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mixitwithblop posted:How about not playing with min-maxing nerds instead.  Please, tell me more
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Feb 23, 2010 15:33
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People have actually proven it a billion times in TGD and YCS, and will probably be in here shortly to do it again now that you've posted that. I won't get into it because hopefully someone who can articulate it better (Ferrinus) will but in short none of the things you listed will actually present even the mildest threat to casters. Well, maybe I will a little: disabling a Fighter is the easiest thing because of (haha) Will saves and hit points don't matter when you can completely disable someone or take over their mind or whatever with magic For someone calling themselves Captain Obvious you're missing the most obvious thing in the world: the caster/non-caster imbalance and why it exists and how wrong your post was
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Feb 25, 2010 17:40
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You guys are getting awfully mad about a neat optional thing that some groups are gonna love
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Feb 26, 2010 03:17
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mixitwithblop posted:4E is better
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Feb 26, 2010 03:18
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They have to expend effort at some point after coasting on a reprint of someone else's rules Seriously though there are gonna be some people really excited about those apps (I think they're cool as hell and I don't even have an iphone) so I don't see how it's an effort waste. I mean look at the stupid poo poo you posted: quote:You can be un/minimally employed and still maintain a warhammer habit. I've seen it. I've done it. You can be un/minimally employed and still maintain a Pathfinder habit. I've seen it. (I wouldn't ever do it though.) Using things like Books and Paper and Dice you can still play the product, the iphone apps are optional, you don't have to buy them or even acknowledge they exist and look at how mad you are about them Also: quote:I didn't realize we could opt out of having paizo resources diverted into this effort waste. Because you can normally influence how Paizo directs their resources? I mean, would you get this stupid about things if they released a book of content you don't want (but other people do)?
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Feb 26, 2010 04:18
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I was genuinely prepared to actually praise Pathfinder for something other than its art and even the Pathfinder fans are bitching about it I'll do it anyway. That living character sheet thing sounds awesome and I'm jealous that 4e's not doing something like it. For groups that are all using i-whatevers it's gonna be really cool and those groups aren't as rare as people think. I'm not going to be able to look the 4e thread in the eye for weeks now, they're all going to know that I complimented Pathfinder/Paizo 
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Feb 26, 2010 04:20
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Gerund posted:But the flip side is that having an iPhone do all the squiggly math inherent in the "2000 spell buff" 3.5 base system is going to further invest the developers into doing nothing to make the game easier for people who don't have a spiffy gadget to do all the work for them. When did Paizo ever attempt to make the 3.5 system easier quote:What really makes it terrible is the fact that it is actually really drat nice to have the app on hand when a Dispel Magic effect takes out only 1/3rd of the buffs that the Cleric had running, Yeah that sounds terrible quote:and because that's the new expectation of the game players on the outside are having to struggle through an obviously poorly implemented design. If people are playing Pathfinder they are already struggling through an obviously poorly implemented design quote:But hey, if you're okay playing solely to the Model Train crowd and never having a group of teenagers play your game, then more power to you. Haha yeah those wacky Model Train guys
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Feb 26, 2010 05:25
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A lot of teenagers have iPhones though, or at least the iPod Touch. And I'm repeating myself here but these apps are optional they're not going to replace books and paper and dice they're just another tool for people to use That said, Pathfinder isn't marketed for new gamers anyway. It's a reprint of an older D&D system with some houserules specifically marketed and created for people who don't want to switch to the newest version for whatever reason. If new people are getting into this hobby, they're going to go with 4e (and eventually 5e or 6e). Well, or World of Darkness.
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Feb 26, 2010 05:53
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(This may come as a surprise to everyone, but) I'm not exactly the biggest fan of Pathfinder. But there's obviously a market for a game like this, so I'm glad somebody is working to make them happy. Other companies make games for different demographics, whether aiming specifically for older established gamers or trying to get new people in the hobby. That's cool too. The only thing I see weird about this is that iPod apps are actually more of a tool to market the system to new gamers, they're the ones most interested in using technology as part of the game.
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Feb 26, 2010 06:05
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quote:Are you really going to pick at semantics and rhetoric here? They're all but admitting that their game doesn't run well unless you have a smartphone to do the piles of math and are releasing a crutch to mitigate that. No they aren't how are you even coming to these asinine conclusions
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Feb 26, 2010 06:06
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Do you honestly think young people don't have iPhones or an iPod Touch
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Feb 26, 2010 06:26
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Hopefully this won't ignite another shitstorm because I'm genuinely curious, when they talked about the Pathfinder app did they mention a release date or even a rough estimate? I ended up getting someone's old ipod touch as a gift when they upgraded to a new model so I'll probably buy the drat thing just to see what kind of cool stuff it can do.
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Mar 3, 2010 02:44
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mixitwithblop posted:The dumb news: Blegh, the networking thing is really the only part I'm interested in.
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Mar 4, 2010 00:12
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happyelf posted:ha ha youall fell for the killer app launch good one mikan I Believe in Pathfinder
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Mar 4, 2010 15:33
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crime fighting hog posted:which edition has bigger tits 
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Apr 3, 2010 05:56
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Anonymous Zebra posted:You have yet to delve into the all the fan service pics that some people draw of the Pathfinder iconics. This has been by choice though. I'm okay with not seeing these things.
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Apr 3, 2010 06:24
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Argali posted:Anyone else out there playing 4E in the Golarian setting? I just bought the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting to see if it's got cool stuff to use for 4e. I'm a bit unsettled by the stereotypical not-Asians and the not-Africans and the other humans. I thought we were better than this. I mean the quote about the Tian in their writeup caused me to roll my eyes so hard I still have a headache.
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Apr 25, 2010 23:08
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It's a whole package kind of thing. The Tian:
So basically the Tian are Japanese businessmen and Chinese emperors There's also the not-Africa group, portrayed by a shirtless black dude with tribal tattoos and some kind of spear who all live in the jungle. Some of them are basically Deejay from Street Fighter, some of them are dudes who try really really hard to be like all of the white races and adopted the white man's decadent ways but still dress like their ancestors while denying any connection to them, just about all of them are tribal dudes with some kind of "noble savage" element And then the not-Gypsies (guess what! they steal from anybody not of their kind and can't be trusted and are all con artists but are so sensual and might be magic), a whole bunch of other racist grandpa style stereotypes. There's also a nationality called the Chelaxians who I keep misreading as the Chillaxians
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Apr 26, 2010 00:34
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I dunno I only got the book today after a trip to the used bookstore and skimmed through the races chapter It's weird because skimming through the other parts it actually looks like a cool setting with some neat ideas but then you've got the racist grandpa races chapter
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Apr 26, 2010 00:54
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I don't even mind pulling from actual Asian myth or anything, since practically every setting ever is just a mishmash of different Western myth. I want to see more games like Weapons of the Gods But the writeups irritate me for two reasons, I guess. It's really lazy to straight up place a real world culture into a fantasy game. I hate when they do that. It's even worse to straight up place a racist stereotype of a real world culture into a fantasy game. I don't even know how they managed to put these in an actual book, I still can't make it all the way through the Varisians writeup A game that actually pulled from Indian myth and legends to create its own thing would own; a game that includes guys who are basically from Fantasy India (Japan/Russia/Ireland/whatever) reminds me of bad 80s RPGs. Everything else in the book looks pretty cool actually, there's a neat fantasy setting in here that is completely hindered by lazy fantasy versions of real world stereotypes. The art owns. I like what I've read of the organizations and evil stuff and different areas and the take on religion and they even did a few cool things with the 3.5 ruleset, as much as you can with it I guess. The art owns. I know I said that already. I honestly didn't expect to say this when I picked it up, but I would totally adventure in this setting. But I can't take the human groups seriously at all, if they had done even the slightest thing to change them up or do something new or the descriptions weren't White Wolf levels of racism (Tian, Varisians, Mwangi are the worst) then (and I hate to say this) I would totally recommend the Pathfinder setting to other people. You don't know how much it pains me to say that by the way.
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Apr 26, 2010 03:35
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I'm glad they're trying to improve things. The whole thinly veiled real world cultures + fantasy thing isn't going to win my favor any time soon no matter what they do, but it is good to see they realize there's a problem. I just hope (using the Tian as the example, since you mentioned them) they don't just take their research and include (Thailand cultural event) + (Cambodian belief) and consider themselves finished. Cultural beliefs and events that actually belong to Tian, with inspirations from real life culture, would be better than just lifting straight from the source and adding the slightest of fantasy to it. It's also a little frustrating that they have basically ASIA. Most RPGs do this. There's a lot of differences between Japan and China and Thailand and Singapore and and and, yet they still lump all of them together as Asia. Meanwhile you've got a billion and one different Western types. The only nice thing I can really say about the setting guide is that they separated the Japan/China knockoff from the India knockoff, most settings just smash those together too. (Asia is Asia as far as RPGs are concerned) Did they expand on the Varisians anywhere? Right now they read like Paizo thought WoD: Gypsies wasn't stereotypical enough I hate to get caught up on this since the rest of it is actually kinda cool and I might track down some more Pathfinder stuff if I can find it cheap, but even putting aside how I feel about using real world cultures (lazy) the presentation is troubling. It does seem really, really easy to rip out all of the stereotype stuff at least  Haven't read the whole thing yet but I don't think it would disrupt the rest of the setting much to ignore the terrible parts of the writeups
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Apr 26, 2010 07:05
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Tolan posted:Yes, they had a section in one of the early adventure paths (Runelords, I think) on Varisians. I can dig it out later and give you some information there, if you like. What stuff are you interested in? Anything that makes them more than two-dimensional "gypsies are all thieves and con artists" really
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Apr 26, 2010 13:28
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There's nothing wrong with taking elements from real world stuff - every setting does it to some extent - it's just a matter of what you do with those elements. Like the Iron Kingdoms and Khador; Khador is heavily influenced by Russia, but still feels unique. Pulling things from the real world and placing them in the setting without any changes at all feels lazy. Parts of the setting are cool and interesting and then other parts are like somebody copied a history textbook but added the words dragon and magic every few sentences. There's no attempt to hide the source or even play with it, just Fantasy Not-India and Fantasy Not-Gypsies. There's no creativity in placing real world analogues in a fantasy setting without any alterations. (Unless you're doing that specifically and play with the idea; Golarion doesn't seem to be doing that) The racist, stereotypical descriptions aren't helping. A lot of settings at least attempt to hide their stereotypes by changing up a few details or creating a location by pulling from different cultural groups, but the Pathfinder campaign setting has groups that don't differ at all from real world stereotypes. It reads like something out of a really old RPG, and not in a good way. It's that last part that really bothers me. I could handle a setting that's literally Historical Earth Plus Fantasy; it wouldn't be terribly creative, but there are some cool things you could do with it. Instead I'm getting Historical Earth Plus Fantasy (As Told By A Senile Racist) Strip all that out and present these Earth cultures as well-rounded groups of individuals and it probably wouldn't be so bad
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Apr 26, 2010 21:53
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happyelf posted:hey guys, it's all well and good to bitch about racist ethnic cariacatures, but everything in an rpg setting is a cariacature, and much of it has a racist subtext. These don't even have the "defense" of using fantasy races or analogues; the description of the Tian is literally "sneaky Chinaman/honorable Japanese", the Varisians are all wacky con artist gypsies. I don't know if you've read the Pathfinder campaign setting or not; if I hadn't read it myself I wouldn't think much of it, but now that I have it's unsettling to see "real world racist stereotype" presented without any sense of self-awareness or exaggeration. I'm not sure how to convey exactly why the descriptions bother me like they do; I've seen plenty of hamhanded racist analogues in fantasy/sci-fi settings, and there have been worse than Pathfinder, but the presentation in the campaign guide is unsettling in a way that a lot of others aren't. quote:i tink mikan has a point above but still, 'oh golly we get to go to egypt' is still a pretyt legit thing for somebody to enjoy in a game. Yeah, it's legit and it's not something that would sell me off a setting, it's just not something that would necessarily sell me on a setting either. My real issue with the Pathfinder real world stuff is that they don't make enough effort to alter it for a fantasy setting; there are sections that are straight up the same as the real world, and it's jarring to see that right next to "oh also check out this demon dimension". For all the parts of the setting that are cool and imaginative and go somewhere interesting, the exactly like the real world parts come off as lazy. Give me all of the cool iconic themes and imagery of Fantasy Egypt, give me neat cultural stuff that feels like it would come from Fantasy Egypt, give me interesting plots and NPCs remniscent of Egypt (plus fantasy), just don't give me straight up Egypt I guess. (That kind of thing could totally work if you built the setting premise around it, what happens when you take the real world and place it in this kind of fantasy world, check out the juxtaposition and how we can use it to highlight certain things, but that's not what I'm getting from Pathfinder.) Mikan fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Apr 26, 2010 |
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Apr 26, 2010 23:35
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Tolan posted:So, basically you can't use real-world analogues of any kind, good or bad, because hey, racist! If this is what you're getting from the conversation, you must not be actually reading any of it. Real world analogues are fine; but when you have a fantasy group of people that are nothing but a collection of racist stereotypes there's an issue. Using real world cultures as a starting point for a setting is cool and inevitable, you can't avoid it; but when you have a region or culture that is literally Fantasy China Filled With Super Smart People Who Do Asian Stereotypes there's an issue. Using stereotypes to describe your fantasy culture is going to happen in any setting, and it's convenient shorthand for players to get immersed; but when I can't tell the difference between Fantasy Culture A and what the racist old lady across the street thinks about Real World Culture A, there's an issue AnonymousZebra posted:As touchy as the subject is, different human groups (especially in a setting without a modern global culture) DO have cultural things that are common amongst them that do remain for a couple generations even when they leave their homeland. I don't have any issue with this, exploring culture in RPGs owns. Every group of humans is going to have its own culture. It's just that the groups they describe are in a lot of cases nothing but racist real world stereotypes. Iron Kingdoms handles this better, I think; it still has its issues but there are a lot of different human cultures in that game, each one feels interesting and distinct. Even with Iron Kingdoms having all these fantasy races humans are still front and center, there's a huge difference between Llael and Khardov. There's a huge difference between the Menites and the Cygnarans. Mikan fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Apr 26, 2010 |
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Apr 26, 2010 23:43
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Tolan posted:No, I agree. What I was objecting to was the idea that applying anything stereotypical about a group as a characterization was racist. Specifically, in the context of Varisians, that stuff that lends them the "gypsy" feel (scarves, traveling, entertainers) was inherently "racist". It's not the scarves and entertainers thing, well not just those things. When you have a description that contains literally every single stereotypical Gypsy trait (including the over the top racist ones) then  quote:I think that in the context of Golarion, there are reasonable, non-demeaning explanations for the traveling, the scarves, dancing, and entertainment focus. You're missing something here. Whether there are explanations for these things in the setting, they still had to come from a real life writer. You can't use this to defend all of these awful, questionable things. "You see, there are legitimate explanations in the setting for why the Tian have issues with their L/R sounds and ride their horses badly. Here's the section that describes what their ancestors did to make them better at math." They could have used real world cultures as a basis and presented things that evoke the themes and tropes of those cultures (as mentioned in the post directly before yours) without resorting to this kind of nonsense quote:I'm not sure how you're supposed to adequately describe a fantasy culture without resorting to broad strokes (of either stripe) There's nothing wrong with using broad strokes to paint a particular culture. I've said this almost verbatim in other posts. You need those kind of broad strokes to give people a good foundation, to draw and immerse them into the setting. But there are ways of writing these broad strokes without creating a one dimensional culture. Even more importantly, you can paint a culture in broad strokes without using all of the stuff I've been complaining about. It doesn't matter what these cultures are like in the context of the setting, they're still based in some awfully racist thoughts and stereotypes that come from actual people (the writers). I can't say that the writers themselves are racist since I don't know any of them but the content they put out certainly is. quote:In the end, it doesn't sound like Golarion is for you, Mikan. But I've said multiple times I like the other stuff in the setting??? I just don't like the racism and I'm genuinely surprised that anybody would put this kind of stuff in print in 2008. This is the kind of poo poo I expect to see in bad 80's cyberpunk games or old school D&D garbage.
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Apr 27, 2010 05:35
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That sounds like a tedious pain in the rear end to keep track of. Are all of the achievement feats like that? If so, it means keeping constant watch of all of the possible achievement feats and tracking their progress just in case you qualify for one. It's also surprisingly video gamey for the system that prides itself on being the D&D that isn't like video games.
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Nov 28, 2012 09:01
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Advanced Player's Guide is always going to be my answer to that question, as long as there's any interest in playing at all. The archetypes add a ridiculous amount of flexibility to character creation and are one of the things I'll always admit Pathfinder got right. The new classes are cool too but mostly it's about those archetypes.
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Dec 21, 2012 19:17
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 04:39 |
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Zurai posted:So you want to pay $10 a month for literally everything Paizo puts out in perpetuity. Like some kind of Pathfinder Insider, though I wouldn't pay unless you get like two magazines worth of additional content each month. Or a character creation program maybe.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:50
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