad and I might aim for one of them to be the January RPG at the game shop.
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Dec 9, 2019 02:49
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Len posted:These both sound rad and I might aim for one of them to be the January RPG at the game shop.
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Dec 9, 2019 02:57
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UnCO3 posted:If you do, let me know which one some time soon-ish and I'll prioritise publishing that update earlier! We're playing an RPG this week so I'll see if the group is interested in either of them. They both sound very much my jam though
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Dec 9, 2019 03:08
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It's a shame that Shadowrun is always ending up with bad systems, cause there's a lot I really like about the concept that I've yet to find a proper equivalent elsewhere
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Dec 9, 2019 03:31
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drrockso20 posted:It's a shame that Shadowrun is always ending up with bad systems, cause there's a lot I really like about the concept that I've yet to find a proper equivalent elsewhere I really want to try Shadowrun because I dig the setting but reading the 5e book with zero knowledge of Shadowrun was just words that said a lot and explained nothing so despite having the book since launch it hasn't been used ever
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Dec 9, 2019 03:39
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It's genuinely impressive that a game that's been around through six editions (not counting spinoffs like Anarchy), been in print for almost 30 years, and has had a entire raft of ancillary products (novels, video games, board games, etc.) published alongside it, has never had a functional core system or well-thought-out gameplay loop. It says something about the inherent appeal of the core premise (D&D but with guns and drones and cyberdecks) that it has stuck around for so long.
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Dec 9, 2019 03:46
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drrockso20 posted:It's a shame that Shadowrun is always ending up with bad systems, cause there's a lot I really like about the concept that I've yet to find a proper equivalent elsewhere I've played in a few Shadowrun games that were very fun. None of them actually used the Shadowrun system!
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Dec 9, 2019 03:46
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Gobbeldygook posted:For those curious but without the time to listen, they had a lot of complaints about the editing (one of them called it the worst-edited major RPG book they had ever read) and really didn't like edge, but what broke them was the armor system. Link to when they start talking about armor (1:08:28). Fixing armor would involve overhauling edge and adjusting the damage values of everything in the system and that's where they drew the line. Oh my lord, what possessed them to do that to armor? What in the world?
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Dec 9, 2019 04:12
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