TG July Chat Thread: Now with 20% less uncanny valley

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG July Chat Thread: Now with 20% less uncanny valley

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Reene posted:

In deference to that other thread, post about a time a game managed to make you break into a cold buttsweat in sheer abject dread.

When, after making an Ops Director for an AdEva game who was going to be the estranged father for another PC and sitting in on my first session, one of the players who was playing an adult pilot (ugh) told me OOC 'Just so you know, my 28 year old tactical operator dude is loving your PC's 14 year old daughter, is that gonna be a problem'

I mentioned it already in the bad experiences thread, but that was the moment I dropped that game and sprinted the hell away from that group forever.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 16:06

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 02:32

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

God do I ever know that. I never allowed it in any game of AdEva I ran. Hell, another butt-clench moment from AdEva was a time a player in one of my on-line groups told me his favorite part of the game I was running was 'the shipping' and complained about how his pilot wasn't getting any from the female pilots with his awkward anime come-on stuff. That was when I realized he wasn't just playing an awkward teen, he was, in fact, an awkward 30 something dude, and when he told me I should be doing more to promote sex/romance between the pilots I just booted him on the spot.

AdEva is a fun game, but you better know the people you're playing well (everyone else in the group was someone I knew personally), because the actual developer community is skeevy as gently caress. We just wanted to play doomed terrified teenagers in crazy robots, damnit.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 16:33

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Oh, yeah. Romance happens in AdEva. It's just best handled like, say, Monster Hearts rather than creepy anime porn. It's hard to play a bunch of teenagers who are facing existential horror without them fumbling around with feelings and relationships and such, it's just those should be the focus, you know? It's like how Monsterhearts has sex moves, of course, but generally isn't intended to be an X-rated game.

I really want to run Monsterhearts some day. I bought it on a whim and with my regular group, two players really wanted to try it but the third vetoed it.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 16:44

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Forums Terrorist posted:

It's me, I'm the guy who missed the point of Evangelion and expected a harem anime somehow.

In fairness, this describes like what, 70% of the people who claim to be fans of Evangelion but want Shinji to be 'more of a badass' and poo poo.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 16:46

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The whole 'gently caress you you creepy anime fucks' thing is what drew me to the whole thing in the first place and got me running AdEva. That, and the fact that I got to have a PC slowly lose the boundary between her personal existence and the existence of others, melt into goo, go on an insane mind-trip where she was finally able to see herself from the perspective of others and realize what a horribly arrogant jerk she often was, eventually reconstitute herself, and overcome her crippling ego.

I mean The Tang Incident was one of the highlights of DMing, for me. It's just absolutely hilarious and sad that the people Eva was written to condemn are the people who tend to love Eva, and who make all kinds of classes for AdEva like 'My PC is Gurren Lagen!' or 'I'm a 13 year old super genius who customized my robot and built it himself and it totally obeys me and doesn't do weird mind-fuckery!' It's like, guy, the weird mind fuckery is WHY WE ARE HERE.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 18:18

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Speaking of, play the Titanworld hack some time. It's simple, thematic, and a lot of fun.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 02:27

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

A Black Crusade party deciding to commit terrorism is a little like saying a D&D party feels like going to a dungeon. It's just kind of the done thing, given most BC characters are pirates, terrorists, or terror pirates.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 08:44

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The funniest thing is how many people forget that Grimdark is meant to be a pejorative, or at least a marker that a setting or story is grim to the degree that it's silly, and insist grimdark makes games totally mature and awesome.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 18:16

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Has anyone ever made a decent STALKER RPG? Because the setting seems just goddamn perfect for one.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 22:22

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Where did you get this Quiet Year and where can I, too, acquire this game? This sounds like my kind of thing.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 01:43

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Galaga Galaxian posted:

So does this mean we'll soon get edition wars for Patherfinder?

God, I hope so. It would be the most poetic justice.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2014 19:32

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Pundit is just really big on the GM being The Boss doling out the world and events to players, with the players having no control beyond the point of sword or spell, and Amber Diceless is essentially the ultimate game of the GM being The Boss.

It's not really inconsistent, at least within his subjective framework.

I've never understood this mindset. I mean, yeah, I like GMing because it's fun to direct the flow of the story and all, but if you wanted that strict of control over things, why not just write prose?

# ¿ Jul 8, 2014 18:58

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Halloween Jack posted:

It's kinda like what I was saying upthread: to keep flogging the same metaphor, the problem is not just that toxic gamers are the loudest people at the party, they also have a knack for positioning themselves near the front door.

So there have actually been studies to show that Gamers are, in fact, The Worst? Like, it isn't just perception based on the internet?

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 04:45

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I think some of it comes out of players getting attached to their characters and wanting to see how the same character reacts to multiple different situations and a long career, too. At least, that's been my experience with my players. They like watching their protagonists develop and deal with a long series of different problems and situations, more like a long serial than a single big novel.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 20:45

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

LongDarkNight posted:

My friend mentioned that be had read about an RPG where the PC were dragons in past lives and as they level up they gained powers related to that past life. Does anyone know what game this is?

It's called Fireborn, I think, and it was pretty terrible the one time I tried it out.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 00:29

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Fireborn's concept was fine, but the mechanics were absolutely atrocious. I just remember that I was the only combat character in our party and I was slicing shadow-beasts in half left and right by spamming the same knife combos over and over while the others all hid behind me.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 02:30

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Basically, it sounds cool and then you try to play it and it's clunky and not very engaging, was how it went for my group.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 02:39

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Tollymain posted:

this is roughly as subtle as a brick to the face

This. I get that you're writing for Pathfinder fans and subtlety isn't really a requirement, but yes, we can all see that A is Orcs who would likely be considered Lawful Good once you remove the racial bias component and B are those loving elven Nazis that always get labeled CG in D&D.

Really, I want someone to just write elves as actual Nazis or imperialists. I played in a setting where the Evil Empire was a vicious race of imperialist grey elves once and it was awesome living in the human diaspora among the dwarves and working for the resistance.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 05:29

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kai Tave posted:

I'm pretty sure Spelljammer had straight-up imperialist elves with Nazi overtones or something like that.

"What if elves...were actually huge jerks!?!?" is honestly as played out by this point as "elves are super-cool and awesome and pretty and this one is totally my GMPC's hot girlfriend" by this point. Nobody's gonna care about you pointing out that elves as presented sound like a passel of dicks because no poo poo. If you really want to stand out what you've gotta do is go the reconstruction route and write up an elven society where they have all that fancy art and culture and maybe-immortality and magic but actually are super-cool and awesome and not huge dicks about it.

That too is also played out. Elves in general are, unfortunately, the most played out of all things that play, on reflection.

Also what the guy above me said about gently caress elves.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 05:35

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The other thing: If Angels and Demons still have alignments, make it make them act really loving weird by mortal standards. Like they were following an inhuman series of taboos that they could not but follow because they don't truly have free will but actually act as avatars of an ill-defined moral concept like D&D Alignment.

I've done that, it works. It had my players reaching for the muskets whenever they ran into a Demon, sure, but also whenever they encountered Angels. Because gently caress if what they do makes any sense, either.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 06:30

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Admittedly, I made the Angels arbitrary and weird as hell because I made them D&D Good. As in, the way Good often seems to come out in grogmined alignment arguments about how 'Oh yeah, totally okay to kill orc children, they're Evil after all.' and stuff like that, basically. They were operating on weirdly simplistic and mechanistic ideas of what Good were that didn't map at all to the world they'd invaded because I was basically running 18th century SMT as it was, just with D&D invading a saner world rather than lots of crazy poo poo with Yahweh kickin' up.

I still need to find a better system for that game because that was the game where we all realized Pathfinder is even worse than 3.5 and should never be used again.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2014 18:38

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Dude, I'm the whitest white boy I know, not to mention het, and I assure you it's terrible for me too.

Same here, this poo poo is awful. Why does this hobby attract so much of this kind of poo poo? What is it about Tabletop Gaming and RPGs in particular that causes this kind of thing?

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 02:57

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

MadScientistWorking posted:

If you think this behavior is relegated to this industry you are in for a rude awakening.

I know it isn't, but it seems to be goddamn everywhere here.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 03:13

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Then I suppose Mr. Mearls products will be persona non grata at my gaming table, too. It can be mutual!

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 06:23

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Galaga Galaxian posted:

Well than its official for me. gently caress Dungeons and Dragons 5E.

Kill all Elfgames. Let Storygames rule the earth.

I mean it's basically 3.5 but with a few minor changes, which is not anything I'd ever be looking to play again anyway. It's just all this shittiness makes the decision to avoid it even easier.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 06:34

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hell, one of the most fun games I was ever in was 3.5. A good DM and group can make almost any game a good game. I think Pathfinder has a terrible system that exacerbates the problems of 3.5, but if you're having fun, it's all good!

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 00:52

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

fatherdog posted:

what is this even in response to?

The guy just above me asking if enjoying a Pathfinder game makes him a bad?

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 01:01

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kwyndig posted:

Enjoying any kind of game doesn't make you bad, unless it's like something disgusting like Black Tokyo played 'straight'.

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. I don't see where any of the confusion came from.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 01:07

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cyphoderus posted:

50 dollars a PDF

I get what this product is, but if they want people to actually try their setting out in a gaming context they should come up with a final authoritative world-defining guidebook that's not big and giant. I tried getting into Glorantha through Heroquest; the material is well-written and flavorful, but extra confusing. People praise Glorantha's unreliable narrators but I just found it really hard, as a GM, to come up with a coherent picture of the setting in my mind that I could convey to players. It's like system mastery, but lore-driven instead of math-driven. I didn't like it.

It's a wonderful setting if you're looking for excellent world-building, though. Totally worth a read.

This. I goddamn love reading about Glorantha, but gently caress if I can run a game in it.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 02:50

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 02:32

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Haifisch's LP of it was great, too. It was a lot of fun to vote in and was what got me interested in Glorantha.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 05:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG July Chat Thread: Now with 20% less uncanny valley