|
Xander77 posted:It feels like "a modern day definition of an atheist, someone who outright doesn't believe the gods exist, wouldn't really work in a universe where the gods are demonstrably real. But they might refer to a deist or theist, who doesn't believe the gods are anthropomorphic \ deserving of worship, as an atheist" isn't that complex of a notion. I would say once something simply exists it stops being part of the supernatural and starts being part of the natural. Like maybe we thought lighting was a god thing in the year 600BC but now we know what really causes it. If what really caused it turned out to be actually zeus, eventually the existence of zeus would also just be a part of the mundane world just as much as gamma particles making ionization trails and electron charges is. Like eventually you'd learn about zeus in the science books. Why zeus, and your cat, and you and everyone you know are in a law/chaos good/evil system that just seems to exist as a fundamental part of the world outside of the world and what that means and why that exists, well there is a supernatural question about real gods. Like there would be religious debate in D&D planet on why thac0 exists than where you go when you die.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 14:22 |
|
|
# ? May 25, 2024 09:02 |
|
https://twitter.com/gshowitt/status/1501642466725965832 I always wonder about this. RPGs are kind of singular among forms of entertainment in just how much they blur the line between the players, the character, and the environment, so the ways people play feels especially revealing. One of the things I find weirdest about the OSR, for instance, its that 90% of it seems to revolve around of sending lovely dirt-farmers into obvious, often cartoonish, peril and then laughing it off when they splatter against said obvious peril.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 14:51 |
|
I think it's also true of non-OSR games though. I think the big difference is that in non-OSR games the cycle is that a PC's personality or history pushes them down a hole, and their skillset digs them out again. There's still a degree of player buy-in. The OSR cycle feels more like it's the GM and the module pushing the PC down the hole, so there's less buyin from the player (besides , I guess, the fact that they're turning up to play at your table at all)
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 16:18 |
|
Haystack posted:https://twitter.com/gshowitt/status/1501642466725965832 PC mortality really, really differs from OSR game to OSR game, especially as we move out of pure retroclones into new old-school inspired games. Like, there are many OSR games where there's a fair bit of PC fortitude built in (AS&SH and a lot of the Crawford stuff off the top of my head), and some if not all of the most commonly used house rules actually give PCs more chances to survive: shields must be sundered, death and dismemberment tables, even just using Gygax's post-2000s house rules with negative hp until death. However, most of what has been popularly shown about the OSR and its most popular products do promote that mortality: DCC's funnel adventures, LotFP negadungeons, and 39,000 B/X clones or hacks with incredibly dangerous, precise low-level dungeon play. Excepting LotFP's negadungeons, the idea that's behind these and how people play them themselves is that low-level characters are interchangeable and consumable, but the lucky ones who survive are incredibly precious, experienced, and strongly characterized by the dangers they've already escaped from (which DCC shows off quite clearly). So the common model is "it's fun to kill a bunch of dirt farmers" and then the game changes significantly as soon as one hits level 2 or 3 or gets some special items or something going on. If you think about most "modern" RPGs with involved character creation as creating a character "you want to play" that you can inhabit the role of, OSR games have a much thinner line between player and character, and the character you're playing is developed for you during play instead of being chosen ahead of time. Whybird posted:I think it's also true of non-OSR games though. I think the big difference is that in non-OSR games the cycle is that a PC's personality or history pushes them down a hole, and their skillset digs them out again. There's still a degree of player buy-in. The OSR cycle feels more like it's the GM and the module pushing the PC down the hole, so there's less buyin from the player (besides , I guess, the fact that they're turning up to play at your table at all) One of the big things that gets reiterated in how to GM for OSR games is that the GM needs to be an impartial narrator. If danger lurks at every turn and the players are supposed to use their wits and skills to figure out how to get through, the GM fudging dice significantly damages the players' ability to make those decisions. In other words, the world is an unforgiving place and the GM presents it fairly and accurately that way the players can get one over it with their smarts and teamwork. Arivia fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Mar 15, 2022 |
# ? Mar 15, 2022 16:29 |
|
I mean, up until the late 80s/early 90s, RPGs were war games with role playing tacked on. I still remember being really intrigued when Oriental Adventures introduced the idea of non-weapon proficiencies; maybe your character has skills beyond what they use to kill things. But even the name pointed out the baseline assumption of “it’s about simulating combat.”
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 19:13 |
|
Arivia posted:One of the big things that gets reiterated in how to GM for OSR games is that the GM needs to be an impartial narrator. If danger lurks at every turn and the players are supposed to use their wits and skills to figure out how to get through, the GM fudging dice significantly damages the players' ability to make those decisions. In other words, the world is an unforgiving place and the GM presents it fairly and accurately that way the players can get one over it with their smarts and teamwork. I don't know, x-com has written tons about how playing it 'real' feels bad and dumb and how a ton of the game is built around the 75% on screen actually being a complex formula to give the player the most intuitively 75% esq experiance instead of being a real 75% odds. Computers in general could be perfect objective arbiters and videogames design in tons and tons of slack and fudging, to make it feel more fun. Even games like xcom that are known to be tough and unforgiving make sure when you die it feels like you messed up, not because three guys got a low odds crit 5 times in a row in one turn before you could move.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 19:19 |
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:I don't know, x-com has written tons about how playing it 'real' feels bad and dumb and how a ton of the game is built around the 75% on screen actually being a complex formula to give the player the most intuitively 75% esq experiance instead of being a real 75% odds. Computers in general could be perfect objective arbiters and videogames design in tons and tons of slack and fudging, to make it feel more fun. Even games like xcom that are known to be tough and unforgiving make sure when you die it feels like you messed up, not because three guys got a low odds crit 5 times in a row in one turn before you could move. How many tabletop RPGs have you played? What’s your personal experience with the culture of slinging dice at the table? Because you frankly sound like you’re freshly arrived from Mars with how poorly fitting this argument is.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 19:26 |
|
Diablo had the same issue; random tends to feel unfair. To be fair, old school d&d also felt unfair. 🤷♂️
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 19:37 |
|
TheCenturion posted:Diablo had the same issue; random tends to feel unfair. And it makes sense to try and craft a player-positive experience in X-Com where player agency is significantly curtailed - you’re able to use your tools to fight the mutoid or whatever, or you lose. That’s it. Old-school RPG dungeon design is instead about alternatives or lateral thinking - the GM is crafting difficult situations for the group to collectively think out of band about. It’s okay to have early monsters that are mathematically unfair with the fun being in finding ways to do unfair things to those monsters in turn. That’s why comparing the play experience to X-Com is so absurd, because you’re not going “oh I’ve only got a 10% chance to hit this sucks” to yourself, you’re instead scheming with the other players about how to make a chlorine bomb or something.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 20:09 |
|
Arivia posted:How many tabletop RPGs have you played? What’s your personal experience with the culture of slinging dice at the table? Because you frankly sound like you’re freshly arrived from Mars with how poorly fitting this argument is. Every tabletop RPG I've ever played has the GM considering what would be fun instead of simply executing a perfect cold simulation. Every battle is some "this is what the wolves would do to have a good fight" instead of "it is maximally optimum for wolves to always use their best attack on the healer" or a simulation of "this is what real wolves would do" RPG wolves fight in a varied and interesting way that is generally a terrible and suboptimal idea for the wolves
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 20:20 |
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Every tabletop RPG I've ever played has the GM considering what would be fun instead of simply executing a perfect cold simulation. Every battle is some "this is what the wolves would do to have a good fight" instead of "it is maximally optimum for wolves to always use their best attack on the healer" or a simulation of "this is what real wolves would do" RPG wolves fight in a varied and interesting way that is generally a terrible and suboptimal idea for the wolves That’s a much newer play and design ethos that isn’t what Arivia is talking about. She’s talking about old school RPG’s where the GM is explicitly there to gently caress the players over in an adversarial way from an authorial/game design perspective and then is supposed to run the game in a “fair” way that is internally consistent even if it’s emulating genre conventions and not necessarily strict physical reality with perfectly researched wolf behavior or whatever. Part of the point is for players to overcome these challenges by thinking outside the box.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 20:28 |
|
Xiahou Dun posted:That’s a much newer play and design ethos that isn’t what Arivia is talking about. Eh, older games had lots more instant death mechanics but they were still games meant to be played. The GM is always in on it being a game. It's not like you'd be like "oh wow, he must be the best GM!" if you heard about a guy where no player ever got to play past their first battle at level one because the GM always wins. Like you say the point is to defeat the wolves by thinking outside of the box. The secret is, the GM is the guy who is facilitating that working. If you see rocks and outsmart the wolves by pushing them down on them, turns out the GM is the guy that decided there could be rocks there and they could fall on the wolves. He just wants it to be fun too. It wasn't like there was naturally occurring rocks he couldn't control being there then you made him really mad by ruining his wolves that he was simply doing everything to defeat you with.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 21:07 |
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:I would say once something simply exists it stops being part of the supernatural and starts being part of the natural. Like maybe we thought lighting was a god thing in the year 600BC but now we know what really causes it. If what really caused it turned out to be actually zeus, eventually the existence of zeus would also just be a part of the mundane world just as much as gamma particles making ionization trails and electron charges is. I don't really appreciate magic systems for the sake of magic systems rather than metaphors in non-game scenarios in general, but there are two things that are guaranteed to bug me - magic has to be inexplicable (which... it never was to people who believed magic is real) and magic has to abide by physical laws in some form (in which case, it's telekinesis or some other form of non-physical manipulation of matter, but not magic).
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 21:43 |
|
Xander77 posted:Ok? You'll have to define "supernatural" in a very modern sort of way for that to be a meaningful distinction, because people had carefully established and widely understood rules and rituals for magic, sacrifice, and contract with the gods \ spirits, who were, to them, perfectly real. People have been using the word supernatural in it's modern meaning for at least 700 years. People pretty quickly realized that the mystic world was real in a different sort of way than hogs and trees are real, even when they thought both existed.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 21:56 |
|
90s Cringe Rock posted:There's always Tékumel but setting aside the weird child sacrifice it turns out the creator was publishing ss revenge fanfic through a serious white nationalist press. Can you expand on this a bit? It sounds interesting and like a good thing for this thread, but I have no idea about any of it.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 22:57 |
|
Telsa Cola posted:I never really found it lovely because in order to be an atheist in that setting you have to ignore the many many many gods and divine poo poo and actual loving angels and demons popping out all willy nilly. Yeah, you kind of have to be an rear end in a top hat to be an atheist in FR. You can think the gods are huge pricks (they pretty much are) and think they should all be destroyed, but that doesn't make you an atheist; that makes you a Cyricist. Arivia posted:It's important to know that the D&D designers on 5e have publicly said they don't consider anything other than the actual 5e game book products canon so making critical comparisons between editions is now sadly illegible. Of course, whatever works for you and your game is what matters most. In one of the Avatar sequels, Mystra says that the gods of Kara-Tur's Celestial Bureaucracy are the Faerunian gods by different names. But that's just one aside in one novel. Owlofcreamcheese posted:Define your terms. Why would a buddhist think of Lorth as a "god" It's Lolth or Lloth. Salvatore moves that second L around, but he never adds an R.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 23:00 |
|
shimmy shimmy posted:Can you expand on this a bit? It sounds interesting and like a good thing for this thread, but I have no idea about any of it. More discussion starting here: Sax Solo posted:I don't think this was too well known before, but apparently the Tekumel / Empire of the Petal Throne guy, MAR (Phil) Barker, wrote a Nazi sci fi novel under a pseudonym -- Serpent's Walk. This is especially disappointing (and even a little odd) because Tekumel is one of the very few published RPG worlds that isn't shot through with white European medievalism.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 23:05 |
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:More discussion starting here: Haha, holy poo poo quote:Really not a bad book. Good fiction; would also be good from someone who is open and learning. It's a little on the weak side philosophically and very weak on the Jewish Problem (sort of makes them out to be just another bad group but not special really). But I will say it had a lot more explanations of political stances (from what I can remember) than some other fiction in it's uncommon/rare genre.
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 23:12 |
|
When you're role-playing an axe-wielding tiger up against the gargoyles from that show (and you're fourteen) I say go for it!
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 23:15 |
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Eh, older games had lots more instant death mechanics but they were still games meant to be played. The GM is always in on it being a game. It's not like you'd be like "oh wow, he must be the best GM!" if you heard about a guy where no player ever got to play past their first battle at level one because the GM always wins. Hey hoss, it’s not my gaming philosophy, I play hippy story games, but that is a play style and people love it. And that’s what is being discussed. Do you just make poo poo up about topics you don’t know about recreationally? Is that your weird hobby?
|
# ? Mar 15, 2022 23:52 |
|
Xiahou Dun posted:Hey hoss, it’s not my gaming philosophy, I play hippy story games, but that is a play style and people love it. He just got banned(+30) for doing some gross poo poo in CSPAM, so don't expect an answer lol. In tabletop games politics, I'm seeing scattered references (sourced in languages I don't read) that Ukrainian Azov fighters are specifically calling Chechens orcs who deserve to be slaughtered. D&D monster politics leading to actual real life war crimes, gross! https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/28/ukrainian-fighters-grease-bullets-against-chechens-with-pig-fat (And yes, orcs originally come from Tolkien but it's D&D and Warhammer and Warcraft that have kept the idea going strongest I think.) Arivia fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Mar 16, 2022 |
# ? Mar 16, 2022 16:07 |
|
The bayraktar song translation I saw most often did have a line calling the invaders orcs. No idea if that's leakage from the nazis.
|
# ? Mar 16, 2022 16:38 |
|
90s Cringe Rock posted:The bayraktar song translation I saw most often did have a line calling the invaders orcs. No idea if that's leakage from the nazis. There's this Russian literary interpetation that associates Russia with Mordor, and you find Russian Tolkien fans calling themselves "Orcs" This probably can be traced back to a 1999 Russian Lord of the Rings parody called "The Last Ringbearer", which had Mordor as this beacon of scientific progress opposed by western superstition. I'm oversimplified, and there's probably some racism involved, but it's not all racism. See here for more. https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/eye-sauron-moscow-revenge-orcs/#.YjIWQWkpA0F
|
# ? Mar 16, 2022 18:51 |
|
That parody gets shut down by the Tolkien Estate but that lovely, generic, LOTR-themed mobile game gets their approval.
|
# ? Mar 16, 2022 18:59 |
|
Also, in regards to the God Learners in Gloriantha, I don't even know if I'd call them deists so much as monotheists. The Invisible God of the God Learners realized that his immense essence and ineffiabilty made it hard for him to be worshiped, so he sent Malkion as a prophet to teach people how to live and achieve Solace, the Malkioni paradise, after death. (He would go on and send Hrestol, as well, but that was post God Learner). So it isn't that he doesn't care about mankind or their behavior, He's just too vast to be understood fully
|
# ? Mar 16, 2022 20:05 |
|
Hrestol was part of the God Learner world view. New Hrestol idealism was the post godlearner revival in Loskalm. Hrestol was at the dawn
|
# ? Mar 16, 2022 20:23 |
|
Josef bugman posted:Hrestol was part of the God Learner world view. New Hrestol idealism was the post godlearner revival in Loskalm. Hrestol was at the dawn Oops. Ok, so the Invisible God sent two prophets.... Weren't a lot of Hrestol's teachings about weakening the older caste system ?
|
# ? Mar 16, 2022 21:18 |
|
Epicurius posted:Oops. Ok, so the Invisible God sent two prophets.... Weren't a lot of Hrestol's teachings about weakening the older caste system ? Specifically they were a rejection of the Brinithi conception of the invisible God and the idea that there is a life after death. Hrestol appears to have had things to say on the caste system and how it should have either been moved through or ignored entirely. It's interesting, and I will get more into it later, but I do need to go to bed!
|
# ? Mar 17, 2022 00:07 |
|
Very early in the thread someone asked about the politics of Palladium games. All you really need to know is a quote from the FATAL & Friends thread regarding Palladium (and Kevin Siembieda in particular) that has stuck with me:quote:There comes a point where it no longer matters whether this is a dog whistle or if [Kevin's] just that stupid.
|
# ? Mar 17, 2022 20:43 |
|
I mean, the Autistic Savant character class in Beyond the Supernatural speaks for itself.
|
# ? Mar 17, 2022 21:55 |
|
All the talk earlier about whether classical buddhists were atheists or deists or not reminds me of that bit in The Name Of The Rose where William's talking about his political views. Dude's basically trying to describe a modern, enlightened representative democracy. But he's trying to do it without the necessary tools, theories, and philosophies because those didn't start to come together until several hundred years in the future.
|
# ? Mar 17, 2022 22:53 |
|
citybeatnik posted:All the talk earlier about whether classical buddhists were atheists or deists or not reminds me of that bit in The Name Of The Rose where William's talking about his political views. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Mar 18, 2022 |
# ? Mar 18, 2022 07:39 |
|
Xander77 posted:Any chance you could quote that? I'll need to track down my copy of the book, since it's a longish passage that I can't find quoted anywhere on the internet. It's just a potentially throw away section that's always stuck with me. And it ties in with things like Gloriantha because part of that game is being able to go "okay, have to get in the headspace of a bronze-age cow thief".
|
# ? Mar 18, 2022 14:14 |
|
Is it this bit? (Name of the Rose is a must read, IMHO)Chapter Terce posted:But now Bertrand del Poggetto was inviting William to expound the theses of the imperial theologians. William rose, reluctantly: he was realizing that the meeting was of no utility, and in any case he was in a hurry to leave, for the mysterious book was now more urgent for him, than the results of the meeting. But it was clear he could not evade his duty. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Mar 18, 2022 |
# ? Mar 18, 2022 15:39 |
|
That's the bit, yeah. Poor dude's fumbling about in the dark attempting to express a philosophy that we'd recognize today using contemporary theology during a time where they were burning heretics. It's like trying to carve a delicate flower out crystal using a lump hammer and a rock you found you found on the ground. Vampire: Dark Ages, White Wolf's vampire game set in (you guessed it) the dark ages touches on this vaguely and inelegantly. But at least the feudalistic mindset makes sense for the setting. It's when you have their modern games fumbling about going "yeah this is totes the way" that it goes off the loving rails.
|
# ? Mar 18, 2022 16:31 |
|
Ok, so it's not the idea of a republic (which was very well known to any educated medieval person), but rather a medievalist foundation for religious freedom (not familiar enough with the theology of the time to see if it actually makes sense). (As an aside, how do I get that Ukraine thread tag?)
|
# ? Mar 18, 2022 18:44 |
|
Xander77 posted:Ok, so it's not the idea of a republic (which was very well known to any educated medieval person), but rather a medievalist foundation for religious freedom (not familiar enough with the theology of the time to see if it actually makes sense). There's a bit in an early Discworld novel (Light Fantastic?) where Pratchett describe a character's outfit as "a diving suit designed by men who have never seen the sea" which has stuck with me whenever trying to consider "What ideas is this character aware of? What things couldn't they know given their circumstances? Even if they want something that I, too, want, what ideas and language would they have to express that idea?" There's a similar bit in HBO's Rome, talking about the stars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erPu_t7tgQ4
|
# ? Mar 18, 2022 19:05 |
|
Xander77 posted:Ok, so it's not the idea of a republic (which was very well known to any educated medieval person), but rather a medievalist foundation for religious freedom (not familiar enough with the theology of the time to see if it actually makes sense). Religious freedom, separation between church and state, *and* undoing the divine right of kings. William of Baskerville is dealing with a way of thinking that predates the Protestant Revolution by 200 years to try and express an idea that we *still* struggle with implementing today. It also pointedly *doesn't* make much sense with the main-stream theology, with William making edge cases and cherry picking bits and pieces while relying on Aristotelian logic to make his argument. The background of the story involves peasant uprisings brought about by arguments about how seriously one should take the vows of poverty coupled with "do you go to Hell *immediately* after you die or only after the Last Judgment?". In short it is very much a must read. When a game line tries to make value judgments about stuff and relies on 'well it's *always* been this way' (Werewolf's whole revanchist, blood purity set up is one I always look at) my knuckles itch. But when it involves removing the tools we use to comprehend stuff, or points out that they've been perverted (Mage the Awakening's Exarchs warping reality to write tyranny into its defining traits so they will always be in power) it bothers me less. And Glorianthia just goes whole hog which i appreciate. Unknown Armies's magic system is another one that comes to mind.
|
# ? Mar 18, 2022 21:21 |
|
Honestly, it just sounds like William is making a Ghibelline argument.
|
# ? Mar 18, 2022 22:09 |
|
|
# ? May 25, 2024 09:02 |
|
One thing that I've noticed about publishers is that the more obviously fraught a subject is, the better and more considerate the writing turns out even if the rest of their line has a bunch of moments (assuming the writer isn't a full-on chud). The oWoD supplement on Holocaust ghosts is a perfect example. Another great example can be found with the 2nd edition of the the Warhammer Fantasy RPG. There was a supplement for that RPG on Bretonnia, a land with rigidly codified rules for class and gender. And the book goes out of it's way to explain that if a player doesn't want to deal with that, they don't have to, they have full permission to be the special exception or not have it come up at all. And even if a player wants navigating a society that doesn't accept them to be part of their story, the book makes it clear that for all of Bretonnia's rules, it's relatively easy for an adventurer to take on a role that society says they shouldn't ('if someone is dressed as a knight, then clearly they are a knight!'). Overall it's very well thought out and goes out of its way to make sure that nothing the players aren't comfortable dealing with in their game gets tossed about just because "it's part of the setting". Meanwhile, the default polity the game is set in (the unimaginatively named "Empire") the topic of gender is "yeah some roles have pre-assumed gender preferences but men and women can have any occupation". And it seems that some of the writers took that as a green light to insert IRL misogamy into the game without any sort of warning or sidebar that perhaps this isn't cool with everyone at the table.
|
# ? Mar 20, 2022 16:29 |