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Social media is, more and more, about sharing and being exceptionally open about your statements. Anyone can reblog your posts in tumblr and share it with others. Nerds are absolutely terrified of other people and their wrong opinions, so instead they burrowed farther and farther into the blogosphere where they could easily vet who could and couldn't respond to them. Once that more or less died they ran for Google+ which is an even better social bubble creator.
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Oct 2, 2014 00:06
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:31 |
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:I am quite sure you are a nerd as well, considering you post on this forum, and frequently speak about nerd interests. Oh poo poo you got me...!
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Oct 2, 2014 00:09
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Libertad! posted:People can reblog your stuff on Google+ as well, though, so that's not gonna help. Yeah but Tumblr is built AROUND reblogging, whereas in G+ it's just this side thing. It's also much easier in G+ to build your circes and then disallow anything from outside of them.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:22
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Ferrinus posted:He should have penalties for using a teacup in order for the fact of his using a teacup to be impressive. That's the point of the drat scene: that Riddick so outclassed those shmoes that he didn't need a real weapon to insanely brutally slay them. You'll notice that in later, more dangerous situations Riddick did not deliberately handicap himself and instead actually tried his hardest and used the best stuff he could get his hands on, because he is not an actual, literal circus clown. I too remember the scene where Riddick took out the teacup to fight in ater more dangerous situatins then paused and told the audience "WAIT, IF I USE THIS, I WON'T BE AS STRONG" and then put it down and are you loving this stupid or are you messing with us? The point is that the "KILL DUDES" character should always be at max KILL DUDES no matter what they have. The teacup scene isn't awesome because you're going oh man that teacup gives him a -4 attack penalty as an improvised weapon! It's that Riddick is so loving badass he will ruin your poo poo with literally anything. That it's a teacup is entirely immaterial. The point is that Riddick is always at MAX KILL DUDES, and complaining that teacups need to give him a penalty is missing the point to a degree of required idiocy that I literally do not think you have, which is why I wonder if you're just loving with us, because you are not that goddamn stupid.
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Oct 5, 2014 07:09
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If you watched a scene where Vin Diesel kills a dude with a teacup/mug and went "Yes, the fact that he's ignoring the penalty to using an improvised weapon shows how strong he is, though it is a shame he is not using the weapon with which he has all his bonuses" then it amazes me you're able to even type coherent sentences on the keyboard. Maybe in that scene he uses a teacup/mug because it's sweet, then in another scene he uses a battle axe because it's also sweet but in a different way, and at no point in time is he or does he have to bean count his way to success. Because if your ONLY frame of reference is "At some point he HAD to start counting out penalties and bonuses" then congrats on being fundamentally wrong about everything. EDIT: Literally your argument is "we have to mathematically prove Vin Diesel is awesome" and if you'd just add some random misogyny we'd have the Ur Nerd Statement. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 10:03
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Chaotic Neutral posted:I don't think it's necessarily a numerical penalty, but there's absolutely some substance to the argument of 'it is more badass because of the limitation' because that's the entire point of the scene. If you're applying game mechanics to the situation without evoking that aspect then it loses a lot, if not all, of its narrative weight. And the whole initial point is that it isn't a penalty to Riddick because he's that awesome. Like, nobody else kills dudes with a teacup! That's a thing Riddick does because he's at MAX MURDER DUDES all the time. He isn't just taking a penalty and then managing to be cool in spite of the penalty. He's cool because he isn't taking that penalty to begin with - because his whole thing is that he will murder dudes no matter what the situation is! Most people can't kill with a teacup, but he does because gently caress! He's that awesome! Not because he's a high enough level or whatever, but because he has I Am Riddick which includes amongst other bonuses "IS ALWAYS ABLE TO KILL YOU" There's a difference between "Well, the teacup gives these penalties, but Riddick is a higher level, so his bonuses outweight those penalties" and "Literally it does not matter that all he has is a teacup, Riddick is Never Not Murdering People."
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Oct 5, 2014 10:20
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I mean the main point to go back to the beginning was that a fighter should always be a fighter. You have a sword? You're a fighter. You've got some brass knuckles? You're a fighter! A heavy rock? You're a fuckin' fighter! It's not that you have a high enough bonus to use these in spite of their penalties (and them being penalties is something I'll go back to), it's that You Are A Fighter: Killing Is Your Thing. Riddick's the fighter. It doesn't matter what he's got. Battleaxe? Gun? Tea mug? When Riddick says "I'm going to kill you with this teacup" the audience isn't shaking their heads and wondering if that's even possible, they're going "poo poo yeah, Riddick's gonna kill this dude with a teacup!" This is something I talked about waaaaaay back when 5e was just being announced. The fighter should be equal parts action movie star, action game protagonist, and Every Fighting Game Character. They don't have specific weapon proficiencies, they have Proficiency: Killing Dudes. No matter what they're using to kill you with, you better believe they are killing you with it. Riddick uses a teacup because it doesn't loving matter, he's Riddick! We don't watch that movie to see the logistics or to ponder how Riddick is so murderful, we do it to watch Vin Diesel Be A Badass. The narrative weight was not "he killed that dude with a teacup, nobody can do that," the narrative weight was "Oh man he killed that dude with a teacup, what's he gonna do next?" In other words, Riddick killing the guy with a teacup wasn't an extraordinary feat. That's just how he rolls. It's not the individual scene that's memorable, it's the overall character being able to just kill everything. And to go to the penalties thing, this is like saying "A 3.x Fighter who pushed a dude is a super badass." Just because something is mathematically unoptimal doesn't make it cool. Penalties are the game's way of telling you "DON'T DO THAT." And you know what? Most players won't. Combat maneuvers had tons of penalties in 3.x. End result? Most players never used them! Fighters with high BAB didn't go around killing dudes with teacups because the game was actively telling them not to do it. Like, games do not advertise themselves on "Hey, you can make this really boring!" The idea that players will self regulate themselves was dismissed LONG ago in video games. Players aren't going to look at the obviously mechanically better but boring option and go "Well, it just won't be fun if I do that." They're gonna do that then complain to you that they're bored. And good! Don't make your loving game boring! So if teacups have a whatever penalty to use them, the actual answer is "nobody ever uses them, and when people do, it's not badass, it's mostly just laughable." On he other hand, if teacups have a penalty and Fighters just straight up ignore any and all penalties that involve murdering someone, then it's different. Nobody else could kill a dude with that teacup, hell, nobody else would even try. The Fighter? He doesn't give a poo poo! He jams that teacup into the dude's chest because he's the loving fighter and killing the baddies is what he does! To hit on Malcolms point, that isn't to say Riddick + Teacup beats everything. It's to say that Riddick killing you with a teacup is absolutely just a thing he does. The Fighter is never accessory to the weapon, the weapon is always their accessory. Yeah, John McClane is better with a gun, but he's not dealing 1d4 damage with a penalty to attack before grabbing the gun. He doesn't suddenly do an additional 1d8 damage when he stone cold hangs a dude. That's just his execution! In Fate, it's invoking the environment. John McClane does not have Weapon Focus: Chains.
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Oct 5, 2014 11:29
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OtspIII posted:Sorry to pop into this as it's dying down, but there are some concepts people aren't really bringing up that I figure are useful additions to the conversation. I'll agree here, but the example sorta destroyed the initial underlying point, which was "A fighter is not their weapon, a fighter is a fighter." Unless you are literally built around using your magic weapon, then yeah, the weapon should be an accessory to the fighter, not the other way around. And if you ARE built around having that magic weapon, then you kinda have to decide if the magic weapon is an important part of your character, or the important part. The problem is that, in basically every edition of D&D, the fighter is the accessory. He makes the weapon go - and without that weapon, he can't actually do much of anything. The teacup example was pushed to point out that in your standard action movie, the fighter is the fighter no matter what they have at hand. Riddick will kill you with your own knife. John McClane will hang you using some nearby chains. The same goes for your standard action game - Nathan Drake doesn't take a penalty to attack when he runs up to a dude, punches them right in their dick, and steals their ammo, or sneaks up behind them and snaps their neck; the boss of the Third Street Saints doesn't have to take a moment to re-arrange their feats to ensure they can kill people with the baseball bat instead of their pistol or their rifle. This is the thing D&D has warped - the idea that the fighter is a magical item receptacle. And that's what the argument is against - that the fighter is always at GO TIME, and all the magic weapon - or bigger machine gun, or fancier battle axe - does, is put them at GO TIME +.
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Oct 5, 2014 20:37
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But guys, if you let the fighter kill a dude with a teacup and not take a gross penalty once, that's all they're going to do! - Nobody who understands games or human beings.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:52
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Ferrinus posted:If you let someone use a teacup with the same effectiveness as they'd use a sword, you diminish the importance of swords. But, swords are, and should be, important to a number of games. I sharply disagree. The sword is a tool. What matters is the guy using it. Like nobody cared if Riddick was using a knife he took from some other dude or an axe or whatever. The weapon wasn't what was important. It was the dude murdering everyone hat people cared about. When John McClane grabs the pistol hidden in his back he wasn't taking some kinda penalty, and nobody gasped and thought "That's a smaller gun! He'll never be able to kill now that he dropped his better weapon!" John Matrix kills people in an absurd number of ways, be it a goddamn arsenal of guns, just just snapping their necks, throwing knives at them, etc. Rambo is equally deadly with bow and hilariously oversized machine gun. Is McClane's machine gun "diminished in importance" because he can whip out his pistol and shoot a terrorist? Are any of THE COMMANDO's weapons "diminished in importance" when he throws a dude off a cliff or just snaps a guy's neck in the plane? What about when he's mowing baddies down with a machine gun and some grenades - do the grenades make the machine gun "less important?" No, because nobody gives a poo poo about the machine gun! We're there to watch Schwarzenegger rack up the body count! When JOHN MATRIX throws a loving pipe at a dude to kill him with a one liner, how many people went "You know, this just ruins the previous scene, why even bring all those guns if he can just kill with a pipe?"
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Oct 6, 2014 01:18
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Ferrinus posted:Why was John McClane happy to get his hands on an assault rifle if it didn't really matter what he had on hand in his fight scenes? Who said it doesn't matter? Different tools for different uses. I don't remember him throwing away the pistol because look, the machine gun has +3 and the pistol has +2. What matters is that he's John McClane, Now With Machine Gun. HO-HO-HO. The machine gun is incidental to the "JOHN MCCLANE." You're the one claiming that unless John McClane has some sorta penalty to choking a dude with a chain, or unless there's some big gap between stabbing a dude with a knife and killing them with your hands, John Matrix snapping a dude's neck in a plane isn't interesting. And what that leads to is a game where nobody chokes dudes, nobody stabs with a knife, nobody shoots a bow, they all just get the One Good Weapon and keep it on them at all times.
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Oct 6, 2014 01:31
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To keep it going, here's a tumblr that's generally pretty good!
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Oct 6, 2014 08:21
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I'll never understand people who desperately ache for a Star Wars with no jedi in it. It's like wanting to play Shadowrun but hating the orks and mages. Dudes, there's settings and systems right there for you, just take the obligatory big animal race and call it a wookie.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:09
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I guess I don't get the guy who watches Star Wars and groans and mutters every time Luke shows up. Like, guys, he's kind of a major character.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:50
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GimpInBlack posted:I've literally never seen someone say "Star Wars would be better without any Jedi in it," It's kind of a really common statement whenever EotE comes up. It shows up nonstop in the thread.
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Oct 8, 2014 22:06
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FMguru posted:Yep. The problem with Jedi in RPGs is the same as wizards in D&D (worse, really, because at least D&D wizards aren't also flashing whirling close combat ninjas). Jedi tend to overwhelm all other members of an adventuring party because in the canonical universe they have all kinds of encounter- and scenario-breaking powers. So either you play a party of Jedi, a Jedi whose powers are nerfed into something like Counselor Troi's, or a party with no Jedi if you don't just want to sit around and watch the Jedi character solve all the problems with his Jedi spell list. "TTG writers are incapable of leaving the shadow of D&D" is not an inherent issue with Star Wars. Luke traveled with Han just fine without either overshadowing the other. RPZip posted:Jedi are pretty stupid though, for real. They have the D&D alignment problem except worse, and it works out okay sometimes when someone else is telling the story but sometimes you want a fun, familiar space opera setting without "is this an Objectively Good Action or not" coming up. There's a reason that when authors like Avellone get a hold of the universe they start seriously rewriting poo poo with the Jedi. Again, TTG writers being unable to leave the shadow of D&D is not an inherent problem with Star Wars. The original trilogy didn't have a Bioware morality meter and worked fine.
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Oct 8, 2014 22:49
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FMguru posted:Only when Luke had like one level in Jedi Noob prestige class. Once he learned more than a single Jedi trick, Luke was off on his own solo adventure away from Han and Chewie and Leia. Kenobi also disappeared from the story early on. Vader dominated every scene he was in, except for when he was bending the knee to a more powerful Jedi. That was due to Han and Luke having different stories and narrative arcs, not due to power levels. Luke was good at killing dudes with a lightsaber and doing unnecessary flips every time he dodged an attack. A few times he flipped a lightsaber to his hand. Once he floated C-3PO to impress a bunch of teddie bears. He can search his feelings. That's about it. The idea that jedi PCs are just "normal PCs+" is BS. That's not really expressed in the protagonists at any point in the original trilogy. And yeah, Vader dominates every scene he's in - he's the bad guy! The villains are supposed to be super powerful and impossible to defeat, that's what makes it great when they're defeated! What Star Wars needs isn't some kind of weird "Jedi Group / Non Jedi Group" divide, it needs to just go either fantasy pulp space opera or full action movie. On one end Han shoots his blasters, flies his ship, and is a smug rogue, while Luke does front flips and sabers dudes. On the other end the jedi are carving their way through hundreds of droids and hurling baddies off cliffs while the republic commando has some kinda of heavy machine gun space laser and a rocket launcher and just ignores the puny blaster fire that gets absorbed by his armor. The belief that jedi must intrinsically belong to the latter group and only jedi can every belong to that is D&D garbage.
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Oct 9, 2014 00:52
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Bucnasti posted:Who cares about Jedi and smugglers, which version best supports wookie game play? From what I've heard, the old d6 one made strength hilariously awesome. Davin Valkri posted:Cirno, just curious, where does KOTOR2 fall on that continuum? Dark Space Opera or something else? A Game With Mechanics That Don't Support It's Intended Message KotOR 2 suffers the same flaw many Chris Avellone games suffer - I can't shake the feeling that what he really wants to make is a visual novel.
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Oct 9, 2014 01:43
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LuiCypher posted:Being a Jedi is a pretty *special* thing, and it definitely should be an advancement option for higher-level play, but once you introduce Jedi it's really hard to balance a system around the assumption that they will have a presence in a party of ordinary people since they have powers that could let them side-step social encounters until GM fiat stops them from doing so, combat prowess that enables them to nearly one-shot everything they get within melee distance of (unless it's something like a Rancor), and space-wizard powers that allow them to circumvent a lot of obstacles. "Use Willpower instead of Charisma when convincing someone, costs a talent." Like there's literally no reason any of those powers have to be explicitly better then anything other classes get. Lando ain't a jedi and he handles himself quite nicely in the third movie's space fight (and in fact is General Calrissian and is calling the shots). I mean come on, the solution to "I want jedi to not overshadow non-jedi" is simple: don't stat them out that way.
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Oct 9, 2014 16:25
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As I said, I think Star Wars sorta needs two "modes." One is more low key pulpy style action a'la original trilogy; Han Solo is a good shot with a blaster and a good pilot, Luke does front flips and sabers dudes, Lando is a good pilot and has some vague leadership abilities (and the ability to be suave as gently caress). The second is EU/prequels/Clone Wars high fantasy action, where jedi are force pushing groups of droids around and performing ridiculous acrobatics and cutting through armies, while republic commandos are mowing down enemies with heavy repeater blasters and taking out armor with rocket launchers and wearing super strong armor. The idea that Jedi have to be the former and non-jedi the latter is pure D&D BS. Incidentally, it always rubbed me the wrong way how EotE really tried to amp up and emphasize it as THE GRITTY STAR WARS, because Star Wars was never gritty. Even in the wretched hive of scum and villainy of Mos Eisley, the atmosphere was far more low key and vaguely noir-ish then it was vicious grim and gritty. Han Solo was a smug roguish scoundrel with a cocky grin, not some horrible amoral criminal from a gritty crime drama.
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Oct 10, 2014 01:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:When did "action economy" become a thing that started being considered as part of design/balance? It seems like its acknowledgement as a mechanic is a fairly recent one, say during 4E? 3e, actually! 3e introduced actual, actions as opposed to AD&D and Basic's "you can move, and you can attack." The additional actions were, of course, typically used to punish non-spellcasters or buff spellcasters - at first all 3e did was chance spellcasting to a Standard (outside of summoning) and attacking to a Full Action, so that only spellcasters could move and still take their turn. Later, Swift and Immediate actions were added, typically to better boost new types of spells. The "action economy" was the idea that players want to maximize the number of actions they can take; spellcasters were stronger because they could simply do more things. A fighter can full attack; a wizard can move, cast a spell, cast a swift or quickened spell, and then cast ANOTHER spell as an interrupt on the baddie's turn. In 4e, when caster superiority was largely taken out back and Old Yeller'd, this stuck around; the difference is that now any class can (potentially) do it. It's why rogue multiclassing and power swaps are so popular; rogues get a minor action attack. This grew to be more and more important as people started to push into bigger novas to attempt to end the fight on the first turn (which was sorta encouraged by the bigger, more damaging, but less healthy enemies starting in MM3), and as more and more powers were made as minor actions (initially it was far more rare and special). A rogue who can attack as a standard AND as a minor is going to be doing better then a rogue who can only attack as a standard. 5e still has it, it just desperately lies to you about it and pretends it isn't there by not actually codifying it as a "minor" or "swift" action, and instead manually reprinting on every goddamn power that it's a bonus action.
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Oct 16, 2014 22:09
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Technically L5R initiative dice can explode same as any other roll, but you don't have multiple passes.
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Oct 30, 2014 08:52
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:31 |
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People like cowboys and magic.
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Oct 31, 2014 05:36
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