Mors Rattus posted:

Incidentally, on WotC and hateful speech: I learned yesterday from Mark Rosewater's blog that at tournaments, use of misogynistic or hateful speech is now against the rules - if you witness someone using slurs or stuff like 'that deck raped me' they encourage you to call over a judge to handle the situation. This, I think, is a real cool thing.

Gerund posted:

I waiting to see the first "Pro Tour Qualifer" level player or above catch a game loss for saying stuff that gets said pretty much on the regular by people not known as LSV. It's nice to paean to the Judge's authority but the de facto reality is not a lot of regular players are going to make waves in a (weakly) closed society.

jivjov posted:

This is a really good sign for the health of the hobby as a whole.

paradoxGentleman posted:

What's LSV mean in this context?

Gravy Train Robber posted:

Has Kibler done something lovely lately?

gourdcaptain posted:

Then again, given that apparently grogs thought 4e was an abomination for not having Gnomes in core, he might have a marketing point here. (Never got that in the slightest- Gnomes are easily the least popular standard D&D race by far from personal experience.)

Nuns with Guns posted:

Halloween Jack posted:

My armchair assessment of Dancey is that he has 2 things going for him: one, the gift of gab, and two, having been associated with an important product, once. Guys like that can keep getting work based on the properties they've been associated with, taking all the credit while assigning blame for any failures to other people. He's the Vince Russo of the RPG industry.

moths posted:

I'm very OK with stripped-down, budget editions of rulebooks. Full color glossy pages are great, but I get more table use out of B&W POD editions since I can write margin notes, use highlighter, pencil in errata, etc.

It's also a lot easier to spend $10 on something like the Savage Worlds explorer edition or $25 on the Kings of War player's edition.

The current model works pretty well since I can buy a PDF and print my own "reference edition" of important sections for the table.

That Old Tree posted:

Rolemaster Standard System had three-hole-punched books with perforated pages. Apparently the idea was that you could make a master binder containing only the rules options you wanted to use, excluding all the rest, but a) very few people want to do that to their books, and b) people who play RMSS are the types that will cram all those optional, sometimes mutually exclusive rules into a single game.

JerryLee posted:

Wages haven't really kept pace with inflation either, have they? I'm not an economist or anything, but that's what I've always read (from progressive sources, at least). The guy literally trying to say "inflation doesn't exist" in FMguru's quote is obviously full of poo poo, but that doesn't mean that inflation has lifted all the proverbial boats equally.

It might well not be the publishers' fault that consumers generally are less and less likely to have the amount of money necessary to comfortably buy things at a "fair" price, but it sure as poo poo isn't the fault of said consumers, again generally speaking.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

They haven't, productivity has gone up immensely over the last 20 years but wages haven't gone up to match for the average worker.

Dr. Buttass posted:

While we're talking about people, and this might be a minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things but it hacks me right off, avoid certain creatures always being evil. If orcs are always evil then there's no real conflict and they're not really evil. They're just doing what orcs do,

Leperflesh posted:

There's room for that kind of game, rkajdi (and it's the kind of game I want to play, incidentally), but there's also a place for players who just want a very familiar fantasy setting with cartoon ethics where you can go to town on some orcs without having to feel guilty or examine your motives.

But there's obviously been a glut of the latter type for 30 years now, so I do agree that it'd be nice to have more exploration of the former. Unfortunately, it seems like a number of attempts at a more "mature" grey areas type game, can't quite help themselves not be horrible shitbags and throw in rape, torture, misogyny, etc. into the mix, because "mature themes" has to mean that to some people.

moths posted:

One worst thing about fantasy is that nerds can never accept a trained warrior capable of killing / incapacitating anyone with a single strike.


A thing that's literally happened for as long as humans have fought is somehow "less believable" than the mystical magical weird wizard show.

Leperflesh posted:

But most importantly, 4E divorced the mechanics of powers from their fluff descriptions, so you absolutely could build a "fighter guy" capable of fantastical, supernatural achievements and feats. Not just a super-really-good but mundane fighter whose goodness is mostly down to being draped in the magic other people made. If you wanted to declare that all of your "melee attacks" were actually your fighter casting magic bolts of steel from his supernatural muscles, you can, and there's nothing in the game that would invalidate that. Plus you could just go ahead and take magic powers. And by the time you were well into your paragon path, you probably were capable of supernatural things, just by default.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/wizards_magic/status/934625377330352128

what happened?

Kwyndig posted:

It's all arbitrary anyway, rarity is meaningless without demand, just look at all the listings on ebay for defunct card games.

Desiden posted:

Though I think the more important fiscal aspect is the underlying message here about the consumer base. The more the alt-right manbabies throw tantrums, the more it seems to me that "fiscal consequences" are the primary underlying fear. Not that they don't hate women or minorities, but a lot of the hostility towards diversity in different circles seems focused on de-legitimizing the idea that companies doing so are doing it for economic reasons moreso than moral. Its "SJWs forcing their ideology" as a narrative, because the alternative would be recognizing that women and minorities represent an economic opportunity for companies. The sum of all fears for that type is that companies will do the math and conclude that lost sales from banning shitheads like this one are more than made up for by making their markets friendlier to other groups.

Which is, specifically in this case, why the symbolism of the ban is more damaging than the reality (since apparently MTGheadquarters wasn't heavily involved in sanctioned stuff anyway). Its basically a message to MRAs that their economic importance is limited, and that putting up with their poo poo isn't an economic necessary evil for the company. It strikes to the heart of all their insecurities.

Now if only Twitter could figure that out too....



(Though to be honest, Twitter's whole model of business is such a stumbling shitshow they may well need to humor the manbabies to keep the thing staggering on)

Caedar posted:

"The social-justice warriors are coming for your board games," says the National Review. Lol.

Plutonis posted:

What is this about MTG tournament judges being kiddy fiddlers and wotc covering them up because I just heard about it from a guy i know

Alien Rope Burn posted:

People want representation and to be able to play what they are in real life in a game loosely set in a mirror of the real world. You can use the word "agenda" to try and make that somehow sound sinister or manipulative, but it really isn't. Saying "No, they can't" is an arbitrary restriction created by the authors, which is particularly ironic given it's a game about changing forms.

Not a hard concept. Well. Maybe it's hard for you.

Plutonis posted:

That should be pretty obvious yes

Comrade Gorbash posted:

The people you're parodying there use REEEE to imply "autistic screeching."

That's easy to lose the thread of because "autistic screeching" isn't an actual thing, and they're blatantly projecting their own awful and irritating behavior on others, as usual. But still probably a thing to avoid.

Bar Crow posted:

How would they even make a power armor bikini? It just wouldn't make sense.

admanb posted:

Nothing fires this thread up like a chance to bitch about other forums.

Quixotic1 posted:

I've slowly turned family and friends and shown them the breath of tabletop games, where they once though stratego and risk was the pinnacle of gaming, they now ask me to bring Chinatown and FCM at gatherings.