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Splicer posted:To cut a big long post down to its core: race-specific fantasy nonsense like wings, regeneration, supernatural luck etc are all perfectly fine, because there's not a lot of real world racists arguing that black people do or do not have an acid spit attack. I thought some real-world racists did believe in rubbing a black man's head for luck. Which makes the way "halfling luck" works in some RPGs a bit uncomfortable, come to think of it. Anyway, my point wasn't that trolls need to get a bonus to Strength. My point is that if you're not going to give trolls a bonus to Strength, don't precede the troll mechanics by saying that trolls are super-strong!
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Mar 14, 2024 01:54
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| # ? May 23, 2024 06:39 |
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"Troll society elevates those who take on the most physically demanding tasks. Those who grow up in troll culture will typically train for and compete in their local annual Strong Troll contest. If you grew up in a troll settlement, +2 STR"
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Mar 14, 2024 02:02
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Silver2195 posted:I thought some real-world racists did believe in rubbing a black man's head for luck. Which makes the way "halfling luck" works in some RPGs a bit uncomfortable, come to think of it.
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Mar 14, 2024 02:02
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Tarnop posted:"Troll society elevates those who take on the most physically demanding tasks. Those who grow up in troll culture will typically train for and compete in their local annual Strong Troll contest. If you grew up in a troll settlement, +2 STR" Splicer fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 02:06
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Well when you put it like that
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Mar 14, 2024 02:09
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I remember Orkworld being this whole John Wick super RPG after he got fired from AEG. It has a whole anthropological account thingy going on in it. It tries to answer a lot of the orc stuff from Tolkien by making orcs the protagonists but it always felt a bit too far but also not far enough. Decent read now though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkworld
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Mar 14, 2024 02:11
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PuttyKnife posted:I remember Orkworld being this whole Actually, as Ron Edwards pointed out in his review of Orkworld, it's about D&D orcs, which have surprisingly little resemblance to Tolkien orcs. Ron Edwards posted:The primary concept relies on a shared RPG concept of "ork" that will be familiar from Earthdawn, Harn, and AD&D, including an old Mayfair supplement called Dark Folk. These creatures are basically humanoid pigs - hungry, crude, rude, tribal, not especially clean, and regarded as animals with no right to live by all and sundry. As Wick acknowledges, the foundation for this concept is probably Glorantha's famous trolls; furthermore, again as he acknowledges in the text, this concept has little or nothing to do with Tolkien's orcs and is entirely a product of RPG culture. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 02:12
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Tarnop posted:Well when you put it like that
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Mar 14, 2024 02:15
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Silver2195 posted:Actually, as Ron Edwards pointed out in his review of Orkworld, it's about D&D orcs, which have surprisingly little resemblance to Tolkien orcs. But then I have to have read Ron Edwards
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Mar 14, 2024 02:48
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So, there's also confusion because of D&D's longstanding shittiness as regards the interaction of ability scores and skills. Because yeah, in D&D, having a high strength doesn't just make you strong, it also makes you athletically gifted. And in fiction, your classic troll is absolutely not athletically gifted, but they are absolutely strong simply by virtue of their size. They're like 12 feet tall and probably weigh literally a ton. There's a certain point beyond which size is the only thing that matters: it's why nobody is going to try wrestle a hippo. Now maybe your world runs on cartoon rules where the tiny old granny can pick up and toss a pickup truck if she trained hard enough. But not every fantasy world works that way. In some fantasy worlds, any healthy adult troll should be able to pick up and toss any human - that's what makes them scary after all. How do you do that in D&D without also making the troll good at running, climbing, jumping, and soccer? Uh, you don't. Or at least not with their strength score. I guess you have to write a bunch of crap about how they have higher lifting capacity and can throw things farther and have bonuses to a couple of specific skills like wrestling and ice hockey, and they have a higher encumbrance and etc... but they don't just have +2 to strength because that would make them better swimmers.
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Mar 14, 2024 03:00
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I mean, there are aquatic trolls; they must have gotten in that water somehow
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Mar 14, 2024 03:03
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Silver2195 posted:I thought some real-world racists did believe in rubbing a black man's head for luck. Which makes the way "halfling luck" works in some RPGs a bit uncomfortable, come to think of it. Quite a lot of racism and bigotry flat out does come down to believing certain kinds of humans have superpowers. Black people basically breathe fire as far as cops are concerned, Asians are a literal hive mind, trans people are walking rape elementals, etc.
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Mar 14, 2024 03:37
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Silver2195 posted:Actually, as Ron Edwards pointed out in his review of Orkworld, it's about D&D orcs, which have surprisingly little resemblance to Tolkien orcs. Edwards description does not match earthdawn orcs in any way. Jfc
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Mar 14, 2024 04:57
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Splicer posted:Trolls being "naturally athletically gifted, it's just biology" has connotations, but the even bigger problem is trolls /not/ being able to start with elf level intelligence. my favorite example of this is the previous edition of Shadowrun (or is it two editions back now...) where in the core game book they explicitly state "there is absolutely no difference in intelligence between the races, that's a racist myth," then you turn the page and the game rules tell you that orcs have a -1 and trolls have a -2 to their maximum intelligence scores that cannot be overcome no matter what
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Mar 14, 2024 06:33
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That’s because orcs and trolls are “metatypes”, not races.
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Mar 14, 2024 08:06
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Jimbozig posted:So, there's also confusion because of D&D's longstanding shittiness as regards the interaction of ability scores and skills. Because yeah, in D&D, having a high strength doesn't just make you strong, it also makes you athletically gifted. And in fiction, your classic troll is absolutely not athletically gifted, but they are absolutely strong simply by virtue of their size. They're like 12 feet tall and probably weigh literally a ton. There's a certain point beyond which size is the only thing that matters: it's why nobody is going to try wrestle a hippo. They can instead be Large for being troll, which comes with a set package of benefits such as a higher carrying and lifting capacity than their raw strength score may indicate, and possibly as a thematic tag to justify bennie use. Theoretically "Large" could even come with +2 starting str (though for game balance reasons I'd avoid doing that). The key is that Large creatures share these traits as a function of their (humanly unachievable) size, not directly because of their respective species or culture. Because str and int are both innocuous looking numbers written down in the same list +2 str for being an X strongly implies that someone somewhere can take +2 int for being something other than an X - which is part of the real motivation behind "Black people are just naturally athletically gifted". Being 12 foot tall and 6 foot wide is along the lines of having wings - you can only have a matching "Bastion of rationality and civilisation due to my racially/culturally superior skintone" ability if someone actively sits down and writes one, which requires a lot more conscious effort and motivation than "Galandriel seemed pretty smart. high elves +2 int" Splicer fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 09:03
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e: nm
The Deleter fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 10:27
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hyphz posted:That’s because orcs and trolls are “metatypes”, not races. They’re referred to as both, interchangeably. The intelligence stat changes its meaning between each edition, with 1st being a direct D&D analogue to 2nd being a replacement for perception. 4th and later split intelligence into logic and intuition, with orcs and trolls taking a penalty to logic, which genuinely just made them worse at some types of magic and decking. Meaning if you made a troll decker, you were just plain slightly shittier than the other metatypes at those things, and gave you another reason not to touch the ruleset that has always been a pain in the butt. Shadowrun diverged from the D&D version of int because FASA was as much about selling the novels as the ttrpgs as that was how the authors paid their bills. Having all of the trolls being window licking paste eaters really limited what kind of characters you could write, so it was dropped really quickly. Orks and trolls being the square peg in the corporate dystopia fits pretty well into the setting. They perform worse on the standardized tests the corporate farm schools produce, which they in turn use to justify not hiring them, limiting their advancement, or paying them less. The fact that they can do so much more than a base human is just completely (intentionally) neglected by the setting. They’re hired for their physical strength, but never compensated for their abilities.
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Mar 14, 2024 11:47
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ninjoatse.cx posted:Meaning if you made a troll decker, you were just plain slightly shittier than the other metatypes at those things, It has always been a major failing of Shadowrun that being an internet troll is disincentivized.
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Mar 14, 2024 13:28
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i like that in 5e they let you put the ability score bonuses wherever but i don't like that they couldn't do it without apologizing "dwarfs are a stout and hardy folk" not mine, he's an indoor kid for sure
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Mar 14, 2024 13:31
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Splicer posted:They can't just have a strength bonus for being a troll because mental stats exist, so there's an implicit assumption that if they get +2 strength someone else may get +2 int, which is just trolls getting -2 int with extra steps. They do something similar with mental poo poo, with an innate-cleverness stat and a level-of-education stat, and I do not believe different species are presented as having differential bonuses to INT (EDU, maybe). There's a certain irony in the Call of Cthulhu system being better on this axis than D&D, isn't there 
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Mar 14, 2024 14:36
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I always disliked Size stats because it seemed ludicrous to have Strength, Constitution, and Size stats. It’s a little too fussily simulationist.
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Mar 14, 2024 14:47
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I would agree, although it's sort of a "if you HAVE to be this simulationist, this set of variables comes closest to actually quantifying meaningful differences." (e: this is a relative judgment, not an endorsement of BRP's modelling of human/intelligent-life's physical and mental abilities)
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Mar 14, 2024 14:48
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It’s interesting that, while few games remove ability scores entirely, the general trend in both “OSR” and “story game” circles is towards fewer of them. Most PbtA games, for example, have four ability scores. I’ve seen an OSR game that had four, called something like Body (Str and Con), Skill (Dex and the perception aspects of Wis), Mind (Int), and Personality (Cha and the willpower and divine magic aspects of Wis). Into the Odd and related games reduce ability scores to three by removing Int entirely in accordance with the OSR “player skill” mentality, and making perception mostly automatically successful, leaving Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower or Charisma.
Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 15:00
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Silver2195 posted:It’s interesting that, while few games remove ability scores entirely, the general trend in both “OSR” and “story game” circles is towards fewer of them. Most PbtA games, for example, have four ability scores. I’ve seen an OSR game that had four, called something like Body (Str and Con), Skill (Dex and the perception aspects of Wis), Mind (Int), and Personality (Cha and the willpower and divine magic aspects of Wis). Into the Odd and related games reduce ability scores to three by removing Int entirely in accordance with the OSR “player skill” mentality, and making perception mostly automatically successful, leaving Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower or Charisma. In my opinion, that is because at the end of the day the main difference between attributes and skills is how thinly they're sliced. Attributes can be as abstract as you want, after all. Smallville's Truth and Justice and Apocalypse World's Hot and Weird are still fundamentally attributes. If you chop attributes up finer than usual*, they just start to look like abstract skill lists. *Or just present them in a less crunchy format. WoD games have ten attributes if you count the nine core stats plus your splat's supernatural stat. I've seen games with skill lists that size.
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Mar 14, 2024 15:18
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Silver2195 posted:It’s interesting that, while few games remove ability scores entirely, the general trend in both “OSR” and “story game” circles is towards fewer of them. Most PbtA games, for example, have four ability scores. I’ve seen an OSR game that had four, called something like Body (Str and Con), Skill (Dex and the perception aspects of Wis), Mind (Int), and Personality (Cha and the willpower and divine magic aspects of Wis). Into the Odd and related games reduce ability scores to three by removing Int entirely in accordance with the OSR “player skill” mentality, and making perception mostly automatically successful, leaving Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower or Charisma.
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Mar 14, 2024 15:22
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I've seen well-considered systems that had more than the classic 6 (splitting up DEX is popular) and fewer (combining STR and CON is popular) but never that exact 6. I don't like BRP's SIZ either. It just feels weird and then plays into a bunch of derived calculations. I feel like dealing with very large and small monsters is better handled with something like D6's Scale stat if it's needed at all. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 15:35
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I wouldn’t say never; there’s a reason we ended up with the now-traditional six in published D&D, despite Arneson’s original campaign using a really bizarre set of eight or so. But the six we ended up with were definitely chosen with things like prime requisites and hirelings in mind, as well as a dungeon-crawl scenario in a pseudo-medieval setting. The higher-tech the setting, the less sense separating Str and Con makes, while the more “talky” the scenario, the less sense Cha being treated as only equal to the other five in importance makes.
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Mar 14, 2024 15:40
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Well yeah, D&D was the original. STR as a unique attribute makes sense if there's a limited number of mechanically-prescribed actions in the game and several importance ones use STR. In a game where forcing open doors and melee combat aren't constants, well, it's a different game.
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Mar 14, 2024 15:45
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GURPS has size provide a discount on strength but also a penalty in certain respects, though size isn't really how it differentiates between normal human-ish sized things but, for example, how it distinguishes a human from a halfling or like, a Predator or something. I kinda get what size is getting at in BRP, but i don't have enough experience with it to really offer a useful critique.
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Mar 14, 2024 15:46
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Lambo Trillrissian posted:my favorite example of this is the previous edition of Shadowrun (or is it two editions back now...) where in the core game book they explicitly state "there is absolutely no difference in intelligence between the races, that's a racist myth," then you turn the page and the game rules tell you that orcs have a -1 and trolls have a -2 to their maximum intelligence scores that cannot be overcome no matter what Mine is classic AD&D opening with a long pretentious diatribe (the only thing Gygax could write) that you won't find such pointless frippery as differences between the sexes in these pages. Then two pages later women have lower maximum strengths than men.
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Mar 14, 2024 15:46
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I don't care what Peterson or Appelcline have to say on the matter. AD&D1e was designed by letting everyone in Lake Geneva write their house rules on a slip of paper and throwing them all in a bucket.
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Mar 14, 2024 15:53
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't care what Peterson or Appelcline have to say on the matter. AD&D1e was designed by letting everyone in Lake Geneva write their house rules on a slip of paper and throwing them all in a bucket. With all the drafts recently popping up finally, you aren’t wrong (and they were because you can only learn so much buying old materials from old, unhealthy gamers who need cash for hospital stuff and have old campaign poo poo from 50 years ago or more).
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Mar 14, 2024 16:25
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hyphz posted:That’s because orcs and trolls are “metatypes”, not races. Hey hyphz, quick question, what do you mean by this
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Mar 14, 2024 16:33
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Because I sure hope you don't mean "it's okay to describe these fictional races as culturally or genetically stupider because we used a different word instead of race" and I'm missing some facetiousness in your text or something
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Mar 14, 2024 16:36
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get his rear end
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Mar 14, 2024 16:43
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The Deleter posted:Because I sure hope you don't mean "it's okay to describe these fictional races as culturally or genetically stupider because we used a different word instead of race" and I'm missing some facetiousness in your text or something I'm pretty sure the obvious read was "there's no difference between races, as in real world races, but there is a difference between the metatypes", which is still not any better given how racially coded the metatypes get. But it's a hell of a lot better of a reading than you going out of your way and twisting words to portray hyphz as a racist, dude.
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Mar 14, 2024 16:49
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My apologies, I retract my statement
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Mar 14, 2024 16:49
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hyphz isn't racist metatypist though!
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Mar 14, 2024 16:50
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| # ? May 23, 2024 06:39 |
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I assume he’s not considering them “races” in that Goblinization meant you could have Black trolls and Caucasian trolls, etc, but in practice they are very much treated as ethnic/cultural groups. The child of a troll is also a troll. I don’t think Goblinization even happens after the initial return of magic. (actually, I don’t recall Shadowrun ever commented on multi-metaethnic characters, which is probably for the best)
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