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ikanreed posted:It has now. You're a bad person because of your hobby. I can tell because I used detect evil on you. No, it still hasn't. People have said WotC employed an abuser in the production of 5e, which is simply true. People have called 5e, the game, bad for being partially the product of an abuser. But nobody has called people who enjoy 5e bad for enjoying the game, they've just gone on to criticize capitalism and make jokes about the free market. I don't doubt for one second that someone, somewhere is making the argument that playing D&D is therefore morally reprehensible, but in this thread so far that has not happened. Edit: For all the alignment chart updates and heinous postings of the other goblin comic, this thread has been remarkably good about being sane irt its criticisms and such. I really appreciate yall for being real. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 16:30
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a truly virtuous and well-rounded person has a responsibility to aesthetics, D&D is aesthetically displeasing, therefore
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Sep 1, 2020 16:53
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Wittgen posted:This is often referred to as the Lenin-Stalin inflection. I always heard it called "The Ship of Kerensky."
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Sep 1, 2020 17:13
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Lt. Danger posted:a truly virtuous and well-rounded person has a responsibility to aesthetics, D&D is aesthetically displeasing, therefore AD&D into 3rd Ed was like a dive off a cliff in that respect. SpaceViking posted:I always heard it called "The Ship of Kerensky." Oh, like the Battletech clans?
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Sep 1, 2020 17:13
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jng2058 posted:Jesus, I hope Rich is okay. Jokes aside I think yesterday was the first time we haven't gotten a Monday update in a couple months?
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Sep 1, 2020 17:16
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Oh wow, so many posts! The new strip must be really---Oh.  ... So. Any chance the MitD is a baby snarl? He did make that comment about his dad being really big and eating a lot, which describes a planet-eater well enough.
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Sep 1, 2020 17:21
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TheAceOfLungs posted:Oh wow, so many posts! The new strip must be really---Oh. There are a few too many people in-universe that know what the MitD is for them to be the snarl.
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Sep 1, 2020 17:24
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Rich said that it's an officially released monster, so being a baby snarl wouldn't work.
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Sep 1, 2020 17:32
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TheAceOfLungs posted:Oh wow, so many posts! The new strip must be really---Oh. So this is what it's like being on the other side of this... 
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Sep 1, 2020 17:39
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I like this DMing and system discussion because my favorite game of last year, Disco Elysium, basically rolls against your stat for different conversation branches and it just adds interesting consequences for both success and failure. It's not that much different from other TTRPG-based games in terms of mechanics but it uses the "fail forward" and "success has consequences" philosophy of good DMing. I think the biggest issue is D&D lets people be lazy and treat everything as an isolated pass/fail binary outside of combat, you can see that in other games based on it too. Other systems gamify that way more effectively and at the end of the day you're playing a game, not doing fantasy improv.
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Sep 1, 2020 17:51
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Who What Now posted:Rich said that it's an officially released monster, so being a baby snarl wouldn't work. I still think it’s that god fetus thing, but for a whole universe.
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Sep 1, 2020 18:03
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I mean let's be honest, there's a binary in combat in D&D as well for pass/fail. You just sometimes get pass/fail harder. A lot of it is predicated on what effort the DM wants to put into it. D&D lives and dies on what you make of it more than any other system and shifts the effort onto the DM to actually grey the lines. You absolutely can fail forward or pass poorly in D&D but like everything else that makes for memorable D&D games, it's certainly not codefied into the rules.
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Sep 1, 2020 18:06
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Dias posted:I like this DMing and system discussion because my favorite game of last year, Disco Elysium, basically rolls against your stat for different conversation branches and it just adds interesting consequences for both success and failure. It's not that much different from other TTRPG-based games in terms of mechanics but it uses the "fail forward" and "success has consequences" philosophy of good DMing. I think the biggest issue is D&D lets people be lazy and treat everything as an isolated pass/fail binary outside of combat, you can see that in other games based on it too. Other systems gamify that way more effectively and at the end of the day you're playing a game, not doing fantasy improv. disco elysium owns but even it isnt perfect like theres one lengthy sidequest chain that gets gated behind a single check for a single stat, and all failure does is lock you out of some of the game's most interesting writing until you come back later and succeed (which, thanks to the game's systems, isn't guaranteed without save-scumming)
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Sep 1, 2020 18:17
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Disco Elysium has basically ruined videogames, because now that it has shown that you can craft writing this good and this powerful in a videogame, everyone else in the videogame industry look like clowns by comparison.
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Sep 1, 2020 18:21
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Robviously posted:I mean let's be honest, there's a binary in combat in D&D as well for pass/fail. It's not really all that binary, though. D&D combat is a game of resource management, decision-making and tactical positioning. Ultimately a lot of the battles boil down to eventually winning or losing, and individual decisions are still made by a roll of the dice, but there are many decisions to make, with varying risks and rewards, and a codified mechanical impact on your future actions - you need to conserve class abilities, magic items, potions, spell slots, etc. You can still gently caress up running combat and make it uninteresting, but there's much more support there for interesting stuff happening.
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Sep 1, 2020 18:39
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Combat in D&D has an immense amount of granularity, whereas non-combat interactions tend to be pass/fail and are mostly up to the DM to inject interest into. That's the crux of it.
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Sep 1, 2020 18:53
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Who What Now posted:Rich said that it's an officially released monster, so being a baby snarl wouldn't work. To be fair, he said it was something *he didn't make up*. He never actually said it was an official DnD monster.
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Sep 1, 2020 18:54
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Zore posted:To be fair, he said it was something *he didn't make up*. He never actually said it was an official DnD monster. Which I think led to the joke answer of "a Snorlax" fitting way too well. It made Ochul teleport using metronome, and that's why it can't do it again.
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Sep 1, 2020 19:06
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cargohills posted:It's not really all that binary, though. D&D combat is a game of resource management, decision-making and tactical positioning. Ultimately a lot of the battles boil down to eventually winning or losing, and individual decisions are still made by a roll of the dice, but there are many decisions to make, with varying risks and rewards, and a codified mechanical impact on your future actions - you need to conserve class abilities, magic items, potions, spell slots, etc. You can still gently caress up running combat and make it uninteresting, but there's much more support there for interesting stuff happening. That's true, but it's worth noting the structure of the thing, were combat is presented as basically a problem to be solved to expend the least resources for the most gain. There's no real narrative component to things, it's optimization.
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Sep 1, 2020 19:23
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I wish Rich was...  COMIC STRIP!!!
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Sep 1, 2020 19:44
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Ok now, that's just cruel.
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Sep 1, 2020 19:49
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AnoHito posted:Which I think led to the joke answer of "a Snorlax" fitting way too well. It made Ochul teleport using metronome, and that's why it can't do it again. Yeah, hilariously 'Snorlax' is about the only thing in the Giantitp forums that people agree actually fits all the clues for sure.
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Sep 1, 2020 19:49
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Lt. Lizard posted:Ok now, that's just cruel. At least it's not loving Goblins.
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Sep 1, 2020 19:50
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Schwarzwald posted:There's no real narrative component to things, it's optimization. Some of it's optimisation, sure. But is there no narrative to steamrolling monsters who once caused you problems? Or from a back and forth duel between your party and the toughest generals in the necromancer's army? What about that moment where you finally use the last of your berserker energy to destroy a foe who until just then had the upper hand on you? Story can emerge from mechanics, even when those mechanics are about fighting instead of talking. Narrative can emerge from mechanics. It happens all the time even in computer games like FTL and XCOM, where the little dudes don't even have people playing them (aside from you), but personalities for them can still emerge in your brain from how the (digital) dice have landed and the risks you've taken.
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Sep 1, 2020 19:55
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Lt. Lizard posted:Ok now, that's just cruel. Hey, It Was Worth a Shot
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Sep 1, 2020 19:57
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Nenonen posted:I wish Rich was... Lt. Lizard posted:Ok now, that's just cruel. Nenonen posted:Hey, It Was Worth a Shot Nice.
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Sep 1, 2020 20:00
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cargohills posted:Some of it's optimisation, sure. But is there no narrative to steamrolling monsters who once caused you problems? Or from a back and forth duel between your party and the toughest generals in the necromancer's army? What about that moment where you finally use the last of your berserker energy to destroy a foe who until just then had the upper hand on you? Story can emerge from mechanics, even when those mechanics are about fighting instead of talking. You can construct a narrative of a chess game or tic tac toe, but their rules likewise do not have a narrative component.
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Sep 1, 2020 20:08
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I still kind of like a nightmare beast for the MitD.
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Sep 1, 2020 20:11
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Games with more narrative baked into their mechanics are essentially just allowing you to construct a narrative, too, they just give you a bit more meat on the bone to do it with. Like, a well-designed social move in a Powered by the Apocalypse system will have specific consequences for a partially successful social check, and the player will get to choose from a list like: - They'll do what you say, but you lose a point of [valuable resource]. - They'll do what you say, but only if you promise to help them with a difficult task. - They'll do what you say for now, but they're planning to betray you later. So that way the player gets some input, the "difficult task" rider can generate new story beats and wellspring out a simple dice roll on like, persuading a gate guard into a whole storyline in itself, the player can also sacrifice some resources to treat their partial success like a full one, or they can take a risk (and some authorship over the interiority of the GM's NPC) by setting themselves up for a later betrayal. Moves can be a lot more complex than that, but that's a good simple example of how a PbtA Persuasion check might go. This also takes some heat off the GM, because in a well-run D&D campaign the GM will be offering choices and providing interesting consequences to skill checks anyway, but here they have some guidelines as to what should happen and the onus isn't entirely on them to make "you rolled a 14 on your Persuasion check" interesting. Running a system like this, you should have a platter of interesting consequences attached to every move, including the combat moves. Different social moves can have different riders and different consequences for partial success, so there's also strategy on the player's part in terms of which they should use. Essentially there are more specifics and more granularity, and in a well-designed PbtA system, social interaction should be as strategic and generative as combat.
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Sep 1, 2020 20:21
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3.5e D&D attempted to codify social checks a bit more, with specific numbers and tables for how high you needed to roll to transition a Hostile character to Neutral or Friendly or etc., but that degree of explicit codification just lead to narrative-breaking character builds where you could focus on instantly transforming all foes into friends with a single roll of your +30 Diplomacy check.
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Sep 1, 2020 20:24
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I feel like there's usually a solidly implied/conveyed narrative regardless as to whether the rules facilitate it explicitly or not; as an example, even when or perhaps because of whenever my character gets knocked out first. We were fighting a boss with psionic abilities and one of us didn't have a ring of mind shielding, frustrated that the rings were shutting down his main abilities to mess with our minds and we were winning, he Power Word Killed my character because he read the other characters mind that it was my character's decision to come prepared with those rings. There are layers of decision making that lend themselves to narrative interpretation even if on its face its a series of "optimal" decisions. An earlier encounter weeks ago saw a different character of mine constantly throwing himself into harms way to save the lives of the NPC hirelings that was a part of the party for the dungeon we were exploring. So I don't really see the distinction because the end result is the same. A large number of games construct their narrative via the emergent gameplay that results from the metaphorical narrative conveyed by those mechanics. Boatmurdered didn't get its memetic status as this hugely engaging narrative thing because of any actual explicit narrative mechanics from Dwarf Fortress, but because of interpretation from the emergent story telling that resulted from the player's actions. So sure there's a lot of binary pass/fail decisions in D&D, but I agree with cargohills that in the aggregate there's enough there to get out of it the narrative you want proportional to the effort you put in. An encounter that you win by the skin of your teeth while exhausting all of your resources absolutely has narrative implications, everyone around the "table" sounds exhausted and pensive about getting into another encounter that might wipe the party. An encounter we win effortlessly pumps the wind into our sails and we all talk with a proverbial spring in our steps with the implicit "We got this" level of confidence as a result. Then add in one liners and you got a fairly complete narrative experience. DM: "click clack" (enemy is being Hold Person'd by me) Me: "More like tick tock you're time's about to run out you abomination." You don't need explicit "storytelling" rules to have a fun/engaging narrative experience; not having explicit lets all manner of people play the game according to their own playstyle, most groups are mixed. The guy that just wants to roll dice and hit things is not going to have the patience to follow rules that insists on extracting a minimal roleplaying tax at the sametime as players in the group who are super into it who likely didn't need those rules in the first place. Android Blues posted:Games with more narrative baked into their mechanics are essentially just allowing you to construct a narrative, too, they just give you a bit more meat on the bone to do it with. I like this system, though I think I'd probably prefer a simpler version depending on how often it comes up. A heavy rp/downtime session might have dozens of these choices, while a more encounter heavy session in my group it might come up just once. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 20:28
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Zore posted:Yeah, hilariously 'Snorlax' is about the only thing in the Giantitp forums that people agree actually fits all the clues for sure. The MitD Speculation Thread posted:No, not that Giant, this Giant Former WCW World Champion. Latterly The Big Show, and played by Paul Wight.
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Sep 1, 2020 20:36
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Yeah, a really good group of players and gm are likely to be playing something like a world game regardless of system because they are constantly failing forward, finding interesting complications and freestyling worldbuilding. I still can't recommend the system highly enough though, because it makes a lot of implicit stuff explicit.
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Sep 1, 2020 20:37
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ultrafilter posted:At least it's not loving Goblins. At least it's not Goblins loving. Edit: the next strip linked: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0070.html has one of my favorite gags. "You were transmuted to stone" FOR A THOUSAND YEARS! Johnny Aztec fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 21:01
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Raenir, I would like to offer you a mod challenge. I think many people in this thread are correct that trying out a system aside from DND 5e would do you good, and even if you do decide that you still like 5e best and that it suits your needs and your group's needs, you'll still have learned something new and hopefully had some fun. If you pick any of the games listed in the document a few pages page, or any PbtA game, and run a one-off with your group-- or even if you just want to carefully read the the rulebook-- and report back to this thread with a thorough trip-report and your thoughts on the system-- I'll give you a free av/title change. I think this conversation has mostly been respectful and really good but I really do think people are being honest with you that getting exposure to a different system could really help give you a sense of perspective. You don't have to fall in love with the system or even change your mind at all. I think just checking it out will help.
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Sep 1, 2020 21:05
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I really wanted to like Goblins, you know? I really like the concept of "savage" races getting the opportunity to turn the tables on so-called "civilized" dwarves, elves and humans. It's a shame that it got... like that.
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Sep 1, 2020 21:30
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Johnny Aztec posted:At least it's not Goblins loving. worth it
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Sep 1, 2020 21:32
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Was OotS funnier back then? I laughed way harder at that joke that anything I remember reading on it recently.
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Sep 1, 2020 21:34
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I'm not going to say yay or nay on that, only that OotS had gone from a more punchline, gag-day day format, to a longer, overarching story.
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Sep 1, 2020 21:40
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Colonel Cool posted:Was OotS funnier back then? I laughed way harder at that joke that anything I remember reading on it recently. It was more humor focused at the outset. What it lost in humor it made up for in other story telling and character development areas.
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Sep 1, 2020 21:40
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