The August Personage of Elminster Chat: $2000 Of Charity Donations + Really Bad Posts

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The August Personage of Elminster Chat: $2000 Of Charity Donations + Really Bad Posts

What is the best version of El? This poll is closed.
Elminster	20	6.45%
Elmara	20	6.45%
Entwine	13	4.19%
GURPS	99	31.94%
El Kabong	153	49.35%
Elves	5	1.61%
Total:	310 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Galaga Galaxian posted:

Using babypowder? For what?

Not to put words in Alien Rope Burn's mouth, but I'd imagine he was referring to chafing caused by walking around all day in room heated by the sweaty bodies of a 1000s of nerds.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2014 22:21

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 17, 2024 02:49

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Yes. Leg chafing is well-known to hikers and some athletes, but an agonizing surprise to interior-bound nerds. There are more dedicated products for preventing it, but baby powder did the trick for me for the most part.

Thought so. Take it from a guy who used to work in a lumberyard, babypowder is your friend.

Edit:

Kwyndig posted:

Hey Chuubo's is finally officially out!

Yeah, just bought my copy of the game. Looks like they halved the page count from the ol' playtest. Can't wait to give it a read.

Covok fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Aug 20, 2014

# ¿ Aug 20, 2014 23:40

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

TheSoundNinja posted:

Bushiroad actually isn't a TCG, it's a Japanese company that makes and sells TCGs.

Their two current games are Cardfight!! Vanguard and Future Card Buddyfight. They sound dumb (at least I thought Buddyfight did at first), but both have some pretty neat mechanics.

My preference is for Vanguard. It's like a cross between UFS and Battle Spirits (the last TCG I was really in love with). I could talk about the rules, if there isn't a thread.

Unlike Bandai/Namco America (the company that released Battle Spirits), Bushiroad isn't "Bushiroad America". The Japanese company has been translating and releasing their games all around the world, and put the Anime series for both Buddyfight and Vanguard on Youtube and Crunchyroll, and the player base has been slowly growing.

I played Buddy Fight recently. I personally didn't enjoy it, but, to be fair, the set available was a mirror fight for some reason.

I also heard Buddy Fight is supposed to be a simplified version of Vanguard. Don't know if it's true.

I will admit the idea of a card game that's all about buffing your leader monster is at least an interesting one.

Edit:

Kwyndig posted:

Unrelated to trad games and more of a general life thing, but having basically no teeth sucks. It's been a week since I had the extractions (full upper and partial lower jaw) and my gums have yet to completely seal back up again so life is pain.

Man, that sounds rough.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 03:27

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Losing your hair at 21 sucks. It also sucks to be overweight and have health problems stemming from that. I really wish younger me took better care of myself so I wouldn't have to.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 03:49

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

If nothing else, from experience, a full frontal sunburn is terrible. Remember, if you go into the ocean, reapply sunscreen and never fall asleep on the beach.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 04:00

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

LeSquide posted:

Falling asleep on the beach is a legit contender for Worst Thing Ever if you're pale.

Skin bubbles, man.

I'm not pale, I'm actually a bit dark. Skin still burns the same if you wait long enough.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 04:05

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

TheSoundNinja posted:

Yeah, if you were using "Dragon World" and it came with a dumb introductory comic, that was the demo version of Buddyfight.

Yep, that's definitely what we were playing.

quote:

Both are very similar (you and the allies you call to your side fight together against your opponent and their allies, with everyone able to buff each other up), but Buddyfight is more similar to M:tG and Kaijudo/Duel Masters.

In it, you have three columns you can summon people to: Left, Center, and Right. As the player, your life can only be targeted by an enemy attack if the center column is open. There's also a limited size to the arena - different creatures have different size values, and each side may only have creatures on the field if the sum of their sizes is no more than 3 (think of the battles happening in the Colosseum in Kingdom Hearts, and everyone can play creatures ranging from human size to Cerberus).

In return, if your center column is open, you can equip a weapon and just do it your loving self. Your weapon doesn't count against this size restriction, plus it's anime as hell.

Before each game, you and your opponent will each set aside a card to be your Buddy. They stand to the side and cheer you on, unless you call a copy of them to one of your columns: then you gain a 3 point boost to your life for free (it's called Calling Your Buddy).

Vanguard, on the other hand, works more like a cross between Battle Spirits, Warcraft, UFS, and a role playing game. No spells, monsters, artifacts and crap; all cards in your deck are units who can be summoned to fight for you. There are three columns still, but now there's a front and back row. In the front center space, is the Vanguard Circle. You start with a "Grade 0" unit on this space, and each turn can Ride another unit of the same grade or higher (typically up to Grade 3, though there are a couple of Grade 4 units out there).

Now that Vanguard of yours is special: it's you! Along with being you, the Vanguard can never be destroyed, but being bit by a successful enemy attack can make you take damage.

The remaining spaces on the board are Rear Guard circles, and you can Call units to fill these spaces. There is a catch, however: you may only Call units with the same Grade of your Vanguard or lower.

When your Vanguard attacks, it gets to perform a Drive Check - this is where you reveal the top card of your deck, and put it in your hand. If that revealed card had a special symbol in the top right corner, you trigger a special effect (appropriately named a Drive Trigger). They each give one of your units +5000 Power, and let you do one of the following effects:

Draw - Draw a card.

Heal - As long as you don't have more cards in your damage zone than your opponent, discard one of the other cards in your damage zone.

Stand Stand up one of your Rear Guard units

Critical One of your units deals your opponent one more damage if they hit a Vanguard

Whenever your Vanguard gets bit by an opponent's unit, you reveal cards from the top of your deck equal to that unit's Critical, and if any of those cards have a symbol in the right-hand corner you Drive Trigger then as well.

In Vanguard, if you get dealt your 6th point of damage, you lose, whereas in Buddyfight, the first person to lose all of their Life (points) loses.

EDIT: Ugn, forgot to mention the mechanic that gives "Buddy"fight it's name. It's in italics.

I really do appreciate the effort you put in to trying to explain it and it does sound fairly cool, but I'm more a learn by doing type of guy so there some parts I didn't really follow. Still, it sounds like an interesting enough game.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 06:25

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

TheSoundNinja posted:

Easiest way to get a feel for it, besides buying two different decks and playing with a friend: check out the anime. The first season follows a complete newbie through learning the game and how tournaments work. Each season then has the first couple of episodes be "hay you forgot? hereis how game play" and "shiny new mechanicssss..."

Plus, the evil force of the first season? Being That Guy.

Well, that is half of the point of those shows, isn't it? Get the kids into the game? Though, it's nice to hear they are now making animes actually educational on how to play the products they advertise considering how Yu-Gi-Oh! just used to make poo poo up.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 06:38

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

TheSoundNinja posted:

Bushiroad has been taking a rather revolutionary stance with Card Game Anime, though: They make it good. Whoever came up with the plots or scripting actually made a story that interested and invested me.

Heck, even Buddyfight's anime isn't half bad, which surprised me.

The series for the Weiss Schwartz TCG doesn't make any sense to me though. Something about some group of Yaoi-bate guys doing... things?

Isn't Weiss Schwartz the game all about playing your favorite anime, sort of? Like I saw it in a con once and all the cards were of anime characters.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 06:49

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

NachtSieger posted:

I miss stupid newbie

It feels like we've gone like 4 new newbie avatars in the last two days.

dwarf74 posted:

We're playing Marvel FASERIP in a few weeks.

That system is pretty old, according to wikipedia. Playing it with long time players or newbies who like marvel comics/movies?

Zereth posted:

Didn't the Yu-Gi-Oh anime/manga/whatever came first actually predate there being a card game at all?

According to other posters and wikipedia, it is true. Man, oh, man, do I feel sorry for the designers of that game now. Their job was to take a manga/anime and try to turn its made-up, loosely defined game of cards into an actual game of cards. Then, after somehow doing that, they had to try and sell it in a field arguably dominated by a pretty heavy player. That's rough.

Also, Yu-Gi-Oh! are no longer being produced, apparently.

Darwinism posted:

After reading the F&F writeup, yeah, it does reward exploration, but the classes really don't reflect that sort of focus. You could probably use the XP system as a source of ideas, though.

edit: Alternatively Numenara with everyone running a Nano

I ran a game of numernera for a few, short months. As some advice, it worked if you barely used any of the rules. Like, if you used it as if it were a 20 page book and not a 400 page book, it was ok. Still, there are systems that do what it does better.

If you don't mind me giving an advice somewhat on faith, I backed Ryuutama and skimmed through it so far. It looks like a better choice if you want to focus on exploration.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 23:39

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Literally The Worst posted:

The card game or anime or what? Because either way it's not right. The latest anime started fairly recently and the new series of cards starts this summer. poo poo prints money, it's one of the two biggest card games and is part of a much larger franchise that also prints money.

Yeah, nevermind. I don't play the game nor do I keep up with it, but I saw a link to an article about Konami canceling it on my Facebook newsfeed. When you asked for confirmation, I looked for it and found I was being trolled. Makes me the fool, don't it?

Edit: How is Kaijudo? I remember hearing about the show winning some award for using flash in a new way, but don't know anything about the game.

Covok fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Aug 22, 2014

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 02:27

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I remember hearing about Yu-Gi-Oh before it even hit our shores, and the rarity scheme at the time just shocked on a 'you can do that?' level. The difficulty of obtaining certain cards strikes me as villainous; or, at least, an very successful attempt to turn young folk into cardboard fiends.

Even if it were somehow a good game, the way it's marketed and sold is shameful and embarrassing for the industry.

You mean how there were three cards that literally do nothing that you could only offically get through tournaments, but were also touted as the best, most awesome, super cards ever?

And, yes, I know they eventually remade the cards to actually do something.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 05:21

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

It's the first time I've really ever bought games with a lot of bits and bobbles before and, man, are these things hard to keep organized. I get that keeping them all sealed up and not ready for play makes them safer for mass distribution, but why do the boxes for some of these games seem ill-suited for actually housing the drat things?

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 05:55

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Bucnasti posted:

From reading the updates to Steve Jackson's OGRE kickstarter, getting custom trays manufactured for all the bits is a huge endeavor. I don't blame companies for just including a simple cardboard tray.

I guess its the whole economies of scale thing. They must mass produce it a one way so asking for it any differently is costly and requires adjustments to equipment setting. These trays probably comes in a few standardized forms and the machines have standardized configurations to make those forms. Didn't really bother thinking of that way, but it makes sense.

It's good thing nerds love this hobby, though, since they are the only types obsessive enough to fix it and, at the same time, ~~petty~~ ~~feel pride over dumb things~~ helpful enough to put step by step guides to organizing things despite the packaging.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 06:19

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

BrainParasite posted:

Both men and women can end up HHUUUUUUUAAAAAAGHHH Goreans, in their simplistic fashion, often contend, categorically, that man is naturally free and woman is naturally slave. But even for them the issues are far more complex than these simple formulations would suggest. For example, there is no higher person, nor one more respected, than the Gorean free woman. Goreans do believe, however, that every woman has a natural master or set of masters, with respect to whom she could not help but be a complete and passionate slave girl. These men occur in her dreams and fantasies. She lives in terror that she might meet one in real life.

I feel gross after reading that.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 20:49

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Literally The Worst posted:

ALso it's really poorly designed and the balance is all hosed and really it is just an awful loving game and I hate it. Vanguard at least seems to be well designed even if I can't stand the physical cards.

What makes the physical cards so bad? Anime art or just bad layout?

Davin Valkri posted:

Oh. Okay then.

It's only sorta rhetorical. I've had plenty of adolescent power fantasies. None of them involved dominating women or looking like a bodybuilder. Usually they involved storming the base of the bad guy who dominates women and looks like a bodybuilder while pulling John Woo moves and looking like Himura Kenshin. So I see stuff like this and my first thought is "this can't be serious, can it? This has to be a joke!"

Some people are just broken and horrible.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 21:40

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Tzarnal posted:

Also it seems to suffer the same problem yu-gi-oh has where everything should honestly have about 2 less zeroes.

I heard someone once say, no idea if it's true, that they did that so they could use decimals without using decimals.

Literally The Worst posted:

The layout's awful. Let me see if I can find a picture and I'll explain better.

edit Here we go:

Look at all those symbols that mean absolutely nothing without some sort of knowledge of the game. They make the card look incredibly busy and even as someone who plays other card games I can't even guess at what this card does because I can't compare it to the (for example) Magic analog, or use the name of the ability to help me understand what it does. It's really busy and distracts from the art and doens't look very good.

Which leads into problem number two, which is that there's effectively no break between the art and the next. Most card games will have that delineation to help you process it better, here it's all just one clusterfuck. The cards being full art means you not only have these little images all over the place, but they're mixing in with art and ughhhhhhh

Yeah, I see what you mean. It's all pretty clustered. That said, I do believe icons are a good way to memorize things. Does the official playmat have a quick reference of the icon's meaning on it?

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 22:31

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Literally The Worst posted:

Hearthstone's can eat my taint. Magic is great. WoW TCG was the best. Kaijudo/Duel Masters runner up. YGO is poorer for not having one.

(I like them to require either luck or skill (ideally a mix of both, leaning a bit more towards skill just because of how I play Magic more often than not), and I think WoW TCG's balancing act of "should I play this card as a resource or should I wait to see if I can play it next turn" is nifty as poo poo. Hearthstone does neither. Hearthstone can suckle my nuts.)

What do you think of Mojang's Scrolls?

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 22:51

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Literally The Worst posted:

Never heard of it. Tell me about it?

Scrolls is a digital only, collectible card game created by Mojang, the creators of Minecraft.

There are currently 4 main resources (Growth, Energy, Decay, Order) and 1 pseudo resource (Wild) to make multiresource decks more viable.

Every turn, you may discard one card from your hand to either a) increase your max resource of 1 type by 1 or b) draw two more cards. The type of resource gained by discarded cards depends on the card you discard. You discard a card that costs Growth, you increase your max growth per turn by 1. At the beginning of every turn, you regain your current max of every resource you have discard for. In other words, if you start a turn with 3 Growth resources and discard a growth card for 1 more resource, you get 1 more resource (4) that turn and next turn your start with 4 Growth resources to spend. Every card costs a number of 1 type of resource. So a card may cost 3 Energy to use. Once you pay the cost of a card, you lose that much of the resource for the rest of your turn. If you had 3 Growth and you played a card costing 1 Growth, you have 2 Growth left to spend this turn. You can use as many cards as you like on a turn as long as you can pay the resource cost.

They just added in Wild, a new pseudo resource to make multiresource decks more viable. Every turn, you can instead discard a card of any resource type to get 1 more Wild resource per turn. However, you can only get as many Wild resources as your current lowest resource. In other words, if you have 2 Growth and 1 Energy, you can only have a max of 1 Wild. You can spend Wild to supplement the cost of any other resource. Sacrificing for 6 resources (2 Growth, 2 Energy, 2 Wild) lets you play scrolls of either resource costing up to 4.

I won't lie, I'm really bad at explaining things so...yeah.

If I can just say, the game is still rough around the edges, it is still being worked on, but I like it.

Covok fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Aug 22, 2014

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 23:41

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Literally The Worst posted:

So's Minecraft. Giving this one a miss.

Well, the game is still in playtest. It's just an open one.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 23:58

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Since Gen Con has come and gone, what new games are people interested in?

# ¿ Aug 23, 2014 04:14

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 17, 2024 02:49

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Ewen Cluney posted:

You know, I hadn't been sure whether I wanted to buy The Quiet Year, but it is now on the Stuff To Buy When I Have the Money list.

I can confirm that it is a joy to play especially if everyone "gets it," know what I mean?

# ¿ Aug 31, 2014 01:42

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The August Personage of Elminster Chat: $2000 Of Charity Donations + Really Bad Posts