TG Chat Thread 2017

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Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

Cease to Hope posted:

that’s it, rpgcodex. and it’s full of just straight up hateful garbage

Honestly he posts worse forums that's are full of headpunchers, spergs and virgs, absolute loving cowards useless wastes of space and I ain't complaining.

# ? Oct 25, 2017 21:27

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 04:57

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

Cease to Hope posted:

that�s it, rpgcodex. and it�s full of just straight up hateful garbage

Does he actually post there? I'm pretty sure they hate him.

# ? Oct 25, 2017 21:50

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Vaguely speaking of which, I know people in here like to talk about the 4e videogame that never materialized. I recently picked up Tales of Maj'eyal, which takes a ton of cues from 4e and is generally super fun, if dense. I know there's a party mod of some kinda that's apparently fairly good as well, if you want to control a whole party.

# ? Oct 25, 2017 22:14

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

the whole point of the "making it like a video game" line is to suggest that they dropped the things that make tabletop rpgs different from videogames (and the new yorker piece is pretty explicit about this), which is clearly bullshit

Yeah. It really is because the whole "online celeb TRPG revival" started in the heyday of 4e and early OSR, crediting 5e with it isn't quite right.

Personally I'm just more bugged by mainstream authors using fantasy metaphors to show how "with it" they are. C'mon, don't. Don't do that. Please stop.

# ? Oct 25, 2017 22:44

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

The weird thing is the one time the 4E marketing actually mentioned MMOs it was as a negative, all about "So we looked at how tanking in MMOs worked, how the tank classes use abilities to generate hate that makes enemies more likely to attack them and we figured that this would not work with a tabletop game, since the monsters are under the control of the DM" so then they came up with Marking instead.

But just the idea of them looking at MMOs at all broke people.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 00:36

Kai Tave: Jul 2, 2012; Fallen Rib

A decade ago, when designers attempted to impose their iron-fisted vision of video gamification upon the noble role-playing hobby, the period historians term The Dark Age began. Thousands of gamers across the land were subject to brutal deterministic torture at the hands of convicted war criminal Rob Heinsoo's controversial DM-O-Trons, unfeeling constructs powered by the souls of accountants and haunted copies of World of Warcraft. These automatons inflicted unspeakable amounts of rules upon their unfortunate players, and the death toll would have been higher if not for the brave efforts of the resistance, led by Mike Mearls (continued on page 43)

# ? Oct 26, 2017 01:20

OpenlyEvilJello: Dec 28, 2009

To me, the New Yorker piece read like the author lacked any personal experience with TTRPGs and just took the opinions of interviewees at face value.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 01:37

Ettin: Oct 2, 2010

Haystack posted:

I wonder what's with the weird paucity of Harry-Potter-esque academy-based RPGs. Most other nerd genres have at least one popular take on them, why not the biggest, most influential fantasy series in recent history?

How about Breakfast Cult? :getin:

# ? Oct 26, 2017 01:54

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

determinism yourself and face to gamification

# ? Oct 26, 2017 02:05

Cascade Jones: Jun 6, 2015

Ettin posted:

How about Breakfast Cult?

I�m going to use Breakfast Cult for my Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality campaign coming up.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 02:05

kingcom: Jun 23, 2012

OpenlyEvilJello posted:

To me, the New Yorker piece read like the author lacked any personal experience with TTRPGs and just took the opinions of interviewees at face value.

Yeah this is basically what I got out of it . Like they had some tangential interest and they talked to a friend and thought it might be an interesting side piece on this thing that had always been this far off pop culture you've all heard of and asked some people to write it up.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 02:05

Magnusth: Sep 25, 2014; _{Hello, Creature! Do You Despise Goat Hating Fascists? So Do We! Join Us at Paradise Lost!}

Something interesting: In international larp scenes, and, i believe, especially finish larp scenes, harry potter larps have been common and accepted for a long while, and the single most high-profile and high-polish larp series started as a harry potter larp in poland.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 02:37

Kai Tave: Jul 2, 2012; Fallen Rib

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

determinism yourself and face to gamification

Please don't tell people about my tattoo, thank you.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 02:48

Blockhouse: Sep 7, 2014; You Win!

Halloween Jack posted:

I think that Ellis' futurist schtick did not actually prepare him for Online.

The bizarre thing is that he mentioned working on that script, in that thread, in 2008. Unless he first wrote a Castlevania manga I don't know about, that's some development hell.

Yeah, it was development hell. Netflix's MO over the last two years has been to buy up any floundering project they can and throw money at it to get it on their service. Castlevania was originally going to be three DTV movies but stalled out, Neo Yokio was finished for that Fox animation block but never released, etc etc.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 03:14

RocknRollaAyatollah: Nov 26, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

Blockhouse posted:

Yeah, it was development hell. Netflix's MO over the last two years has been to buy up any floundering project they can and throw money at it to get it on their service. Castlevania was originally going to be three DTV movies but stalled out, Neo Yokio was finished for that Fox animation block but never released, etc etc.

Was what was released of Castlevania one movie because that's pretty sad if so?

Castlevania wasn't bad, it was just a thing that happened and was better animated than some of the stuff coming out of Japan at that time, like Berserk. Then again, that's not hard because the latest Berserk series is comically bad.

I think Netflix is trying to find a good animated series since Voltron seems to have taken off in some circles but they'll never get a Cartoon Network or Disney level show unless they buy out VRV or something. I think it's hard for them to get some good people because traditional media still dominates that area. They're moving into anime pretty nicely though and they might be trying to apply that model to the US side.

EDIT: They have good animated shows oriented towards adults too so who knows why they're buying up all that stuff.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 03:59

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

With regards to 4th Edition D&D and its comparison to World of Warcraft, there's this excerpt from a Chris Perkins interview in Wizards Presents Worlds and Monsters:

quote:

We�ve been reading a lot about talent trees in 4th Edition. Will 4th Edition characters progress similarly to those in an MMORPG and was this sort of play dynamic the inspiration for the new 4th Edition rules?

Talent trees aren�t unique to MMORPGs. Wizards has produced other games that use talent trees, such as the d20 MODERN Roleplaying Game and the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition. The theory of game design, regardless of platform, is constantly evolving. We�ve taken our gaming experiences over the past decade, as well as player feedback on the games and supplements we�ve produced in that time period, to build a system for character creation and advancement in 4th Edition that draws inspiration from numerous sources, but isn�t exactly like anything that�s been done before.

It seems as though many of the changes and new rules in 4th Edition were inspired or emulate the ease-of-use of the current generation of MMO. How has the popularity of such systems affected D&D and how has it contributed to creation of 4th Edition�s game systems?

Just as MMOs have looked to the D&D game for inspiration, so too have we learned a few things from MMOs. (And not just MMOs, but games of all kinds.) However, the D&D game is not an MMO, nor are we turning it into one. As it happens, certain things that work well in MMOs also work well in tabletop RPGs. For example, we like the idea of being able to create different �builds� within a single character class, so that one player�s 5th-level fighter can look and feel different from another player�s 5th-level fighter. This is something we experimented with in various other game products produced by Wizards in recent years.

Not only did they categorically reject the idea that they were trying to "emulate" MMOs, but the defensiveness of the answer suggests, at least to me, that they were aware of the comparisons to WoW, and that the comparisons were not complimentary ones, and they were trying to push back on it.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 06:03

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

kingcom posted:

Yeah this is basically what I got out of it . Like they had some tangential interest and they talked to a friend and thought it might be an interesting side piece on this thing that had always been this far off pop culture you've all heard of and asked some people to write it up.

the only reason this is surprising is because the new yorker tends to be better than this, even on "non-serious" stuff

# ? Oct 26, 2017 06:20

Kai Tave: Jul 2, 2012; Fallen Rib

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

the only reason this is surprising is because the new yorker tends to be better than this, even on "non-serious" stuff

I cannot bring myself to imagine that anybody working for the New Yorker gives enough of a poo poo about D&D to sift through a decade's worth of really dumb edition warring in order to really get to the heart of the matter.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 06:27

Der Waffle Mous: Nov 27, 2009; In the grim future, there is only commerce.

Christ, what an rear end in a top hat!

# ? Oct 26, 2017 06:29

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Kai Tave posted:

I cannot bring myself to imagine that anybody working for the New Yorker gives enough of a poo poo about D&D to sift through a decade's worth of really dumb edition warring in order to really get to the heart of the matter.

by and large, if the new yorker gives enough of a poo poo to write an article about something, they give enough of a poo poo not to make really obvious errors. being really diligent about even the small stuff is something they're known for

# ? Oct 26, 2017 06:51

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

Kai Tave posted:

I cannot bring myself to imagine that anybody working for the New Yorker gives enough of a poo poo about D&D to sift through a decade's worth of really dumb edition warring in order to really get to the heart of the matter.

End of the article says they were running three games a week at one point :thinkum:

# ? Oct 26, 2017 06:52

Kai Tave: Jul 2, 2012; Fallen Rib

Arivia posted:

End of the article says they were running three games a week at one point :thinkum:

Let's be real here though, there's a pretty vast gulf between caring enough about D&D to want to play it a bunch and caring to try and reconstruct a close-to-factual account of a decade's worth of people spouting vitriol about MMOs and Warlords shouting arms back on. I'm not even really trying to throw shade at the New Yorker (though that article is pretty dumb) because so much of this stuff is scattered to hell and breakfast across a dozen blogs, G+ accounts, forums, etc over a period of nearly ten years (I guess you could narrow it down to about four if you just wanted to count the lifespan of 4E in and of itself), and a lot of it is going to boil down to "which collection of random internet users do I trust more?" I mean I actually got to experience the entire thing play out in realtime from the day 4E launched (and the print proof pdfs were leaked the same week) to the day Monte Cook wanted to tell us all about a little something he liked to call passive perception, and I'm trying to imagine sitting down and having to explain to someone at the New Yorker what the deal with "dissociated mechanics" is and why that was such a huge point of contention and it's like I can feel myself slowly going mad.

Part of it is just that the field of "critically examining tabletop RPGs" is virtually nonexistent. Like just from a very basic premise the idea that "4E is dumb and bad like a video game because it has too many rules, unlike these other editions" fails the moment you prick it with a pin, but a lot of people, even people who play a shitload of D&D, aren't predisposed to approach it that way. People that really care about digging into elfgames that way are a distinct minority overall, and so it wouldn't surprise me if the New Yorker's roleplaying contingent A). saw all the highly visible bitching about 4E being like an MMO and B). looked into 4E and came away agreeing with that assessment.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 07:29

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

Basically almost nobody actually examines their own hobbies critically.

In turn, I've absolutely met people who get pissy about 4e being all "video gamey" who've literally never once even watched someone else play it. But they heard blah blah blah, so it must be true.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 07:55

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I mean you don't even really need to "edition war" to come to the conclusion that "more rules = worse than" is a dumb take. It's not a refusal to delve into the history of D&D - it's buying into stereotypes about magical tea party poo poo and refusing to read even the actual thing you're talking about.

Like, the 5e PHB is 319 pages. That's not nothing.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 08:03

Elfgames: Sep 11, 2011; Fun Shoe

Simian_Prime posted:

Good, gently caress him. That Netflix Castlevania series he did loving sucked.

�Oi, mate, what this here game about whipping vampire needs is me Dick Dorkins athiest hot takes, is what. We needs a Konami code to fight the Pope, is what.�

except castlevania was really good? and i didn't see any atheist takes at all since uh god is apparently real and an actual force for good, like the church was corrupt but when a faithful preist consecrated the water it was actual holy water and harmed demons. like it would have been better if it had been a few more episodes or paced a bit quicker to get to some more monster fights but making the game 1 for 1 into a show would be a bit hard.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 08:07

Kai Tave: Jul 2, 2012; Fallen Rib

ProfessorCirno posted:

Basically almost nobody actually examines their own hobbies critically.

In turn, I've absolutely met people who get pissy about 4e being all "video gamey" who've literally never once even watched someone else play it. But they heard blah blah blah, so it must be true.

Same. I don't assume that most of the people I've run into out in the real world who tell me how much of a video game MMO anti-roleplaying roleplaying game are doing so because they're actively disingenuous, it's because by this point that's just become a sort of received wisdom passed along from other people in their social circles who got it from other people who in turn might have picked it up from somebody's 20,000 word essay on why martial daily powers are what actually caused 9/11.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 08:24

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Nuns with Guns posted:

Kate had to put out a psa on her Twitter a few years ago asking goons to stop apologizing for that every time they saw her in person.

Did anyone apologise for all the goons apologising for the other goons? And then someone else apologise for all the goons apologising for all the goons apologising for the other goons? And did someone write a pair of recursive Twitter bots that just apologised for each other constantly?

# ? Oct 26, 2017 08:57

Lurdiak: Feb 26, 2006; I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.

Halloween Jack posted:

I think that Ellis' futurist schtick did not actually prepare him for Online.

The bizarre thing is that he mentioned working on that script, in that thread, in 2008. Unless he first wrote a Castlevania manga I don't know about, that's some development hell.

It was supposed to be a movie when he was working on it. Which explains why the 4 episodes of that cartoon feel like the first act of a 90 minute movie despite being stretched out to an hour.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 10:45

Runa: Feb 13, 2011

Lurdiak posted:

It was supposed to be a movie when he was working on it. Which explains why the 4 episodes of that cartoon feel like the first act of a 90 minute movie despite being stretched out to an hour.

Yeah, it was a pretty good start but in serious need of some trimming down. Also the rest of the story.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 11:05

Lemon-Lime: Aug 6, 2009

Lurdiak posted:

It was supposed to be a movie when he was working on it. Which explains why the 4 episodes of that cartoon feel like the first act of a 90 minute movie despite being stretched out to an hour.

They feel like the first movie out of a trilogy, really.

Which makes sense, since it's the first four episodes of a 12-episode show.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 11:19

occamsnailfile: Nov 4, 2007; zamtrios so lonely; Grimey Drawer

My experience with 3E was almost entirely Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, so when people complain about 4E being 'like a video game' I'm like 'yes please make one'. :

:

Also of course the ridiculousness of claiming 3E is a creative land of freedom & creativity and 4E is all blinkered rules, man.

I mean I'd rather not sit down to TT and play any edition of D&D, I'd like to play almost literally anything else, but they do make some good videogames.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 15:29

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

ProfessorCirno posted:

Basically almost nobody actually examines their own hobbies critically.

Plus this hobby is based around only one in five or six people being exposed to the damage of full systems. If I run a bad system, I can either exhaust countless hours trying to plug holes or leave my players in the lurch, but if I provide a bad experience the blame ultimately lies on me.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 16:57

ZorajitZorajit: Sep 15, 2013; No static at all...

occamsnailfile posted:

My experience with 3E was almost entirely Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, so when people complain about 4E being 'like a video game' I'm like 'yes please make one'. ::

Also of course the ridiculousness of claiming 3E is a creative land of freedom & creativity and 4E is all blinkered rules, man.

I mean I'd rather not sit down to TT and play any edition of D&D, I'd like to play almost literally anything else, but they do make some good videogames.

I didn't care for 4e at the table but it's a drat shame it never got proper video games, and I'm still surprised that nobody filed the serial numbers off like they have for half a hundred 3.X properties like Low Magic Age.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 19:31

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ZorajitZorajit posted:

I didn't care for 4e at the table but it's a drat shame it never got proper video games, and I'm still surprised that nobody filed the serial numbers off like they have for half a hundred 3.X properties like Low Magic Age.

I don't know any of the background around it's development, but pillars of eternity certainly feels pretty 4e-inspired (unfortunately the story and character work is a bit blah)

# ? Oct 26, 2017 19:34

Andrast: Apr 21, 2010

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

I don't know any of the background around it's development, but pillars of eternity certainly feels pretty 4e-inspired (unfortunately the story and character work is a bit blah)

I wish pillars combat was even a fraction as good as 4e.

# ? Oct 26, 2017 19:35