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Kurieg posted:NFTs are just incredibly complex cryptographically unique files that store a URL and a name saying who 'owns' that URL. It takes an absurd amount of processing power to make them cryptographically unique and that processing power takes real world electricity which makes pollution which is where the whole "I burned down half the amazon to prove I own these pixels" Meme came from. The point of the grift is that to buy an NFT you need to buy crypto, which prices more people into crypto and makes more of it. And in theory drives up demand and therefore the price. It also uses THE BLOCKCHAIN and techbro grifters are unable to climax unless the blockchain is involved. But there is absolutely no regulatory body, anyone can mint an NFT for any reason, and NFTs aren't like.. a cryptographic hash you need to have in order to unlock the original file to prove ownership. It's just an arrow pointing at something with the text "paradoxGentleman owns this". Leading to that hilarious JPG going around 'You wouldn't screenshot an NFT, would you?'
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May 3, 2021 17:19
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dwarf74 posted:I have been expecting crypto to go away for a long time, but I don't expect it's gonna. There's a legit argument that bitcoin is the world's first heroin-backed currency.
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May 3, 2021 17:26
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Eastmabl posted:The first time my bard cast Glibness was also the last time my bard cast Glibness.
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May 3, 2021 17:29
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Dawgstar posted:Leading to that hilarious JPG going around 'You wouldn't screenshot an NFT, would you?' You don't even need to screenshot it because the NFT itself doesn't store the file, just a URL pointing to the file. Anyone who digs the data out of the blockchain can just download it.
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May 3, 2021 17:45
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Roadie posted:You don't even need to screenshot it because the NFT itself doesn't store the file, just a URL pointing to the file. Anyone who digs the data out of the blockchain can just download it. And also that by exhibiting the 'art' that you 'own' you are necessarily exposing the art to the world and therefore anyone can just right click and download it. The story from last week was that someone bought an "original" artwork NFT from someone then wanted to destroy the physical piece of art so that the value of his NFT would go up... and it turned out that the person who sold him the NFT didn't actually own the artwork, nor was he even tangentially related to those people.
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May 3, 2021 17:56
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The temptation to put together a website to sell NFTs to digital objects that I don't own the copyright is really strong, but I'd hate to be part of a SCOTUS case on what defines fraud.
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May 3, 2021 18:02
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Fraud? Sir, this is performance art.
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May 3, 2021 18:09
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Keeping a document of who owns something is a workable model for tracking ownership. A record of property ownership at the townhouse or whatever works. There's even not stupid reasons to do a digital form with a blockchain, which is a way of showing provenance and verifying the legitimacy of a series of records (of certificates of ownership). But NFTs, instead of being sensibly held at a courthouse and enforced by a state with a legal system are enforced entirely by people's willingness to accept the blockchain as containing a certificate of ownership. Legally it has no more teeth than putting "I, Alice, made this and sold it to Bob" on your Facebook page. Except "this" is not the object but an URL that just happens to, at the moment, point at the object. Which is like putting on your Facebook wall that "I, Alice, sold the document on display pedestal number 23 at the local art gallery to Bob". (Further complications: for all the talk about decentralized security in this, the directions to the local art gallery are all kept in records held by a small number of centralized organizations. So if anyone wants to go see what's at display pedestal 23, they have to trust the organization handing out directions. Which is the kind of centralized trust the entire decentralized blockchain thing was supposed to avoid having to rely upon in the first place...)
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May 3, 2021 18:36
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Notahippie posted:There's a legit argument that bitcoin is the world's first heroin-backed currency. Not sure I buy that. The Afghan "Afghani," extant since 1925, surely predates it; Afghanistan has been the primary source of opium poppy used for heroin for a very long source (well over 50% of global production); and at least in the post-Soviet era, that's been at least a major, if not the primary, economic output. That's just a technicality, though.
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May 3, 2021 18:46
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LatwPIAT posted:Keeping a document of who owns something is a workable model for tracking ownership. A record of property ownership at the townhouse or whatever works. There's even not stupid reasons to do a digital form with a blockchain, which is a way of showing provenance and verifying the legitimacy of a series of records (of certificates of ownership). NFTs are basically one giant trust excercise done by a bunch of people who don't trust "The man" to manage things. As such they've created a system that's incredibly open to bad actors. Things would be marginally better if there were some kind of central and public nft database but there's not and there probably never will be. And that's not even taking into account what happens if that database goes down like when a bitcoin exchange goes under and takes a pile of currency with it.
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May 3, 2021 18:56
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LatwPIAT posted:(Further complications: for all the talk about decentralized security in this, the directions to the local art gallery are all kept in records held by a small number of centralized organizations. So if anyone wants to go see what's at display pedestal 23, they have to trust the organization handing out directions. Which is the kind of centralized trust the entire decentralized blockchain thing was supposed to avoid having to rely upon in the first place...) I posted a lot about this years ago, in one of the earlier iterations of the various bitcoin threads (probably in GBS). I'm fascinated by the concept that A) trust is bad, and B) "trustless transactions" aren't an oxymoron. I even thought about doing the research to write a paper or book about it, until it dawned on me that other people probably have already, and sure enough... https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-97206-007, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1461669032000072256, etc. The crux of my position remains that trust is a foundational requirement for all human interactions other than violent conflict and total avoidance, which are the only options that remain when trust is impossible to establish or is entirely lost. In order to sustain societies too large for every individual to directly establish trust with every other individual (I've seen theories that this maximum number is between ~70 and ~200 individuals), we have created systems of proxy trust (a third party nominally guarantees trustworthiness) and social signaling factors (this person seems at least trustworthy enough to coexist with because their appearance and behavior fits the model of "belongs to my tribe"). Cryptocurrency is an attempt to route around proxy authorities, which is why it's always been so massively infused with grift; if I don't know you, and we're using a medium of exchange in which I give you something of value that I cannot claw back and no third party proxy can claw back, I have no reason to trust that you'll give me what we agreed to in exchange, and vise-versa. We then must resort to informal or ad-hoc methods to establish some kind of trust... a website where you present yourself and get ratings saying you definitely deliver the heroin as promised, say, or a trusted online exchange who guarantees that both parties to a transaction will perform. Or maybe we just meet in a starbucks and swap digital items, hoping that neither of us is a brave enough criminal to subvert the transaction where there are witnesses and cameras, literally co-opting Starbucks security as our security proxy, lol. All of which just underlines the fundamental failure of the so-called decentralized security promise of cryptocurrency. It's a new kind of car, one with no wheels, from people who believe wheels are evil, and all you have to do to use your amazing new car is hand-craft some wheels every time you want to make it go. Also if you lose your car keys the car is unusable forever, if anyone else ever even sees your car keys then can take the car any time they want and get new keys made and now it's their car and nobody has the power to give it back to you, and each time you drive the car it uses exponentially more gas than it did the prior trip, with the total gas consumption of all the world's cars rising forever on an asymptotic curve.  Which. Just to bring this back to the actual origin of the discussion, is why copyrights, trademarks, and patents exist in the first place: A government is trusted to establish ownership/control of intellectual property, because we have a collective societal interest in proof-of-ownership, the government is big and powerful and can (in theory) enforce ownership rights, and we can mostly all agree to trust it not to lose or sell our ownership without our permission. An NFT attempts to circumvent the government but ultimately still relies on government enforcement mechanisms to prevent anyone from just taking and using the thing for which you have purchased a digital, blockchain-recorded record of contractual "ownership" of. It's taking the fundamentally broken idea of trustless transactions and tacking on the same broken idea as applied to intellectual property rights.
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May 3, 2021 19:05
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All right-wing libertarianism hinges on the insane notion that you can have the framework of a government without anybody having to pay to maintain it. The end result is always either a) wacko experiments like cryptocurrency that couldn't actually survive outside the safety net of existing governments, or b) government being replaced by quasi-feudal compounds run by mad tyrants. Modern libertarians are basically trying to recreate feudalism, whether they realize this or not, but with contract law replacing the role that loyalty and family played in the feudal system. But, uh, what entity records and enforces contracts if there's no state? So they propose stuff like DROs, which is like "What if a corporation did everything that a government does, but was somehow magically not a government because we say so?"
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May 3, 2021 19:25
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TheArchimage posted:"I am the moon" was the actual 3.x book's example of an outrageous lie, the DC being something that a properly built character could trivially hit at level 1. It became a meme because getting your party members to agree with you counted as an assist action and give you a bonus, hence "I AM THE MOON" "HE IS THE MOON" "YOU ARE THE MOON". (I think it took up to level 4 to make the athlete that could jump so good that everyone who sees him jump immediately becomes a fanatically loyal follower that would die for him, even if they were trying to cut him to pieces a moment ago, but that's not moon-related except as yet another example of how loving bad the rules for talking to people were in 3.x)
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May 3, 2021 19:26
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Halloween Jack posted:See, jumping so gracefully that everyone who witnesses it will follow you to the ends of the earth, that sounds like something that could happen in a wuxia story or an acid fantasy novel like The Last Unicorn. But put that ability in the hands of a D&D party, and they're just going to treat it like a weird mind control power and use it for ridiculous, petty shenanigans. it's arguable that D&D exists for ridiculous, petty shenanigans
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May 3, 2021 19:35
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Halloween Jack posted:See, jumping so gracefully that everyone who witnesses it will follow you to the ends of the earth, that sounds like something that could happen in a wuxia story or an acid fantasy novel like The Last Unicorn. But put that ability in the hands of a D&D party, and they're just going to treat it like a weird mind control power and use it for ridiculous, petty shenanigans. Somebody should make a 5e supplement with stats for bottlecap armor.
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May 3, 2021 19:38
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I appreciate the effort you all put into teaching me about this, even though I hate the actual knowledge thst I acquired. E: this is about the NFT paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 21:51 on May 3, 2021 |
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May 3, 2021 21:42
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paradoxGentleman posted:I appreciate the effort you all put into teaching me about this, even though I hate the actual knowledge thst I acquired. Same but about Monte Cook
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May 3, 2021 22:04
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Froghammer posted:There's a reason Bards get access to Glibness at level 7 in 3.5 and level 15 in 5e And arguably, 5e glibness isn't even in the same ballpark as 3.5e. (Obviously, it's sine apples to oranges, but 5e glibness isn't a middle finger to the truth.)
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May 3, 2021 23:29
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homullus posted:it's arguable that D&D exists for ridiculous, petty shenanigans AD&D certainly did. It was literally created to screw Arneson out of royalties because it was supposedly a different game from D&D.
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May 4, 2021 04:09
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Joe Slowboat posted:Monte Cook's evolutionary niche is that he's 'indie' for people who only play D&D and Pathfinder, and getting into Monte Cook games is the last stop on that particular train. He's like a border swamp between D&D and the indiezone, and curious travelers get bogged down and sunk into the Monte Cook forever. Numenera and Invisible Sun are "evocative" of the Dying Earth because Cook had enough money to hire good artists. His "concepts" are utter poo poo. Like, Numenera's magitech is explained by some undifferentiated magical radiation. I didn't think it was possible to make the Dying Earth that boring. FMguru posted:I give Cook credit for actually trying to do new things, even as an old and established designer. He certainly doesn't fall into the OSR mindset where the hobby peaked at Gary's table sometime in 1975. Omnicrom posted:It's always struck me the way that Cook is completely uninterested in martial characters. It seems completely beyond his capacity for creativity to come up with ways to make a superhumanly strong dude interesting. In all of his games you get all sorts of cool and interesting and evocative powers for whatever the wizard is, and the martial classes at best get jack squat. Cook seems to have the attitude I saw in a lot of D20 edition warriors, that the setting must be "realistic" and therefore magic has to be science in disguise. But all that means is that magic is this omni-particle that can do anything. For people who only care about spellcasters, it's a frustratingly boring approach to magic. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:45 on May 4, 2021 |
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May 4, 2021 15:41
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Halloween Jack posted:The OSR has produced works far better-written and better-designed than anything Cook has ever done. Something the best OSR writers understand, which Cook clearly doesn't, is that magic should be weird, and that magic in D&D covers a lot of different things mashed together. I'm going to take issue with this. gently caress Cook, you're right on that front. I feel like it comes up on TG a lot this idea of the prescriptive weirdness of magic. "Magic should be weird" seems to get thrown around a lot. I think for evoking certain writers/feelings/whatever, I absolutely agree. Weird magic can be super fun. But I think a lot of time people just want video game / super hero magic. "I point my finger and it reliably goes pew pew pew". And that's fine, too. You can absolutely explore the implications of people with super magic and tell interesting stories. And sometimes you just want wizard magic to go with your beer and pretzels. You may find it boring, but the idea that it's inherently boring or less than is dumb.
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May 4, 2021 15:49
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Worlds Without Number's default setting does Numenera better without even particularly trying. quote:The magic of Latter Earth is born from the Legacy, the accumulated mass of arcane laws and thaumic energies that have accrued over fathomless eons. From its first crude beginnings in the Highshine emergency recovery nano-systems of the ancient past to the modern alterations laid down by the conquering Outsiders and their vengeful usurpers, the Legacy and its magic has existed as a tool to serve the purposes of Latter Earth’s masters. There's also a sidebar on the magical swordfighter specialist class that says "the proper fighter should be better at fighting than a magic fighter." The system isn't perfect at living up to that, but it's got good intent. 90s Cringe Rock fucked around with this message at 15:55 on May 4, 2021 |
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May 4, 2021 15:53
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Even if you're just pointing fingers and lightning come out, that's weird. Cook and a lot of D20 warriors are of the mindset that magic should be the fundamental building blocks of the rules. Magic doesn't let you "fly like a bird," that's imaginative nonsense. Birds should be treated as if permanently under the effects of the wizard's spell bird's flight as described in PHB3.2 (third errata.) This lets you know the exact physics and boundaries of the game without having to imagine anything, which is exceptionally appealing to a subset of players. It also makes the casters disproportionately powerful because their players are engaging with the rules in ways other players cannot.
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May 4, 2021 16:03
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I was just going to bring up Worlds Without Number. It's good poo poo.
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May 4, 2021 16:03
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CitizenKeen posted:I feel like it comes up on TG a lot this idea of the prescriptive weirdness of magic. "Magic should be weird" seems to get thrown around a lot. I think for evoking certain writers/feelings/whatever, I absolutely agree. Weird magic can be super fun. Using the Dying Earth as an example again, let's say you have a thin metal tube that projects a blast of electricity from one end when you hold it the right way. It might be an electronic weapon crafted by a lost civilization. It might be a weapon crafted by a wizard who trapped a jinn inside it. It might be a missing part from some huge machine, or the shed spine of some monster, never intended to be a weapon. In any case, when you translate it into rules, it's a wand of lightning. Now, the approach of Cook and many "fighters don't get nice things" grognards is to say that because magic is just science we don't understand, all of these come from the same phenomenon. The lost civilization made weapons filled with Magic. When the wizard trapped the jinn in the wand, he filled it with Magic. The big machine was a Magic machine, and the monster is a magical monster so its tissues are suffused with Magic. This technically satisfies their demand for a rational universe where the laws of physics work the same as in ours, but their standards are ridiculously low. Like I said, Magic is just this omni-particle that can do literally anything. This is what I call "defensive worldbuilding." It's not designed to be interesting, it's designed to stand up to being picked apart by the sort of person who argues about why Jedi don't have lightning bolt on their spell list.
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May 4, 2021 16:15
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I still remember playing in a (badly run) Numenera one-shot where one of the players said that the "connections" you put together between characters were better than Aspects in Fate because "they tell you how your characters are related!" and I still think about that a lot. It just feels...indicative of the type of person who thinks Monte is a good designer. Just focused on the surface level of the game and not thinking about what everything means. That was honest-to-God the worst session I've ever been in. I was bored out of my skull the entire time because I was the fighty guy built entirely around fighting and like three hours of the game was just walking around following the party's face (who was the GM's boyfriend) as he talked to everyone. The GM was also one of those people who has you roll for every mundane thing so you can narrate the "hilarious" failures. Such a perfect mix of bad system and bad GMing.
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May 4, 2021 16:16
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Fair. I think I get/got hung up on a narrow definition of "weird".
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May 4, 2021 17:18
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I think Cook is a pretty garbage and shallow writer, but in the same way that some dude who thinks putting a little garlic salt in his hamburger is getting fancy. And he makes a good living doing it, because the presentation is usually very attractive. But I'm a little allergic to calling him a "huckster" or "lazy." I don't think we're digging deep into the cultural psychology of capitalism here, and outside of that context he's no more a trickster than an individual McDonald's franchise. I only care enough to bring this up, because regardless if his output is intellectually lazy, he and a lot of co-authors still put a ton of real work into the artifice that nevertheless allows a ton of people to have fun with his games (not to mention the swathes of writers elsewhere who do largely the same, but less successfully). That's still work, and in this industry especially we shouldn't be treating that like it's nothing.
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May 4, 2021 17:38
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That Old Tree posted:I think Cook is a pretty garbage and shallow writer, but in the same way that some dude who thinks putting a little garlic salt in his hamburger is getting fancy. And he makes a good living doing it, because the presentation is usually very attractive. Some people are pretty good at making games. Monte Cook is pretty good at making products.
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May 4, 2021 17:45
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I don't think Cook is lazy, it's just that he just seems so attuned to a design niche (for lack of a better word) that he can't move outside of it. It's like all he knows is d20 and caster supremacy, so that's all he's ever going to try to do. Writing that out, I think his other problem is that he's not really that creative when you get down to it. Numenera and Invisible Sun look like deep, evocative settings at first glance, but when you get down to it they're not very gameable. There's no real point to the settings besides "wander around them and see everything that was set up in advance" or "weird for weird's sake". They end up feeling like museums that you're expected to just walk through and be impressed by rather than something you can interact with.
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May 4, 2021 19:00
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A lot of D&D-adjacent writing has a bad case of Theme Park Syndrome.
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May 4, 2021 19:04
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Evil Mastermind posted:They end up feeling like museums that you're expected to just walk through and be impressed by rather than something you can interact with.
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May 4, 2021 19:22
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That Old Tree posted:I think Cook is a pretty garbage and shallow writer, but in the same way that some dude who thinks putting a little garlic salt in his hamburger is getting fancy. I need to find the quote from him on the design process for 3e. He thought he was brought in to bring in the really crazy ideas, like bringing back the assassin class. I read it several times to see I could divine whether it was supposed to be self-deprecating sarcasm, but I think it wasn't.
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May 4, 2021 19:26
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I believe he got his start at the tail end of Rolemaster 2nd edition, so he has basically been doing the same thing for 30ish years.
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May 4, 2021 19:28
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As I understand it, MCG pays its people well and gives them benefits, so automatically one of the better actors in the industry.
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May 4, 2021 19:31
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slap me and kiss me posted:As I understand it, MCG pays its people well and gives them benefits, so automatically one of the better actors in the industry.
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May 4, 2021 19:45
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May 4, 2021 22:39
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 but also yes, bring back spelljammer you cowards
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May 4, 2021 23:03
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May 5, 2021 00:09
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CitizenKeen posted:Fair. I think I get/got hung up on a narrow definition of "weird".
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May 5, 2021 03:51
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