Baron Porkface posted:Someone in the last thread quoted someone saying that there have only been 4 true innovations in tabletop gaming, and MTG was one of them. Does anyone know what the others were? I wouldn't limit it to four, but historically Reiswitz's Kriegsspiel, H. G. Wells's Little Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering all invented/codified entirely new types of tabletop game (board wargames, miniatures wargames, role-playing games, and collectible card games respectively) and all have clear historical attestation. Of course, in addition we must have the invention of board games, card games, and dice games, bringing this up to seven true innovations, but none of these three have clear historical origins. Now, I'd personally expand it a little to talk about various innovations within each type (e.g. the first board game, the first non-roll-and-move board game, the first board game to implement theming in the rules [chaturanj, the first version of chess], Eurogames, etc.), but if you're talking about just four those are pretty good examples.
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Apr 22, 2013 15:34
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SunAndSpring posted:I've been giving Monte Cook and friends some more benefit of the doubt than I should because I kind of liked Numenera, at least for the setting, and because I've got a knee-jerk reaction to people who use words like "erasure" after looking at that thread about Tumblr on GBS, but what the gently caress is this poo poo. This looks like something I'd find in an Old World of Darkness supplement. Why would you release something like this in 2015 and claim its actually super good for the Native American community? Because they figured that since Bruce Cordell knows Natives, has Native relatives, that they had an accurate picture, and the people assailing them were just tumblr types, who would never be satisfied. Also, they didn't really figure what having a minority of people actually be people in their game world meant.
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Mar 21, 2015 03:47
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PresidentBeard posted:I'm still not quite following. I get that we don't owe Gencon anything, I was going before or after this law passed. My issue is that you're saying that boycotts are to convince moderate or left leaning businesses to act, rather than hardcore bigots. The state of Indiana are those bigots and for Gencon itself it isn't economically feasible to break contract. Who are you trying to force into action by boycotting? Who specifically are you trying to actually pressure? If it's the state of Indiana, the very bigots that passed the law, why bother giving that justification about trying to pressure progressives/moderates? I don't think you understand how this law was passed, duder.
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Mar 28, 2015 18:12
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PresidentBeard posted:If their were shenanigans please inform me. I was under the impression it was passed by bigots voted into office by other bigots. You're missing all the people who don't actively seek to persecute LGBT people but don't care about it happening, who probably make up the majority of support for Mike Pence and who could be influenced by boycotts. You're also missing the possibility of getting Indianapolis to ban antigay discrimination in the city via economic pressure.
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Mar 29, 2015 00:38
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Gravy Train Robber posted:John Wick just asked to add me on LinkedIn, and I have no idea why. This subforum is about my only interaction with the larger trad games community, and I haven't bought anything from him so Sorry for adding you.
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Apr 2, 2015 18:11
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SilverMike posted:Did that man come from the Internet? He's the perfect stereotype... I'm guessing he came from his mother and father.
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Apr 4, 2015 02:50
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Captain Foo posted:I'm guessing he came in your mother. The Light Rail Avenger's victims come forward. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 4, 2015 04:13
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paradoxGentleman posted:At this point I feel like I should ask: what system would you use to stat Conan? Are we talking about an exact emulation of Conan, or a Conan-esque character? Because Conan is someone with a lot of skills that would make him a pretty expensive character to make in a generic system, and difficult to do in a more narrowly-focused system (apart from one that was solely for playing Conan), but making a character like Conan without being an exact match is a much easier task, and even easier if we assume that characters will develop to the point of being as capable of Conan instead of starting out at his level. This is more apparent if we look at the anti-Conan, Elric of Melnibone, who was a Magic-User/Illusionist/Fighter/Cleric/Druid/Assassin in the 1980 Deities and Demigods, but making a character who does what Elric does is much easier- you could do it with some limited houseruling in D&D 4e, mostly to add Stormbringer.
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Jun 10, 2015 14:52
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I've never played one so I couldn't comment. I'll bet they are pretty bad. Hmm, this sums up my problems with a lot of indie rpgs very well, so thank you.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:22
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I will never stop finding the desire to cut the "game" part out of role-playing game bizarre.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:03
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Kai Tave posted:Bingo. I've been seeing people independently come up with the same next big thing in TRPGs for years now. Build an app! Phone/tablet/laptop integration! Go digital! Except nobody who could actually do a good job of that cares about the tiny TRPG market enough to actually do it, and the TRPG market itself is largely comprised of people so regressive and set in their ways that they look down on digital anything out of principle. Back when D&D4E had digital tools like character builders and monster builders and the Companion, this was considered proof that 4E was a dumbed down game for MMO babies because back in my day we did everything by hand and also have I told you about this thing called THAC0, well you see There's a gigantic audience for TTRPGs and LARPs. First of all, there are a lot of people that identify as "nerdy" or "geeky" who thus have an academic interest in doing this geeky thing. There are a substantial number of people who already "roleplay" on blogs, imageblogs, twitter, etc. There are a number of people who would find it appealing if exposed to actual play. There are a number of people who engage in fantasizing in their day-to-day life, who could also be served by roleplaying. Reaching these audiences is fairly difficult because of the way roleplaying games are manufactured, sold, and often designed. But there's also a large part of the existing market that doesn't interact with organized RPG culture except marginally and via the outskirts, who are currently underserved too. But RPGs don't really compete with any other type of game except themselves, at least beyond the abstract way that all activities compete with one another. The challenge is to make games that a) understand what makes RPGs distinct, b) are able to successfully appeal to people, and c) are able to be sold beyond the somewhat incestuous world of RPG culture. moths posted:The fields have already been salted, though. If a new, popular, and accessible RPG were to crop up heralding a renaissance? ,The Old Guard would gatekeep the living gently caress out of it and its players. Those people can't gatekeep their refrigerators, let alone a roleplaying game. It's easy to blame things on the damnable grognard, but it's also wrong.
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Jun 23, 2015 17:58
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If you look at the most popular RPGs of all time, you would see it shake out into three leaders: D&D, World of Darkness, and the D6 Star Wars game. Both of the latter also brought players into the hobby. Both of them had settings that were easy to get into, and had plenty of depth to explore. Both of them had plenty of crunch. This is why indie games will never approach D&D in popularity.
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Jun 24, 2015 03:28
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Tabletop roleplaying games offer a different experience than improv, than online freeform, than CRPGs and MMORPGs. A lot of this experience is poorly understood by people who make and play these games. For example, people assume that rules-light would sell better and get more people playing, but when you look at the (two) games that brought lots of people in, proportionately, they were far from rules-light, and when you look at the perennial also-rans, the kinds of games that come up in conversations outside the RPG online circle, very few rules-light games are among them. This is entirely understandable. Rules-light games are terrible at providing a sense of accomplishment from playing. If slaying a dragon comes down to a single roll, or can just be declared by the player, it's not memorable. If character development is nonexistent, or minimal, there's no sense of advancement. If there's no rules to learn and understand, there's no sense of mastery. Not to say that crunchier means better, because what tends to drive people out of the hobby is the clunkiness of games. A lot of that comes down to problems with design. Another commonality is that they have settings with plenty of depth and plenty of things to do. A lot of modern games, rules-light or not, either reject settings, feature thin implied settings, or use very generic settings. (4e's setting was really good, but buried deeply and without much development.) Setting, however, provides context and understanding to play. This is also why licensed games are unlikely to get really popular, because the one that did- SWD6- had 90% of the setting invented or heavily elaborated by West End Games. The ones that merely established a fanbased (Palladium's licensed games, etc.) did similarly. This didn't happen for pretty much all of the Guardians of Order licensed settings, for the TSR Indiana Jones RPG, etc., because they couldn't or didn't expand the settings to the level of making them explorable or playable. In the modern day, the first is likely to be more important.
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Jun 24, 2015 13:01
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Every single time someone even vaguely academic turns their gaze upon role-playing games, the thing that they identify as the defining characteristic is that an RPG allows players to attempt anything, in principle. This is not something any video game can even attempt to approach, and anything that could would arguably no longer be a video game anymore. Saying that TTRPGs occupy the same headspace as videogames doesn't just include board games (and with them wargames and card games), but probably conflates most of our leisure activities. But nobody argues that TTRPGs have to compete with TV.
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Jun 25, 2015 19:29
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moths posted:There's still a sense that the game world is in "pencil," if that makes sense. The DM can arbitrarily retcon, contradictory material can get published, etc. What would be the purpose of this? What makes it anything more than a gimmick that trades on nostalgia?
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Jun 25, 2015 19:58
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homullus posted:I'm more interested in rules for moving a campaign forward generationally -- what happened to the cities you visited, the laws you instituted, the business schemes you started, the cults you quashed, the evils you banished? Did your previous PCs have children, and if so, are the new PCs descended from them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Emblem:_Genealogy_of_the_Holy_War
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Jun 25, 2015 20:22
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JerryLee posted:I think that some video games (specifically, the ones that enable and encourage heavy modding) aspire to the same attempt-anything ideal. The difference is that in a CRPG, it's easier said than done, whereas in TTRPGs, it's often literally as easily done as said. No matter how many mods I pile on top of Fallout: New Vegas, I will always be able to come up with something the game doesn't allow me to do, until the map becomes the territory and the simulation becomes the real. TTRPGs don't have this problem because they're improvisational.
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Jun 25, 2015 21:52
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JerryLee posted:My point is that making CRPGs "improvisational" in this sense is essentially just a technical/engine limitation and that those can be overcome as technologies and design philosophies advance. We may not ever be able to improvise in a CRPG with exactly the same ease as we can do so in a TTRPG but I fully expect them to converge until CRPGs can scratch that itch for most practical purposes. When we're at that point, they will no longer be games, but automated game studios that generate assets and dialogue and plotlines and so on as necessary. This is unlikely to ever be as popular as a designed vidcon, and making them good would require superintelligent AI, which is quite likely to be impossible to implement, apart from the ethical concerns.
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Jun 26, 2015 02:00
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Fuschia tude posted:100% perfect would be impossible, sure. But it doesn't need to be perfect. Couldn't the problem largely be obviated through statistical methods, like in this dramatic/geographic/logistical situation 99% of players take action X, Y, or Z, so you just need content for paths A, B, and C? Then store that response indefinitely like a cache/hard drive combo. For the really obscure actions you could keep a stable of human devs filling in the cracks on-demand (with maybe a bit of autogen filler padding out gameplay until implementors reach you in the queue), and then save those results for future use as well. The idea being that you would code the automated stuff at a high level of abstraction so it could be reused as much as possible (ninjas attack you in a tower/ninjas attack you in a cavern/you attack the ninja hideout) with some variables to adjust to the current situation. And eventually the map becomes the territory and this is no longer a game, but a reality of its own.
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Jun 26, 2015 02:54
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Roleplaying games are hard to make profitable because each product serves multiple people while being purchased by one person, and is itself durable. This holds no matter how many people are in the hobby. Even if 50-60 million Americans were playing RPGs, you would still be selling a fraction of a book per player, and this gets worse when you consider the long term. In conclusion, capitalism must be destroyed.
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Jun 26, 2015 03:58
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Ferrinus posted:More importantly, that still wouldn't be a roleplaying game or fun for the same reasons that roleplaying games are fun, because you play roleplaying games with other people. Yeah. gradenko_2000 posted:Why are you assuming that the role of the GM will be taken over by an AI and not by a human? "An automated game studio that generates assets on the fly as necessary to drive the plot that the group wants to pursue" is exactly the kind of thing that NWN and (to a lesser degree) Sword Coast Adventures is aiming for. Okay. Let me use Fallout: New Vegas as an example again. Within the context of the game, it is entirely reasonable that, if I wanted to build and launch a rocket to the moon, I could, using the resources reasonably available to a late-game player. However, I can't, most specifically because there are no assets or programming related to space travel in the game. So this would require an entirely new set of assets, and indeed a reprogramming of the game, in order to implement. Furthermore, procedurally generated dialogue is incapable of achieving the level of the real thing, so you need someone to write all the associated dialogue, and determine what I can do when I get to the moon, creating the necessary quests and characters. And you need to be able to do this essentially in real time. So you require superhuman capabilities in order to do this (that is, a superintelligent AI), or an entire simulated world, which brings its own problems. By contrast, if we were playing Fallout tabletop, or whatever, flying a rocket to the moon can be improvised in real-time, with maybe one or two breaks to accommodate the need to figure out what's on the moon to interact with. There's no actual need to create new assets, and the process of creating the optional assets is much simpler than doing so for a video game. There's also no need to reprogram, only an option to add microgravity rules. The dialogue is being improvised by an intelligent being who knows the characters enough (in theory) to be able to do so convincingly. ManMythLegend posted:You're proving my point. TTRPG's represent, for the initial purchaser of the group, a commitment of as much or more money as buying a AAA game. In general it also requires a much more precise set of circumstances to actually play (a place where you won't be bothered, friends with the same work/school/ECA schedule, etc) and much more time to sustain as opposed to a video game where the ease of access is low and constant. Why would a kid go for that, especially if it's unclear that their immediate friend group would want to actually play it long enough to feel they got their money's worth? Solitaire represents an even easier set of circumstances to play! Why don't kids just play solitaire instead of anything else? This is a stupid question. quote:We don't because no one has, or if they have they haven't released the data publicly. Until someone does the best we can do is watch the industry and imply from there. Why are we assuming that corporate entities are unbound by material conditions, or that they instinctively know the best way to go? This is a very historically ignorant assumption.
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Jun 26, 2015 14:46
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Lemon Curdistan posted:It's an anecdote pretty much everyone I know also reports, so I'm pretty sure it's not just you. The problem is that AGE is still too close to D&D for comfort, really. It'd be better starting people off on Monsterhearts or Apocalypse World (or Dungeon World, if you want to show RPGs that look like what non-RPG-players think RPGs should look like). I don't think it would, actually. This is "earn your fun"-type nonsense.
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Jul 10, 2015 21:47
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Ferrinus posted:That piece of Exalted art being traced or stolen or whatever is actually a massive boon to the line, because it distracts everyone's attention away from how completely godawful the 100% original fiction on the opposite page is. I believe the Red Army called this maskirovka.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:04
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Lemon Curdistan posted:They've literally stated they're working on it. MHRP doesn't have character creation because Cam Banks is ideologically opposed to it for some reason, but the genericised Heroic Roleplaying is meant to have some character creation rules. MHRP has character creation. It's not mathematically rigorous but that should make it all the more rules-light.
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Nov 7, 2015 01:25
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dwarf74 posted:From all accounts, comics just had a fantastic year. So I think the doom & gloom is a bit unwarranted. On the other hand, the central problems facing comic books are still present, sales in dollars of individual issues have basically kept pace with inflation since the switchover to Diamond, and all this is in an environment where geeky stuff is chic.
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Feb 9, 2016 18:08
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:You unironically believe that a 200 million dollar movie's color grading - a cooler, bluer (and not consistently muted) look which is 100% consistent with the director and cinematographer's prior output - was chosen because at every single level - executive, producer, director, cinematography - a multi-billion dollar studio thought that the these colors would be solely responsible in making the movie a success. It's an unconscionable crime to treat someone with an incredibly stupid, incredibly proliferate opinion with even the slightest hint of contempt. No looking down at creationists for you!
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Feb 9, 2016 19:00
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Lightning Lord posted:The argument feels more like "Zack Snyder's output is generally critically unpopular and I also don't like his work, and that's the direction WB has decided to go into for DC superhero films" rather than "MARVEL GOOD, DC BAD, FORUMS POSTER SMASH!" The argument feels more like, "I'm immersed in a sea of memes about 'realistic=brown' so I express my dislike for Man of Steel in terms of 'muted palette' and I also universalize it and toss in a couple more memes like 'without irony' just for the heck of it."
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Feb 9, 2016 19:05
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Evil Mastermind posted:Has a "let me tell you why that thing you like is actually really bad" or "let me tell you why that thing you don't like is actually really good" ever actually swayed anyone? Yes. Lightning Lord posted:I legit don't like Man of Steel. It doesn't jibe with what I like to get out of Superman media, and I don't like Zach Snyder's films in general. Nolan's films are great, but I'm more a fan of the world trotting adventurer and weird crimefighter approach to Batman than the modernist political parable direction. I guess I'm just a basic nerd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay. I'm glad that you're able to distinguish between "I don't like it" and "Nobody (with taste) likes it." Not being sarcastic, that's a skill that a lot of people don't develop. Leperflesh posted:Creationists are actively harming the world by denying two hundred years of irrefutable scientific achievement. Contempt for them is absolutely equivalent to sneering contempt for someone who thinks a superman movie was bad for reasons you think are dumb. Yes. People who believe that movie studio executives or producers think that color palettes drive people to see movies and are a source of movies's popularity are actively harming the world by their gratuitous uncharitable beliefs about other human beings. Contempt for them is perfectly justifiable from the rather unusual perspective you are offering. Effectronica fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 19:24
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Leperflesh posted:"Hey man, that opinion is pretty uninformed, here's why" is the first approach maybe? Like, with a creationist, you can start by pointing out some resources for learning about biology and the evidence for evolution... and only after you have someone categorically refusing to accept a mountain of evidence do you necessarily go down the path of "OK you're just willfully stupid and also your agenda is hurting America so I am going to address you with contempt." Respectability politics is inherently bullshit. Arguing that the reason creationism is bad is because it's impairing American power is also kinda bullshit.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:31
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Asimo posted:Man of Steel is an amazingly well done film on a technical and visual level that severely mishandled the core themes of the character and property. And no I don't mean the usual "but he killed Zod!!!" thing moths just mentioned. The basic idea of Superman, going all the way back to the 30's, is a sort of Utopian outlook on the world, with the idea that he can solve problems nobody else can (I mean there's a whole load of early golden age stories of Superman capturing wife beaters and thwarting war profiteers and other very mundane evils) and, more importantly, that he has the moral character to stand up to these evils even when it's hard. But there's several points in Man of Steel where he seems reluctant to do the right thing, or does the right thing out of anger, or does egregious property damage without consideration. Ironically the Zod thing isn't one of these moments, since it's pretty clear he was struggling with trying to find some other option, and in the end makes a painful choice in order to save innocent people; it's actually one of the moments where the film got it right. The character of Superman in Man of Steel is immediately willing to trade his life for that of humanity. I'm not sure how much more idealistic he's supposed to be.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:48
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Any differences between Marvel and DC on a company-wide scale disappeared by the end of the 1970s, and I would argue that they disappeared by 1972 at the latest.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:59
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moths posted:It's a hard lesson for him, but ultimately it's the one he learns. Imprisoning someone, or brainwashing them, is committing savage violence and brutality. So is permanently disabling them. So, the only way for Superman, given the conditions of the film, to defeat Zod, is with either violence or coincidence, and making a movie where Superman is useless and all that matters is chance in this world is actually worse ideologically.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:06
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moths posted:Which is essentially why those were the wrong conditions to present in a Superman film. OK, so now that we've disallowed Zod, Luthor, Darkseid, Brainiac, Mongul, prepare yourself to have all the superman films be about the Parasite and the Prankster. Because those five villains are also people Superman can't actually defeat by converting them to his cause through reason or moral inspiration.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:10
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moths posted:Honestly Captain America is a better Superman at this point. Cinematically?
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Feb 9, 2016 20:15
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moths posted:E: Yes. This is a pretty damning indictment of the cinematic Captain America, bluntly.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:19
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moths posted:That he's a better Superman character than Zach Snyder's Superman? The problem is that your T-Shirt Superman is not a good thing to resemble, from my point of view.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:31
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Lightning Lord posted:Just to be clear you don't come off looking that great in that thread. Illusion is inferior to being.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:42
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ProfessorCirno posted:Stop responding to IZ posters already. I knew we shouldn't have changed the name from "Traditional Games Discussion." That's when the rot set in.
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Feb 9, 2016 22:34
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Bongo Bill posted:what the hell does "cronk" mean I think it's rude to make fun of Sean Reynolds just because he can't spell crunk.
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Feb 10, 2016 03:16
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Somehow I'll just have to live out the rest of my days knowing I'm Wrong About Comics. Is there any particular reason why you're unwilling to engage in discussion in the discussion section of the website? Or are you just blessed with a sneer reflex? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 10, 2016 20:20
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