|
Evil Mastermind posted:The Platinum Index will be going PWYW on DriveThru, too, once they get the ebook versions sorted out. It's already up (though PDF-only, with the ebook versions coming soon)
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2015 03:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 23:26 |
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Designers & Dragons is really good and worth way more than $20 alone.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2015 06:46
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:When does it get good? I started at the start with the 70s and was bored as poo poo and eventually gave up after it failed to get better. I bought the whole set of ebooks as a bundle a while back, so if there is a more interesting volume then I might give it another try. Or maybe it's just not to my taste - that's possible, too. Maybe you just don't care about Judges Guild as much as I do?
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2015 10:58
|
|
|
occamsnailfile posted:There's drama? This sounds almost as good as getting the book! Basically the author was not a capable project leader and then blamed everyone else for any problems encountered on the project, in the process managing to burn every bridge that could be burnt.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2015 14:20
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:When does it get good? I started at the start with the 70s and was bored as poo poo and eventually gave up after it failed to get better. I bought the whole set of ebooks as a bundle a while back, so if there is a more interesting volume then I might give it another try. Or maybe it's just not to my taste - that's possible, too. I dunno what to say, skip to a company or era you find more formative or interesting? It is kind of dry and straightforward. But you have to want to know a lot of inside baseball stuff about RPGs. But ultimately just skip to the companies you find most engaging, you won't be penalized if you don't read up on Midkemia Press or Heritage Models. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Jun 26, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 04:28
|
|
|
Yeah, I won't pretend it's inherently interesting, but if you are way into RPG industry history Designers & Dragons is an incredible resource.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 04:33
|
|
|
Plague of Hats posted:Yeah, I won't pretend it's inherently interesting, but if you are way into RPG industry history Designers & Dragons is an incredible resource.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 05:43
|
|
|
Today, thanks to the miracle of Facebook tagging, I realized that I went to church for many years with Jonathan Tweet and his family and hung out at his house a few times and never put 2 and 2 together. What a small and weird world it is.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 06:13
|
|
|
Sixto Lezcano posted:Today, thanks to the miracle of Facebook tagging, I realized that I went to church for many years with Jonathan Tweet and his family and hung out at his house a few times and never put 2 and 2 together. Jonathan Tweet was inside a church?
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 07:06
|
|
|
Kellsterik posted:Jonathan Tweet was inside a church? I'm a Unitarian. It doesn't count.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 07:13
|
|
|
I've started replaying Neverwinter Nights 2 recently. Objectively, it's a mess. Act 1 is already incredibly tedious and not getting any better from what I hear. Turn-based mechanics in a real-time game are not a good fit, and I desperately wish there was a way to adjust the AI's targetting; I'm playing a warlock and around 1/4 of my eldritch blasts poof away into nothingness because my frontline fighter drops the targetted enemy the second I start casting, and you can't retarget. Not to mention how the enemy AI zeroes in on you and you alone. As far as the story goes, they should have dropped the pretense of letting you make your own character and had you start out with the guy they obviously wrote the campaign (and AI) for, Generic Lawful Good Paladin. Or, like, let you pick from 3-4 characterizations at the start independent of class/alignment/stuff. And yet I'm still having fun playing it. I think it's a reptile brain "numbers go up" thing. What's more, I'm starting to think I could actually have fun playing 3.5 again despite all the evidence to the contrary. Probably should give it a rest before I do something stupid.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 07:22
|
|
|
NWN2, much like the Infinity Engine games, papers over the player agency issues of their tabletop equivalents because you're controlling the whole party at a time - it'd suck if you were just the Warlock and the Fighter kept invalidating your turn 1 real-time minute after another. I've often wondered why none of these D&D games ever went fully turn-based and grid-based after the Gold Box series. Would have been a much better fit and probably would have made the system more understandable for people who didn't come from a tabletop background.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 07:36
|
|
|
Probably because Baldur's Gate was such a big hit, along with Planescape Torment. I get the impression a lot of the later games were really trying to make that lightning strike again. I also found NWN 2 oddly fun (I also played a warlock as well), despite a lot of obvious flaws. It was certainly a lot more entertaining than the first one. I recall my favorite of the old D&D games pre-BG were the Dark Sun ones, Shattered Lands and Wake of the Ravager. I loved those games. Which is especially odd since I had no experience with D&D at the time and the games made absolutely no effort to be accessible to players who didn't know the system. Especially egregious since it was 2nd edition so not only did I have no idea what "2d4" meant but I also had a bunch of terms like THACO and AC that kept going down or up seemingly at random.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 07:59
|
|
|
I had serious starting difficulties as well. I restarted something like three or four times with different characters, which closely mimics my actual real-life 3.5 playing. I actually tried playing the game years ago and it was just the same then. Play a warlock - but all the enemies rush you and the dialogue options push you too much towards lawful or evil. Ranger! Dinosaur companion! Awesome! Nope, not awesome, what little tactics playing as a warlock brought is gone now, you just click an enemy and wait until the fight is over. Go with a prestige class - nope now I have to plan out this character from level 1-20 and I can't be bothered. I wish they'd had Duskblades. Only 3.5 class I ever really had fun and stuck with. In the end I went back to the warlock and got used to the fact that if I get bored, I can switch to a companion for a while. And also edited a file to remove the alignment restriction.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 08:16
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:I had serious starting difficulties as well. I restarted something like three or four times with different characters, which closely mimics my actual real-life 3.5 playing. I actually tried playing the game years ago and it was just the same then. Play a warlock - but all the enemies rush you and the dialogue options push you too much towards lawful or evil. Ranger! Dinosaur companion! Awesome! Nope, not awesome, what little tactics playing as a warlock brought is gone now, you just click an enemy and wait until the fight is over. Go with a prestige class - nope now I have to plan out this character from level 1-20 and I can't be bothered. I wish they'd had Duskblades. Only 3.5 class I ever really had fun and stuck with. I found NWN2 interminably dull - its plot just didn't grab me. I skipped to mask of the betrayer, though, and that was absolutely excellent. It takes a good hard look at the forgotten realm's metaphysics and says 'this is bullshit', which is always fun.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 08:30
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:And yet I'm still having fun playing it. I think it's a reptile brain "numbers go up" thing. What's more, I'm starting to think I could actually have fun playing 3.5 again despite all the evidence to the contrary. Probably should give it a rest before I do something stupid. Imagine wading through all the poo poo you just mentioned only with 1000% more tedium and also you have to block off your Saturdays in order to do it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 08:34
|
|
|
I remember that NWN1 ran you through some tutorial stuff and then threw you into the action pretty quickly, and NWN2 having an interminable festival "story" as its tutorial. I think it was also paced like poo poo, because after you leave your starting village you just start picking up party members on even flimsier pretext than NWN1. Including some lady you literally just happen upon down the road and what amounts to "I'm sidekick material" back story spills out of her so, hey, new party member. What was the NWN1 expansion with Deekin the kobold bard? Undrentide? I liked him.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 08:57
|
|
|
It really wasn't until maybe halfway through the game that things picked up at all. I'm not actually certain why I stuck with it so long...I think I just didn't have any other games at the time that I could play easily while working.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 09:01
|
|
|
As long as you realize liking things is dumb, it's okay.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 09:03
|
|
|
Plague of Hats posted:As long as you realize liking things is dumb, it's okay. That is the important lesson. Don't enjoy anything, because it is terrible. To be a thing is to have flaws and to have flaws is unforgivable.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 09:19
|
|
|
The Temple of Elemental Evil actually had turn based combat and that was actually pretty good if you could overlook the bugs and how every combat encounter was against a bunch of bugbears. Knights of the Chalice was an indie adaptation of turn based d&d combat rules and it had actually decent encounter design (though the game designer is the groggiest of grognards) It's a mystery why anyone stuck with real time with pause, given that as far as I know no one liked it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 10:42
|
|
|
Tulpa posted:It's a mystery why anyone stuck with real time with pause, given that as far as I know no one liked it. I liked it* *In the Knights of the Old Republic games.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 15:06
|
|
|
Is there any truth to the fact that in the Blue Rose setting the good guys resort to mind control intollerant people? I assume it's bullshit willfully misintepreted by grognards afraid of change, but it never hurts to ask.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 17:50
|
|
|
paradoxGentleman posted:Is there any truth to the fact that in the Blue Rose setting the good guys resort to mind control intollerant people? From the main book section on crime and punishment: quote:Almost all criminals undergo counseling with healers who use the psychic arts to uncover mental and behavioral problems. Because psychic adepts can access people’s innermost thoughts, the success rate of this counseling is high; however, the psychic arts are only used to assist in understanding the root causes of antisocial behavior and to help criminals reform. Adepts don’t brainwash people into becoming good citizens. Both Aldin morals and the healer code of ethics affirm the mental sanctity of every being. Any long-term psychic influence, without a subject’s permission, is considered the foulest sorcery. The adept-priests of Jarzon using the psychic arts to forcibly “reform” criminals, heretics, and dissidents is one of many sources of tension between Aldis and Jarzon. A seriously uncharitable reading might interpret the "peace torc" as mind control, but the actual psychological rehabilitation is explicitly not. In fact using psychic powers to do things like that has harsh in-system negative consequences.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 18:40
|
|
|
Lemniscate Blue posted:A seriously uncharitable reading might interpret the "peace torc" as mind control, but the actual psychological rehabilitation is explicitly not. In fact using psychic powers to do things like that has harsh in-system negative consequences. I agree that it would come from an already unfriendly reading of the book, but the torc is a bit unsettling because it evokes the imagery of the "taking over the world for humanity's own good" stock setting. It's not hard to read that and picture these people having glassy eyes and not quite remembering their own names.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 18:51
|
|
|
Kellsterik posted:I agree that it would come from an already unfriendly reading of the book, but the torc is a bit unsettling because it evokes the imagery of the "taking over the world for humanity's own good" stock setting. It's not hard to read that and picture these people having glassy eyes and not quite remembering their own names. It sounds more like it's just a magical version of psychiatric meds for psychotics.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 18:58
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:It sounds more like it's just a magical version of psychiatric meds for psychotics. Definitely, but I think the imagery of an enchanted collar being put around your neck because you defied the government suggests something different from say, an herbal remedy.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:00
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:It sounds more like it's just a magical version of psychiatric meds for psychotics. Pretty much: Here's the description of the Calm arcana: You can drain intense emotion, calming those around you. The target creature must make a Will saving throw or be drained of all extremes of emotion. The creature is calm and incapable of taking violent action (although it can defend itself) or doing anything else destructive. Any aggressive action or damage against the subject breaks the effect. A successful Will save means the creature acts normally. This arcanum suppresses (but does not dispel) arcana relying on emotion, such as Heart Shaping. While the Calm effect lasts, the suppressed arcanum has no effect. Also, it only gets used on repeat offender violent criminals and murderers, so it's not really "anyone who's defied the government." unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jun 26, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:01
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:It sounds more like it's just a magical version of psychiatric meds for psychotics. They can literally use magic to make people sane. It's better than medication. I mean, you could play with the idea that bad guys use the same methods as mind control, but that still plays in the modern world with drugging people into submission and such.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:04
|
|
|
Yeah, if I were writing that section I'd have written it more like a Culture slap-drone from Iain M. Banks. You're free to feel or say anything you like forever, but as soon as you try to do anything violent you just stand at attention for a second. I suspect they were limited by a misguided "must be an existing spell/arcanum" notion and that seemed to be the best fit.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:05
|
|
|
Kellsterik posted:Definitely, but I think the imagery of an enchanted collar being put around your neck because you defied the government suggests something different from say, an herbal remedy. e: also the idea of a forehead tattoo is a bit  and the less said about "we hold all life sacred so don't do things that carry the death penalty" the better.
My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jun 26, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:19
|
|
|
Kellsterik posted:Definitely, but I think the imagery of an enchanted collar being put around your neck because you defied the government suggests something different from say, an herbal remedy. I agree, they should go back to the tried and true method of dealing with repeat violent criminals and simply executing them. Plus think of the money you'll save on enchanted collars, so it's not just more wholesome, it's fiscally responsible too. This right here is basically the number one problem with Blue Rose...it's not the magic deer, it's not gay people being gay, it's that every time people used to lovely game writers and their cliche "twists" about how the good guy kingdom is SECRETLY EVIL WOAH get their hands on it they simply can't accept the idea that no, maybe the good guy kingdom is just good and maybe a magical peace collar that's smart enough to allow you to defend yourself but won't let you continue to be a serial killer or lash out at others with your uncontrollable violent temper is probably way better than execution or imprisonment or having your hands chopped off or whatever, but no, obviously the people with these collars are going to be glassy-eyed lobotomized zombie thralls Psychic counseling that helps people? It must be an INSIDIOUS PLOT to engineer an army of sleeper agents! All that stuff they say about Jarzon being a bunch of jerks? Propaganda! What is the magic deer's secret agenda anyway!? You could probably make a drinking game out of it, every time you read something in Blue Rose where it's obvious another RPG writer would have made something good-seeming secretly "too good to be true" or "subverted" things by having it be a secret evil plot or part of some sinister conspiracy, take a shot.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:23
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:First thing that came to mind for me was Clockwork Orange's Ludovico technique, and frankly the spell description doesn't reduce that impression enough to be comfortable. Well, it's being rewritten as we speak so maybe some comments in the right places would cause the new writers to take a better approach.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:24
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:I agree, they should go back to the tried and true method of dealing with repeat violent criminals and simply executing them. Plus think of the money you'll save on enchanted collars, so it's not just more wholesome, it's fiscally responsible too. I do not think Blue Rose is bad. I enjoy reading about positive settings and genuinely good people. I oppose the death penalty and consider medication to be an effective way of treating depression. I do not think the passing mention of "peace torcs" should be interpreted as meaning that the good guys of this setting, and perhaps all "good guys" in general, are actually evil. I think that the writers of the roleplaying game "Blue Rose", who have complete control over what they do and do not include or say in their fictional world, did not need to state that the Kingdom of Aldis uses enchanted collars to control recalcitrant criminals. In my opinion, there are many other and perhaps even better ways they could have chosen to describe the criminal justice system of their idealized fictional world, such as that Aldis is a fundamentally healthier society and does not have repeat murderers in the first place, if they chose to mention the subject at all.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:43
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:I agree, they should go back to the tried and true method of dealing with repeat violent criminals and simply executing them. Plus think of the money you'll save on enchanted collars, so it's not just more wholesome, it's fiscally responsible too. It's just a lazy and easy solution to keep people have violent thoughts or mental illnesses but be unable to act on them due to pseudo ludovico technique instead of true rehabilitation by humanizing prisoners, but it's not essentially good or evil.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:47
|
|
|
I dunno, I don't think it's so bad. Yes, it's a little chilling to us, but it is straightforward about what it is and what it does--and it isn't presenting this as an unambiguously happy solution. It's people who are deeply concerned about evil in their midst using the best solution they can come up with, and that solution isn't entirely pleasant but neither is prison, lashings, exile, or execution. Execution may prevent recidivism but it is also very prone to irrevocable error, with the collars you can always just take them off again if you were wrong. Characters in-setting would be free to criticize it on those grounds without repercussion even--and they may not have mentioned it in the books but it could be a part of their own society that people are uncomfortable with confronting. Like Kai Tave said, it's a Good Kingdom that just isn't secretly evil somehow. It isn't perfect, it's still a monarchy for one thing, but for the most part it has succeeded at governing to the benefit of many of its people and I find that honestly refreshing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:50
|
|
|
I guess they could just have quietly ignored it and not mentioned it, but I guarantee that the first thing a bunch of gamers would have asked upon reading about Aldis is "okay but what do they do to criminals? What do they do to thieves or murderers (or rapists because, y'know, elfgames)? Does everybody just get along perfectly because of inherent goodness and the magic deer? This is bullshit!" And the next thing you know you've got threads full of people writing essays on their really cool subversive twist idea of how Aldis shuffles its undesirables off to concentration camps or shoves them all in a giant bottomless pit somewhere, and Jarzon are the secret good guys of the setting fighting against the Aldis Imperium's secret tyranny. I mean not to pick on you specifically here but nowhere in the mention of peace torcs or the description of the spell did it mention glassy eyes and forgetting your own name, but that's the first thing your mind went to when you saw that even though it's entirely unsupported by the text.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:51
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:e: also the idea of a forehead tattoo is a bit Okay, okay, I can see how the peace torc can be construed as to being creepy and oppressive, but how the hell is a cultural understanding that all people's lives are inherently valuable (even criminal's lives) and a brand of exile weird at all?
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:53
|
|
|
Kellsterik posted:In my opinion, there are many other and perhaps even better ways they could have chosen to describe the criminal justice system of their idealized fictional world, such as that Aldis is a fundamentally healthier society and does not have repeat murderers in the first place, if they chose to mention the subject at all. This would just be silly though. Blue Rose and its setting aren't about making some utopia that winds up in some sort of societal uncanny valley like "repeat murderers aren't a thing" - partly because the people in the setting are humans and some humans are just hosed up, but mostly because there's no point in adventuring in a genuine utopia. There needs to be exciting things for PCs to do, and in the setting part of that is resolving conflicts internal to the realm. Why cut off a whole segment of potential conflict for the PCs to encounter and resolve? Besides, it's such a natural question to ask given the setting description that not answering it would stand out like a sore thumb. What happens to criminals? Well, they are offered magic counseling and rehabilitation. If they don't want that? It's against our principles to force it (and dangerous to boot) so what now? As has been pointed out, there are issues with the peace torc and the Calm arcanum that make it not the most well thought out solution, and I hope the new authors have a better answer. But to ignore it completely would just have been weird. TheLovablePlutonis posted:It's just a lazy and easy solution to keep people have violent thoughts or mental illnesses but be unable to act on them due to pseudo ludovico technique instead of true rehabilitation by humanizing prisoners, but it's not essentially good or evil. They offer rehabilitation you doofus, they just don't force it on people because to them brainfucking is worse than magic benzoes. Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jun 26, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 19:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 23:26 |
|
|
GrizzlyCow posted:Okay, okay, I can see how the peace torc can be construed as to being creepy and oppressive, but how the hell is a cultural understanding that all people's lives are inherently valuable (even criminal's lives) and a brand of exile weird at all? The exile tattoo is a sentence of lifelong ostracism, though. Wherever you go people will recognize you as an unrepentant criminal - "hey, that's the tattoo they use in Aldis!" - , and presumably they're not as progressive everywhere as in Aldis. They're cautioning the exiles not to go where they will certainly be killed, but everywhere else is like, well something might happen to you or it might not anyway not our problem anymore bye now. And even without that it just evokes images from countless dystopian media where forehead branding is what the bad guys do.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2015 20:04
|
|