quote:

Why don't we just roll once for a stat. Like 18 and it is good for all 6 statistics(strength, dex,etc).It would be good for all the attack, and skill checks as well.And we do not need any skills groups, since every skill can be lumped under 1 skill( The everything skill)!!!!!

It would make the game so easy, anyone can then play it.


Is that not what you have done going from 3.5-4th addition. Now simplifying it further in 5th eddition.

Simplified it to the point of stupidity!!!!

An how do you differentiate detwee one thief( thats into breaking in and cracking safes, from a thief thats into political intrigue, when both have a 5 ranks in thieving skills????

An then have the gall to charge $20.00, and we still had to download the basic rules in pdf (and print it out). Telling us its free to download. So are you going to reinburse us for the 110 sheets of priter paper, and printer ink needed to print it out? SOUNDS LIKE A CHEAP COP_OUT.

Didn't anyone at wizards of the coast Learn when they scaled back 4th eddition?

DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM!!!!!!!!!

Instead of trying to blatenly rip us off, by Dropping 3.5 (which had a huge fan base and source book set up). Just so we had to buy new players guide, DMG and MMs.You should have instead went with expanding the 3.5 with new worlds( for the modern, future, and traveller books)Maybe set up some deals with Lisanne norman(for her sholan series), Todd McCaffery( for the Dragon Riders of Pern), to make source books for adventuring there.Maybe also go back and update Spelljammer for 3.5.What about doing a d20 book for (Counsil of Wyrms).

D&D is a ROLE-PLAYING GAME.... Not Warhammer 40k(minitures war game), POKEMON(card game), I'm very disapointed in you guys. I've been playing D&D since I was 13 and it first came out of chain mail.An now I'm 50 years young. Stop being greedy, Your killing off D&D.

quote:

And, no, video games did not kill it, WOTC killed it, on a binge of "Inclusivity" and market share. Most of the P&P players i knew where women, but all of a sudden everyone had to dumb their games down so women could feel more inclusive (which most of the women i knew hated cause they really liked the complexity). WOTC started buying out / suing out everyone else, and the whole thing died. 4th edition is crap. No seriously, i would rather play farmville then 4th edition. Its that bad.

Erebro posted:

I reiterate: promotional.

Think about it.

quote:

Q: Why are you trying to engage with these people? You know they won’t listen.

A: Good point. It’s a consistent hope with me that I can get through to people, make them understand things and accept opposing points of view even if they don’t agree with them. Perhaps that simply can’t be done in a lot of cases. Not to pick on religion exactly, but as an atheist I end up in a lot of debates with people who operate on faith and that acts like a brick wall that you simply cannot – normally – get through. When it comes to certain ideologies and other ideas I think they can end up operating along the same lines, so maybe it’s pointless and I should reassess. The problem I have is that some good points of genuine crit and suggestion will sometimes turn up amongst the slime, but maybe it’s just not worth wading through the slime to get to it.

I’ll have to rethink. Engaging just seems to make them worse.

Q: Do you consider the Gorean world to be misogynistic?

A: That sounds like an easy question, but it isn’t especially. It’s certainly male dominated and tends strongly to the patriarchal but is it misogynistic? To say that Goreans men hate women – which is, after all, the meaning of misogyny – doesn’t seem accurate. Goreans prize women, seek women, fight for women, put themselves in harm’s way to gain women, enter into free companionships, work for women, guard women and so on, so ‘misogyny’ doesn’t quite seem to be the right word.

A certain amount of comparison could be drawn between Gorean society and Islamic states. You can argue that Islam (and to be fair, the other Abrahamic faiths) are misogynistic but, similarly, that’s not entirely accurate. From their point of view they are venerating and protecting women and wouldn’t say that they hate them, so we need something else as a description.

It is oppressive, or at least dangerous, for women.

Free women are venerated, protected, served and honoured, but greatly constricted by the society’s rules.

It’s slaves – of either gender – who are at the sharp end of all the worst aspects of the society.

Q: What’s with the hats?

A: I have no idea why certain people are so obsessed with hats (especially fedoras). It’s been a bit of a theme lately. The honest answer is that meeting my ‘game design heroes’ has been a consistently disappointing experience as, frankly, most of us designers are balding, middle-aged men in faded T-shirts, however interesting our ideas. I try and ‘rock star’ it up a bit to compensate. It’s also the same reason I often wear a suit at cons.

a droll satire of modern acute sensitivities posted:

literally Summon Sex Partner posted:

This spell summons a creature and binds them into your presence or that of a client long enough for a sexual act to take place. The creature summoned may not be entirely willing (some are) but is bound by the magic of the spell to do what is required and cannot return to their home save by fulfilling the demands of the spell. Beware of meeting a previously summoned creature outside the context of the spell or you may well be in trouble.

An Edgy Designer posted:

Hentacle is an ADULT game, a really, really adult game.
I mean it. We're not just talking a couple of nipples here. This is filth. Disgusting, perverted filth and you should be ashamed to buy it.

Do NOT buy this for your children.
Do NOT play this around kids or, if you print it out, leave it for them to get hold of.*
Do NOT come whining to anyone about how rude and tasteless it is, we know, you bought it and if someone bought it with your credit card you should be more careful and/or your parenting skills are questionable.

Thank you for your attention.

*Unless you like being asked embaressing questions about pee-pees and hoo-hoos.

Hentacle is a fast paced point-scoring card game where 2-4 players compete with each other to be the supreme tentacle monsters, exerting their perversity upon their lovely victims.

Taking its cue from animated Japanese perversity Hentacle is a disgusting and reprehensible product and you should be as ashamed of buying it as I am for creating it.

The Zip file presents the cards at 150 dpi and gives you the following...

An 8 page rules booklet.
2 rules cards, one in English, one in Engrish.
6 double-sided victim cards.
- Aimi - The Schoolgirl.
- Chiaki - The Space Policewoman.
- Hisako - The Businesswoman.
- Ichie - The Bunny Girl
- Emiko - The Otaku
- Fukuyo - The Cybergirl
56 action cards.
Desktop wallpaper of four of the girls for your PC.

Someone who refuses to type the word "whore" because he'd spell it wrong posted:

Crack Wh-r-

Warning! This game is for adult audiences only. Persons 18+ only.

Warning! This game contains adult themes and adult language and should NOT be viewed by minors, played by minors, or left out where it might be viewable by a minor.

Warning! This game is NOT politically correct. In fact, if may very well upset the sensabilities of some people. If you are offended by games based on ugly, nasty, adult themes, then THIS GAME IS NOT FOR YOU!

A G-spotgames.com Game

Still intrigued? Ok, maybe this game is for you. Crack Wh-r- is a solitaire adventure dice game where you play the character of a street wh-r- who is trying to escape the street life. Of course, to accomplish this you need to save up some considerable money; and that means working the streets. Your pimp, drugs, deases, and guys that like to hack apart street walkers stand in your way to achieving a better life?

Multi player option allows for more than one person to play at a time, competing to see who is the first wh-r- to escape the streets and win the game. Can you escape the desparate life of the streets before they put you six feet under?

-- 7 Pages. Includes game rules and character sheets.

Someone whose family tree is two twigs sticking into a dead badger posted:

Trollops of Destiny

THE WAYS OF WICKED WOMEN?
Harlots, wenches, whores, and trollops. While fantasy role playing provides a more heroic outlook for female characters through the roles of sorceresses, amazon like barbarians, skillful rogues, and much needed healers there's always plenty of room for the classic fishwife. This gallery of non-player characters provides the background details for over half a dozen shameless, lustful ladies.

FANTASY UNIVERSAL COMPATIBILITY:
This product is written in a format that is more or less stat free, allowing it to be compatible with most fantasy, paper and dice style role playing games.

MATURE CONTENT WARNING:
Though the author has taken considerable lengths to avoid explicit discussions in this book, the nature of this guide is still reflective upon the topics of prostitution and sexual seduction. As such, Top Fashion Games has decided to present this game book as being suitable for mature, adult readers only.

An evolutionary dead-end posted:

MILFS 2: Monsters I'd Like to F***

Have you ever looked at a particularly alluring female monster your party was facing and thought:

"Man, I'd like to roll d20 to hit that!"

Well, now you can! MILFs are the monsters you would most like to have a random encounter with.

This set of full-color paper miniatures is designed to be compatible with other 25/30mm figures and contains nine different creatures, all scaled to be approximately man-sized. Furthermore, four of these have also been scaled for use as giant-sized creatures.

Miniatures in this set include:

* One alluring Satyress

* One two-headed, quadruple-D babe that has also been scaled for use as an Ettin

* One sexy Snake Demoness scaled at both human and giant sizes

* One eye-catching busty Beholder, provided in both medium and large sizes

* One patchwork Flesh Golemess with parts from a number of sexy sources

* One buxom she-Minotaur, scaled as both a human-sized and giant-sized figure

* One woman as sexy after death as before it that can be used as a Specter or other undead

* One beautiful Centauress

MILFs 2 is part of Skirmisher's Cardstock CharactersTM line of figures that can be downloaded, printed out, and used in many different sorts of games. Other currently-available sets include ones for use with Mutant Future and other post-apocalyptic and science-fiction games; anthropomorphic ducks and pigs inspired by the Quactica wargaming rules; and the "Forbidden Creatures of Foree" line of creatures that some companies have declared off-limits.

We hope you enjoy MILFs 2!

quote:

As I recall, in fact, rape jokes etc made zero difference to normal people. Only people already with problems felt that way.

quote:

Very few aspects of a roleplaying game is ever created equal, thankfully, I would say.

quote:

Fermi paradox my rear end.

The entire reason that alien life has interfered with Earth is not generally accepted is US foreign policy. There are governments in the world that do openly recognise the existence of UFOs and aliens but the US wont because they see any such declaration as undermining their own military dominance and admitting to their people that they are not on top of things.

I tired making this thread on /x/ but those shitcunts are to interested in their own internal narrative to have an actual discussion about anything paranormal.

Tell me about how you handle aliens in your setting. In mine the major power blocks have been established for the last 500,000 years and Humanity was forced to find it's niche in a neomercantile system that dominates the Orion Spur.

quote:

Alignments can be a bit trickier. I've seen some people try and replace this with Drives, but after hearing the explanation as to why it became apparent that it's entirely based on someone's very narrow interpretation of what Alignment can mean, so I just don't roll that way.

an idiot posted:

Superman: Heat Vision is a re-flavored Scorching Ray; Flight is obvious; Durability is Stoneskin; Speed is Haste. Strength could be Telekinesis, or Bigby's Grasping Hand or maybe Disintigrate.

I could continue for the other examples, but you should be able to see how easy it is to get superhuman effects by re-flavoring spells. The differences is, of course, limits. A wizard or other spellcaster can't produce these effects all day long (and many of them can't happen at the same time), therefore in the interest of balance, stronger superhuman abilities would also need to be limited.

an idiot posted:

quote:

What you do is that you give them things that magic doesn't - magic might be subtle, or be able to do things instantly, or whatever. Aragorn might not be lighting the army on fire or hypnotizing them so they fall asleep, but he could certainly restore the morale of his troops or kill a bunch of orcs through the more mundane method of running a sword through their gut. The Hulk might be supernaturally strong, but most of what he does is purely mundane - jumps high, punches hard, lifts heavy things, takes a lot of hits. Cu Chullain may know some spells perhaps, but what he's more known for is the whole Warp Spasm thing where he rages so hard that his body warps and water boils as it touches him. Or how he spent days defending a ford from an army, I suppose. Or how even when he died, his foes dared not approach his upright corpse in case he was merely fooling them.

I don't understand what you are arguing, then. All I get from your posts is a vague sense of 'mundanes should be better, somehow', while offering examples with HUGE differences in superhumanity. Why would you ever use Aragorn of all characters of an example on how 'mundane' characters should be better than they are?

an idiot posted:

Yes, all maneuvers are equally ranked in terms of acquisition time. However, you can use your superiority dice on any of them, without limits. A wizard can't use lower level spell slots to fuel higher level spells, meaning that those better spells can't be used as often.

I suppose you could make some maneuvers better than others, gate them off by level progression, and offer different kinds of superiority dice pools so that there is a reason not to just use the most recent maneuvers that you've learned, right?

Congratulations! You've once again come back to the mechanics of spellcasting in 5th edition!

quote:

There's always pathfinder

quote:

So, just read a review of 5e, sounds like they just took all the effort out of it. Sounds like it'd be good for people who want to play a video game(dungeon crawler) but want(for some reason) don't like that format. Very autopilot, sounds bad.(odd that I come away with that feeling, as the reviewer seemed to like it.) Only people can make a game bad, but a system can make it boring. I feel like what I'm seeing is taking all the personal investment (on the part of the players/no longer existent-DM). Sounds like 6e will end up as a freemium app game, the sellout(worse than now) is nigh.

Vowtz posted:

5e healing and damage discussion again? Since I started it for the 10th million time last week I will help someone who is starting it again now:


For a lot of players, HP lost represent physical damage, when you take slashing damage you are damaged because you were slashed, when you take fire damage you get buuuuuuurned, and so on, if you are attacked by a swordsman and lose 90% of your HP, it was an awesome blow and your wound is deep. That explains why some monsters are resistant to particular kinds of damage.

That's my personal interpretation and a lot of other people think like that too.


Other people prefer an even more abstract view for this already abstract (numbers representing wounds) hit points, they say that you only take minor hits until something actually drops you.

That has some problems like, if you are with 1 hp because you fought a dragon and then consult the best doctor in the world, what he's going to tell you?

1."You are hurt and almost dying"
2."You are not badly hurt and will be ok"
3."You are just exhausted"

People like us say that you are almost dead. More abstract explanations are 2. And 3.

Later you are attacked by a rat, suffer 1 damage and die.

If you used explanation 1. That makes sense, you were almost dying after all.

If you used 2. And 3. You can say that this rat managed to attack a specific spot and severed some artery or so, ignoring the fact that it's 1 damage, and not a critical hit or anything. Alternatively you can just switch to explanation 1 on the fly, changing things retroactively.

Lots of people find that unsatisfying. For us, If you abstract too much you will always have to keep finding excuses for things that should be really simple, and that is not fun.

For other players that makes no difference, and many just want their character to be healed quickly.

But the thing is, unlike previous editions, our simple and direct view of hit points is inadequate in 5e because people here can heal their wounds to full in 1 hour, or 8 hours, or 6 seconds for a fighter. It's impossible to be "badly hurt", there's only three stages: unharmed, scratched, dead.

If a farmer gets hit by an arrow in the morning, that evening he is already fully healed. Yes, if you "abstract" you can have him say "oh, I'm feeling so bad, my leg hurts". Well, his crying doesn't change the fact that he is already perfect.


An explanation for that fast healing rules is that it's more simple this way and that gives a more "fast paced" adventure.

Again, for lots of players this "wolverine healing" just switched default d&d game mode to "very easy". If you take damage today, that has zero repercussion on tomorrow.


THE CONCLUSION IS, if you are like us, then you don't want every adventurer, salesman and housekeeper to have mutant regeneration, and you also don't want to metagame monsters where they should not be to make the game harder, so you will have to houserule human healing ultil DMG comes with, maybe, a better solution.

quote:

Never! I hate minis--so immersion breaking. Needing minis was one of the two major reasons I hated running 4e. No, if I never see a mini again, it'll be too soon.

quote:

This. When I play miniature games I play miniature games. Roleplaying games I resent mini's as something that makes me look down at the green tinted grid sheet on the table instead of living in the Elven Forest of my imagination.

quote:

My groups' D&D remains the kind where swinging off the chandelier and kicking the Goblin King in the face matters far more than grid placement. And yeah, some of the advice in that thread is completely alien to what I'm interested in doing in a game.*

*Note: I'm not saying 4e is a board game or any other edition war stuff like that. I haven't played it. I have ready plenty of awesome descriptions of how it can play in this forum and don't doubt that it is great RPG for a lot of players. I also don't doubt that it fully supports a variety of play styles. But wow, some of the advice in that thread looks nothing like any game I've ever participated in or would want to participate in.

quote:

I apologize for the rant, but i need to get the disappointment out my system.

Am I really the only one who is concerned by the reduction of high level spell slots to bare minimums after 11th level?
on 12th, 14th, and 16th level you even don not get a single spell slot. At level 11 you have 72% of the spell slots you will ever have.
In 5e you get at most 22 spell slots, a 2e wizard could look forward to 37 slots (a whopping 68% more, put another way the 5e wizard gets 59% of the slots a 2e wizard gets).

I really liked 5e until i discovered the evisceration of the upper part of the spell slots table. (Concentration was bad enough, but if it made the fighter players feel better, i could deal with it). What the spellcasting classes get in return is rather measly, a handful of pseudo-spellpoints, or a few lower level slots.

Was is really nesseary to make higher wizard levels unattractive in order to restore game balance? multiclassing the wizard after level 11 seems the best choice.

Soular posted:

Why? Because role-playing is all about picking the right spell for the situation? If that's what I wanted I'd go play 4E (*spit).

I cut my teeth on BECMI Fighters, and they remain my favorite to this day.

To me, combat is easily the most boring part of a game session. So the Champion is like easy-mode. Everything he has is innate, nothing situational. He doesn't need to  sneak, he doesn't have to line up LoS, or memorize spells... just stride toward the enemy and apply the edge of his sword, liberally.

When a fight starts I ask myself, "Am I currently wearing armor, and do I have something to hit stuff with?" So long as the answers are yes, then I am 100% G2G.

For 5E I currently have a Fighter-Champion and Rogue-Thief. I like these characters because they are challenging. You have to rely on your wits and really play the characters to the hilt to remain relevant. I find that far more stimulating than keeping track of spells and stuff.

And I am lazy. :redface:

some loving LIAR posted:

Hi everyone I'm got a question about paladins. If propositioned by a tavern wench does it go against the paladin archetype to take her up her offer? Mainly I'm curious if it cod cause him to have a shift in alignment
-----------

quote:

Well I just took a quick glance at free 5th editions pdfs have to say I not impressed what so ever, in the first place I happen to like looking at the art that is what helps stimulate the imaganation and now they took that out, there is not any size any more and I have no clue what so ever what the heck they are talking about for people who are swallowed whole by giant tolds and frogs

For example: if the frog dies, a swallowed creature is no longer restrained by it and can escape from the corpse using 5 feet of movement exiting prone, Now what the hell is a exiting prone?

if some one is swallowed whole and they have no way to cut their self out or no one to get them out then they are still laying in a stomach of acid rather the creature is dead or not and even if the acid does not do them in then lack of air will, also how come only the frog and giant told have swallow attacts how come the giant shark does not, Do not know about you but I will not be wasting any of my money on 5th edition...

quote:

So I'm reading a story just now of a DM with an unruly player. The DM decides enough is enough after the player desecrated the altar of the God of spite.

As the player is riding, he has a giant dragon let loose it's bowels from approximately 400 feet in the air killing the player with 45 points of damage of " dragon poop " impact damage.

That got me thinking, if a dragon was to let loose it's bowels in mid air, from such a high distance and it was to hit a player, or npc, or structure how would you rule?

I know, I know, this is a "crappy conversation" lol

quote:

My Charecter is a bard. Far from his final magic secrets but i want to figure if what i want to do is possible or if i should re-roll warlock and just hurl people through hell.
Bardo is a worshipper of Sune, the godess of beauty, and a avid fan of beautiful people, men and women but leaning very heavily towards women. I would like to use his wish spell to create something akin to an avatar of beauty (burning his ability to "wish" in the process) that would act as his companion (both in and out of combat).
He isnt some, "i wanna wish me a waifu!" freak, he honestly just worships beauty and wants to shape his passion for it into physical form.
Thoughts?

quote:

Frankly humanity is 3 or four hot meals away from being savages; I've heard it before from some shrink and I'm personally very inclined to believe it.

Some portions of humanity are already savages. Just look in the Middle East in whichever corner the fighting is in this week. Being reluctant to kill? It's a matter of morality and people training you that it's wrong. Or people training you that actions have consequences like jail time.

EDIT: Also, just look at nearly every major city where gangs shoot each other for whatever stupid reason they come up with this week as well.... And shoot up whole neighborhoods trying to hit one person because they evidently can't aim and squeeze... These people aren't sociopaths in a lot of cases, it's just they don't have the same cultural mores you do.

When you take those away? Or you need to defend your home and family? Reluctant Killer? Bah.

At least as written I WILL NOT use any of the GURPS Pacifism/Reluctant Killer/Post Combat Shakes etc.

They may be realistic and all for *SOME* cases - not all soldiers come back from war and wind up in the funny farm at the VA, but they're also CRIPPLING and a quick way to make a character unplayable.

Half the issue with the GURPS flaws is the severity and also you'd be buying the drat things off within a session or two once you realized "HEY! These people are out to kill me! This thou shall not kill ******** is gonna get me killed!"

Then you pick up a gun and learn to use it.

quote:

The thing about *World is that it's task resolution system is bad. It's taking a great deal of willpower for me not to launch into a overvitriolic rant about how bad the *World engine is, but the short of it is any failed roll results in the GM coming up with some negative consequences on the spot and the system as a whole if fairly stifling to player agency.

quote:

quote:

All I have time to say right now is that this description, to me, is wildly inaccurate. It does not fit my experience at all.
Well maybe we can the Bear World thread at a later date.

In the interim let's just say that opinions strongly differ on the merits of the *World engine.

quote:

quote:

To me, that's exactly how nearly all traditional RPGs work: on a failed roll, the GM decides what happens, and it isn't good (from the PC's point of view).

No it isn't. If in say D&D I miss the Goblin with my crossbow that doesn't cause the Goblin to stab my character in the face, nor does the Goblin passing it's save vs color spray result in a technicolor bear spewing forth from the aether and attempting to maul my character. In both those cases in a traditional system a failed action simply means that the action failed. In *World it results in the GM an arbitrary story declaration, one not to your advantage, and any failure could mean bears.

quote:

DW is a player facing game so the DM doesn't roll any dice. The book is pretty cheap and the pdf is cheaper. Pick it up and look it over. It is a REALLY different way to do things. Also, from a DM standpoint, the chapter on Fronts is awesome. I have stolen Fronts for pretty much every other game that I run now.

Trust me I've looked over DW already, and I've been having this argument about the *World engine for more than a year now.

quote:

quote:

Marisa, the examples you give strike me as not being problems with the system but with very bad GMing

Under ordinary circumstances this post would result in me cussing you out but this is RPG.net so I'll restrain myself, just be aware that you have just made one on the top RPG discussion bad faith arguments.

Getting to the core of the issue, in *World the range of potential failure states in not transparent enough for players to make genuinely informed decisions because the are generated post hoc by the GM. That's the problem with *World in general it's GM fiat and bears all the way down.

Cerulean Lion posted:

I just would like some Catgirls

Specifically, interesting ideas for catgirls, statted out in a rule set.

Complete stats not necessary, but at least an outline in a known system and/or setting.

Warriors and sorcerer/spellcasters preferred, but I will gratefully take anything interesting.

Images optional; I'm looking for usable ideas/designs.

Watcha got for me, Gamers?

quote:

"Are you looking for characters, or ideas for races?"

Individual characters, please. They can be members of another race transformed into catgirls, or members of a feline species. But I'm interested in the person, not so much the species.

quote:

@NeoVid: Thank you for the image. It does indeed inspire thought. Does the site require registration for download privileges?

@Arkat: Hm...hm...and hmm. Been a long time since I read the rules, but: obsessive watching grants her Charges, which she can expend to do magic. Results would be cat-themed. There would be Taboos, which deprive her of Charges if she breaks them.

@Dark Mother: Oh my. Oh my, the thoughts, they do come quickly. I don't know if the results will show up in our game, but if not, surely somewhere else. You have my thanks.

Sean K Reynolds posted:

Feat Point System

Hi, I guess you're here for the feat point system I wrote in 2003.

Well, I've deleted the page for it and replaced it with this.

Some people have taken it upon themselves to tear this thing apart, as if it were my magnum opus and I think it is the Best Thing Ever.

Actually, it was a variant rule I thought up (for the D&D 3.0 ruleset) in a couple of hours while commuting to work on a train, with the intent of messing with the idea that all feats cost exactly the same amount ("1 feat unit"). It wasn't trying to solve any big problems with the game. It was just an speculative experiment.

Yes, the feat point numbers in that speculative experiment are off, and we've all had an additional 11 years (and two revisions of the game) to think about how much value the various feats should have relative to each other, plus hundreds of new feats and spells in various sources that skew the value of those Player's Handbook feats in the context of the entire game.

Some people go out of their way to be insulting and rude about this speculative experiment. If you want to do so, I'm sure you can find someone who has it or a link on the Wayback Machine to the original post. But I'm not going to leave pumpkins out on the porch (as old and quickly-carved as they may be) just so you can smash them.

Thanks, and have a good day!

Spellcasters SHOULD be superior to mundanes and 5E missed their chance to fix this. posted:

Frankly, I'm tired of D&D deciding to center its challenges and high-level metaplots in such a way that Conan the Barbarian and Madmartigan are legitimate characters for all levels of play.

All high-level characters don't have to wear robes and have pointy hats. But the idea of being high-level without being supernatural in some sense (whether your character is an artificer, a psion, a spandex-and-tights superhuman, an angel, a DBZ monk, a Bleach swordfighter, a beholder, a transforming Spelljammer spaceship that can go human-sized, etc.) needs to go hole up in a corner and die. We already ran the experiment of trying to allow epic-level mundanes by torturing the numbers; all it did was kill the coolness of everyone else. Your paladin is fluffed as being infused with the personified hopes and dreams of the people, you ride on a mighty gold dragon decked out in magical barding, and each swing of the sword is powerful enough to shatter stone buildings... and you're inferior to some schmuck with a shiny sword because they have 2 AC, 8 hit points, and +4 to damage over you. And they're not Hercules or Gilgamesh or anything, they're Xander from Buffy after gaining some trinkets.

Spellcasters should be superior to mundanes. However, the solution for modern D&D is to not allow mundanes to participate past a certain point. You can either forcefully retire their characters and make them get new ones, you can force them to become supernatural in some fashion, or you can abandon the idea of gaining more power altogether -- which includes ending the campaign before Willow or Harry Potter graduates to Bavmorda or Gandalf. 5E D&D is better than 4E D&D about not sucking all of the coolness of high-level characters for the questionable goal of making mundanes relevant, but they still clearly think that it's possible. This, more than anything else about 5E D&D, is what alienates me about the edition.

quote:

Well I was gonna suggest Savage Worlds but then I noticed this thread was just gonna be a Dungeon World circlejerk so i said forget it.

SW is a great customizable system and has everything you could want. It's rules light and fast. But no, no, let's all jerk off to dungeon world which takes the ideas of FATE and turns them into purified poo poo.

Not to mention the monsters have "tags" what teh gently caress? It took me half an hour to get used to THAT poo poo. Not intuitive, just gay as gently caress. The tags were a nice idea until they were like all those conditions in D&D that you had to memorize. "Target creature is sickened" WELL WHY THE gently caress CAN'T YOU JSUT PRINT WHAT THAT DOES IN PARENTHESES AND SAVE US FIVE loving MINUTES.

The loving "moves" are dumb as poo poo, it's like that card slap game where the first person to slap the table wins. I played dungeon world once and some loud mouthed bitch always went first just because he opened his mouth first, he was het most popular and he went first.

It's ncie because it LOOKS like you only need d6s, what with the 2d6 thing, but then requires d4s for damage and poo poo. Seriously? gently caress you dungeon world.

Some of it looks good, but the modifiers? Rip from D&D more can you not? gently caress. I'd rather play AD&D. Or 4e, since that's what DW is based off of, the same kind "ZOMG COOL MOVES" powerwank bullshit that that system revolved around. The only place for Dungeon world is in a car ride where d20s will roll around too much. And if I was stuck in a car with hipster faggots who play Dungeon World (becaues I have met at least 10 players of it, they are ALL like this), I would rather kill myself.

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And where this breaks down for me is that you aren't allowed to just be your character. You have to interact with this system that tries to force you to play your character instead. I think, as a long-time roleplayer, it's almost insulting. And when you combine that with this crazy notion that I would ever, as a player, want control over a scene or story instead of focusing on control of what my character does and would do, that's just so alien to me.

It's the split between storytelling and roleplaying, narration versus simulation, and collaboration versus immersion.

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I understand your perspective, but cannot relate to it. My games have always been collaborative storytelling narrations as opposed to immersive roleplaying simulations. FATE just formalizes it really well.

Yup, two distinct types of gamers out there. It's why I've always thought that Fate and games like it should have eschewed the name Role Playing Game in favor of Story Telling Game.

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I don't find it elegant. I find it clumsy. Why? Because it doesn't let you tweak the one set of variables independently of the other; it doesn't allow much room for manoeuvre in probabilistic modelling.

To put this in context, I use a unified roll for whether a blow connects, and what impact it has ("to hit" and "to damage" in old school terms). And that causes me issues, but I do it because it has other advantages. Point is, merging those two aspects of the attack causes me issues. Merging the attack and the riposte, all the more so. Again, to put that in context, I do use a freeformier alternative as well, where a few rolls cover the whole of a combat. But I don't like the more refined / detailed option to be off the table entirely.

I hate the way the word "elegant" tends to be used in this sort of context. It tends to mean, at its heart, "quick and dirty and streamlined and simple and simplified". That is not what "elegant" means. "Elegant" means "beautiful". Whilst there can be beauty in simplicity, basically, it's a very loaded use of language pushing a particular value-judgment.

I just don't see what the big problem is with having to wait a few dice-rolls to discover the full implications of your first roll.

GorfZaplen posted:

I just now broke down and got the D&D5 players handbook...in all honest I just figured it's something I should check out because it's inevitable I'll find myself in a "new edition" D&D game sooner or later. I haven't been following this edition AT ALL, mostly for reasons I won't bore you with, but mainly just disinterest and burn-out on new editions. I only tell you this because I don't want to get flamed to death if this topic has come up a million times...I just want to hear the reasoning and opinions that have come already (in a nutshell).

So this post is on the art, as I've only just flipped through the book looking at illustrations (as I usually do in the store...but I got this online)...I have to ask, who on earth is responsible for choosing this art? OMG, this is the worst looking D&D book (IMHO) I've seen in 35 years of gaming (and even worse than the majority of small press stuff I buy these days). There are maybe 10 or 12 illustrations I think are "acceptable", and none I really "love". I certainly don't want this next bit to come out sounding wrong, but I also have to ask what's up with the excess of women? Call me a chauvinist if you like, but it's just...weird. The majority of the class and race illustrations are women. With the human illustrations, they tried to be so politically correctly racial diverse that none of it looks like a part of any coherent fantasy world?

I'm kind of turned off before even starting to read. I've always been a very visual person, and art sets the tone and mood for me, which is ultimately very important to me when choosing what games to play and support. I know art is subjective, but what has been the general feelings on the art from other people, or hasn't it really come up?

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As far as the racial diversity and women. I'm all for it, but I've always felt that this should just be the way it is, not something that even needs to be consciously thought of...but to me it felt "forced" in this edition, and that's what felt unnatural to me, and why it took away from the package. It almost felt as if they were sitting with a list saying, "OK, we need X number of this, and X number of that". Then the artists went out of their way to "exaggerate" the difference, rather than making it feel like it was a natural part of the whole. 3.5, for example, had plenty of racial and sexual diversity, yet it manages to all look like part of a cohesive whole. It felt like part of a real (fantasy) world. You could picture all those characters in a single illustration and believe they were a real part of an adventuring party in a real world.

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I’m sorry to post this on the forum, and hope I don’t get in trouble for doing it here…but this is where the stupid mistake occurred. This is an apology and simple explanation, nothing more.

I started a thread (about the art in D&F 5ht edition) that some took to be sexist and/or racist. I apologize to the people who were offended by this. It certainly wasn’t my intention or meaning.

I’m not going to bore anyone with a long explanation, because the main intent of this is to apologize (and even now I might say something that is misunderstood by accident in an attempt to clarify). I simply want to say that it was a simple internet misunderstanding that I caused by poorly choosing my words and the structure of the post. The intentions of the thread were definitely not intended in any way to express racism or sexism on any level, as I’m very opposed to these things.

Apparently the misunderstanding (due to my poor wording) has spread and become a topic in other places I don’t visit, where people who don’t know me (my internet personality or real personality) apparently think I’m some kind of chauvinistic bigot. It really hurts my feelings. Call me an idiot for expressing myself poorly…but don’t label me as something I morally oppose on every level.

Sorry for the confusion, sorry for choosing my words so poorly, and sorry for anyone who may have been offended or hurt by my mistakes. It won’t happen again.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

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Yeah, maybe it is on purpose. I just find it a bit bland.

Part of the idea of exploration, at least to me, is to go to unfamiliar places and meet unfamiliar people. Presumably, you will be unfamiliar to the people you meet in those places as well. To me that is a big part of adventuring, both in fictional universes and in real life.

In fact, it probably is on purpose, exactly for the reasons you outline, to play it safe and avoid running against the idea of inclusion and diversity. As I said, personally I think that's a bit bland; and I think it's possible to get into the mutually unfamiliar and mutually exotic without compromising inclusion and diversity. That said, it might be a bit too risky for something intended to appeal to a broad audience, maybe it's better to not attempt it.

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I have never ever heard 'no, wont play that because not enough representation of my demographic' as a reason for not playing role playing games....