Grognards.txt NEXT: Goodnight, Sweet Wince

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Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

FMguru posted:

Here's some slightly offbeat grog from the delusional business idea bin

The American cult of "Entrepreneurship" has a lot to answer for...

This sounds like a useful sideline for a hobby shop honestly. Or as an added benny if you run a game in the store.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2015 03:00

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 15:19

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Bieeardo posted:

Dat-- no, I can't even write it.

That feeling, when the party passes by, unpissed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSE2xvIHWMI

# ¿ May 13, 2015 15:21

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TheAwfulWaffle posted:

Are there any rules anywhere for creating characters above 1st level? Specifically, is there any kind of wealth by level chart anyplace?

In the 1E DMG there's a table for generating random other adventurers; my own constellation of gamers would use that for, at least, determining what magic items your new sixth-level guy had.

The "earn your fun, always start at level 1" is also a persistent misapprehension, Gygax meant "take pains to let a new PLAYER have a small dungeon run - put the campaign on hold, let the regulars play level 1 fighter men-at-arms or something - so he gets that pleasure of discovery. Then after a couple of sessions start giving him his cut and catch him up with everyone."

# ¿ May 18, 2015 21:30

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World of Tanks presents German tanks pretty accurately, which has led to massive crying and bitching on the part of people who imagine the Germans to have had invincible Gundam tanks, as opposed to "pretty good tanks, which were made extremely effective by training and good operational deployment." Similarly, the Russian tanks tend to be quite good, because historically, they were -- the Germans even considered just building their own copy of the T-34. It probably helps that WoT is developed by a Belorussian company.

Now that said I would not be surprised if other tank games made Tigers into invincible battlemechs.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2015 20:34

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Ronwayne posted:

SR hasn't been about anti-capitlaism, just "how do get my share of the blood money" since 4th ed, at least. The chapter fic in the newest book has the protags literally stealing babies for money.

I don't think Baby vs. Dragon is going to take off as an attraction, brother.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 23:27

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thespaceinvader posted:

If it's not a combat game and not a story game, what the actual gently caress IS it? Exploration, seriously. D&D, a game wherein, depending on edition, between half and 90% of the rule book is about combat and most of the rest is about social interaction and personal skills... is not a combat game nor a social skills game nor a storytelling game, but an exploration game.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggghhhhhht.

This was significantly more the case in the early stuff at least, where mapping, complex cave structures, and so on were big. It got de-emphasized in 2E and seems entirely vestigal in 3E onwards, though obviously the context of the game allows you to do it if you want.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2015 21:49

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FMguru posted:

There's also their cousins, the Paranoia fans who insist that every scenario should involve multiple TPKs before the GM manages to finish reading the mission briefing (or else you're Doing It Wrong) and the Call of Cthulhu fans who fetishize hopeless no-win affairs where everyone loses their minds before being eaten and ugh I don't know why they even statted up the major gods of the setting the players have no chance against them (despite the titular story being one where the protagonist actually kills Cthulhu by driving a speedboat through him) and anyone who doesn't play in that style is a goddamned munchkin who doesn't understand the first thing about Lovecraft.

To be fair, he didn't kill Cthulhu so much as temporarily stun him. He was regelatinizing as he left.

I haven't really gotten that vibe in practice with CoC games, though convention games have of course a greater degree of narrative pre-determinations than a campaign might. I imagine the stats are partly legacy from when everything had to have a stat block, and that SOME of them aren't actually totally immortal - if you shot Father Dagon with a nuclear torpedo he would presumably die. Of course if you have a nuclear torpedo who is the real monster, eh??

# ¿ Jul 6, 2015 04:13

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Nihilarian posted:

"oh, gosh, I can't tell who the movie wants me to think of as the good guy. Is it the rapist warlord, or the woman who opposes him? I wish they would make it clearer."

What's even funnier is that the film does briefly consider this factor and makes it clear the wives are deliberately rejecting their position of relative safety and comfort in order to reach freedom. But horrors, a non-tactically optimal action-- worse, agency on the part of female characters!

FMguru posted:

I suspect it's the bloodline-linked-to-power thing, combined with the everything-is-mechanically-defined approach to magic. Want an army of demigod warriors? Better break out the mind control spells and start building rape breeding camps, which you can actually fully extrapolate from the rules as written.

I don't think this is quite as bad with the DBs, though I'm sure there's some horrible Solar spell which does in fact facilitate breeding up super mutants.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2015 05:51

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Kurieg posted:

Lunars can have animal-people children by mating with mortals. Which is kind of a thing, half-god people turning out wrong is thematic to all sorts of Mythologies.

But people took that to the logical extreme and came up with hypothetical situations where Lunars set up 10,000 year breeding programs with multiple sires to create hypothetically optimal animal-men. Also lots of furry sex.

Considering this makes me think one of the issues in Exalted is that PCs may not make great 'adventurer' characters. Sadly I'm sure Ex3 won't be moving towards troupe style, Ars Magica-fashion.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2015 06:05

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ProfessorCirno posted:

Reminder - that poster in question bragged about how none of his friends wanted to see movies with him because he'd spend the whole time snidely looking for plot holes or calling out cliches. He takes pride in being insufferable; it means he is "better."

Wait a minute, I think I know that guy. He doesn't live near Philly, does he?

# ¿ Jul 7, 2015 19:50

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Kurieg posted:

What The gently caress!?

Like, what are the beastmen in this case, is he turning all the children of those he infect into his children. Or is he spawning really tiny crab people?

Crab people
Crab people
Heals like Exalt
Armor piercing melee attack

# ¿ Jul 8, 2015 08:08

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EvanSchenck posted:

I feel somebody should point out that none of those examples of wizards use magic to do the bolded thing, which makes it really funny that this guy is all "read a book sometime, scrubs!" In the source material Gandalf and Merlin very seldom do anything overtly magical and mostly function as sages who advise the protagonists--who would of course be martial classes if you rolled them as characters. A D&D wizard uses more magic before lunch than either of those characters used in the entire fictional works they're depicted in.

Gandalf starts a fire with wet wood and locks a door really hard. Then he gets in a three-day swordfight and comes back as a Warlord.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2015 10:16

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Ronwayne posted:

The part of those stories that always bothered me most was all the sword fighting that was going on while everyone's jibbly bits are flying free in the wind.

Remember the Gentleman's Oath in the Stick of Truth? Same idea.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2015 08:44

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Serf posted:

To keep calling them "racial" bonuses (ugh), you should use them to model things that are inherent to the biology of that species. Dwarves getting darkvision can be a racial bonus, sure, that's just something their eyes do. Bug-people should get the Ambidextrous feat or no penalties to dual-wielding or whatever because they have extra arms. But skill bonuses seem a little weird.

Actually, does anyone have that post where the dude tries to give Renaissance European nations "racial" bonuses and ended up giving Italians a +2 to Poisons or something? That's sorta what this feels like.

There's a bit of this in the 3.5 sourcebooks for Iron Kingdoms, although I think it was purely for physical statistics and was for fictional (if approximately mappable to real life) national/ethnic groups in the IK setting. (They have removed that from the IK RPG, I do believe, other than noting some obscure skills and abilities are typically associated with particular groups.)

# ¿ Jul 15, 2015 22:57

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Mors Rattus posted:

Not entirely removed - there's still racial trait limits, just not ethnic ones. Some of them are really dumb and annoying, like there being intelligence limits on trollkin, who are not actually dumber than humans.

I can see them wanting to avoid "lol, trollkin warcaster is only acceptable character choice" from a playerbase possibly conditioned by 3.5. At least the derived 'intellect' stats are not things you can map directly to Intelligence Quotient, As Revealed By Professor Withersteel In His Seminal Work, "The Bell Curve, Or: Why The Non-Rhulfolk Are Inferior"

# ¿ Jul 15, 2015 23:02

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ProfessorCirno posted:

It's because Gygax largely wrote what he assumed people wanted in the game rather then what he personally DM'd, so AD&D has a ton of that poo poo. There's also people lookin at tournament play and assuming "this is how all gaming should be."

Yeah, it seems like there's this kind of decay chain from "tournament modules run at conventions" to "tournament modules cleaned up and packaged/the Keep at the Borderlands as a starter document in the box set" to "these are how games ought to be" to --wherever we're at now. I know Pathfinder keeps putting out canned scenarios.

Of course some canned scenarios are impressive. I'm very pleased with my copy of the grand ol' "Beyond the Mountains of Madness," although I don't know if I could manage to actually run it...

# ¿ Jul 18, 2015 00:21

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The Real Foogla posted:

Yeah, they never get why verisimilitude and cheap mind reading spells don't mix. Well, mix into a world they want.

I don't even know what they'd want here. Having some ritual to ensure the king is a good king, conducted by a whizzard, would seem to be empowering to the wizarding trade.

I'm guessing in Blue Rose the purpose of this is to create a monarchial system which can be romantically defended without straining the credulity of modern-day players?

Kai Tave posted:

Remember that when D&D Next first came out and had a sidebar about inclusivity that a bunch of people got up in arms over it. "Do we really need this shoved in our faces? Ugh, why does this need to be included in any game? D&D doesn't need to get political!" This was coming from generally pro-Next people too, folks who were glad to see D&D returning to traditional D&D values except hey, what's this doing here.

As hyperbolic as this thread can get sometimes when talking about people with dumb and lovely elfgame opinions I don't think it's all that hyperbolic to say that the backlash against Blue Rose really does boil down to the fact that it's a game that dares to bring up GLBT people and say "yeah these guys are cool" and that maybe bigotry is bad. It's not even that preachy or super-pointed about it, there are no thinly veiled political cartoon-esque potshots going on, it doesn't open with an essay about how terrible traditional RPGs are and how you're a terrible person for enjoying them, etc. The hate for it largely seems to stem from A). it's the "wrong" type of fantasy aka not Tolkien by way of Howard, B). it makes mention of women and GLBT folks, and C). the central kingdom that PCs are likely to come from is a generally decent and egalitarian place to live and isn't secretly corrupt and grimdark beneath the facade which absolutely rubs some people the wrong way for some reason.

tl;dr Blue Rose is about the most inoffensive game out there unless you really super loving hate magic deer, but to people convinced that anything which even vaguely resembles a concession to the SJW feminazi illuminati is part of the homofascist plot to kill roleplaying it's a hoof stamping on their face forever.

I guess these guys are unduly exercised over the (fictional) existence of provable Good. How ironic.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2015 09:04

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Kai Tave posted:

In a way, yeah. I remember when the game first came out and people who I generally didn't have pegged as the sorts of folks to strip a gear were trying to come up with, like, a Blue Rose campaign where you play malcontents and exiles from the magic deer kingdom and the goal is to amass an army to go conquer Aldis and depose the tyranny of the magic deer, hey guys what if all this good kingdom stuff was SECRETLY A FACADE run by Lovecraftian horrors and everyone just thinks that Aldis is shiny and happy, hey what if the kind of oppressive kingdom over yonder are actually the good guys, makes you think

Not all of them were even on the same level of pipe-smoking insanity necessary to churn out essays about how Blue Rose is actually a paean to fascism, but for some reason a bunch of people simply could not come to terms with an RPG that posited a generally Good kingdom...not even a utopia, this is demonstrably shown in the text of the game itself to not be the case...which was actually good and not a big bait-and-switch or something.

While I suppose I can't fault it entirely as a heuristic for looking at real-life stuff, it seems like the idea that there has to always be a catch, a downside, a secret horror or oppression at the root of things, is this huge bugaboo for folks born in like... the 1960s on.

I wonder how much of it is "This kingdom doesn't meet my idiosyncratic definitions of The Good, and therefore must be bullshit while a Catholic monarchy would not be" and how much is "I can't believe there could be actual goodness - there has to be a catch."

# ¿ Jul 20, 2015 09:32

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Night10194 posted:

In fairness, outside of D&D, I cannot think of a genre of fantasy where profligate and constant use of magic by wizards is portrayed as a good thing. D&D is one of the only places I've encountered where magic is taken lightly and totally fine to always muck about with for personal gain.

Ars Magica? But even there it's more like "a wizard will obviously work hard to be good at magic."

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 22:49

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Antivehicular posted:

The image of this guy carrying around the loving massive Nobilis hardback to "casually" read on the bus or whatever is pretty hilarious, at least.

(Guilty confession time: I once read the World's Largest Dungeon in an airport lounge. In my own defense, I'd just gotten it for Christmas, my flight was delayed, and... uh, really, that doesn't help at all, does it?)

I've read RPG books in public a bunch of times, especially when travelling. Basically nobody ever gave a gently caress. I think once it was a D&D book and someone recognized the cover. You are not shamefully revealing your stupid hateful hobby that you need to be embarrassed about, I think. (I mean, unless that makes the RPGs more fun in which case yes, sure, totally, everyone's snort-snickering up their sleeves. Shame on you, reading non-pornographic specialist literature in an airport terminal.)

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 07:25

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Antivehicular posted:

Most of my shame has to do with the fact that the WLD is approximately the size and shape (and, uh, playability) of a cinderblock. Why in God's name was I carrying that thing on?

Is it that big? :stare:

The biggest RPG books I've seen or bought have been.... I guess Vampire 20th (but it was two volumes) and Beyond the Mountains of Madness.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 07:30

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Chill la Chill posted:

So what OSR really stands for is reactionary. Renaissance actually made things.

Considering that the Renaissance was mostly about how we need to go back to being like the cool dudes of the distant past, rather than the lovely lame dudes of the recent past, I'd say it's actually quite apt. I believe modernity came about as a sort of side effect to the renaissance, rather than as a direct product of it.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 20:06

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You know, I guess the hard magic resistance thing probably WAS another of AD&D's soft limits on wizzard supremacy. Did 3E have anything similar other than regular saving throws?

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 20:47

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Claytor posted:

Pretty much the opposite. Many, many monsters from mid-level onward couldn't be harmed by non-magical weapons.

That was a thing for really high end monsters in AD&D too, but usually they were poo poo that you would probably not confront before like 13th level or something, at which point it seems even in a low-magic environemnt, yeah, you might have a +3 sword by then.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 21:06

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I don't think there's any shame in enjoying prose that is not aggressively minimalist, but it's a loving taste thing, not some kind of sign of ignorance.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2015 02:43

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spectralent posted:

Thanks to the magic of generation wars, any preference not held by people under thirty is now a sign of their objectively terrible education, discipline and values.

Oh, sort of like how any preference held by people over thirty is a sign of their bestial education, reactionary ways and rapidly-advancing senility?

# ¿ Jul 26, 2015 20:21

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It also depends on what "Strength" is meant to model, and most of its effects seem like things which are only partially dependent on raw muscle mass, even in the original versions. If "strength" is essentially "melee damage" than it's pointless, though perhaps it is somewhere where variation might exist between different intelligent species with substantially different musculature.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 21:39

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This is usually brought up because you can argue that the Selective Service system in America, which requires all men to register for it (I believe this is necessary for things like voting and drivers' licensure, though you can claim conscientious objector status with some difficulty), is the one institution which does present a discriminatory framework aimed against men, as women would not be drafted to go fight in Bush's oil wars.

The last time the draft was used was in Vietnam and was a large part of that war's massive unpopularity. I suspect that the draft will never be used again save in some WW3 situation (and frankly, we'd be likely to be the ones starting WW3), and I would be in favor, if not passionate about, either abolishing the selective service system or expanding it to include women too.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 23:03

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El Estrago Bonito posted:

A lot of the racial class restrictions in IK are really dumb though. My group rarely plays with them because it's kind of dumb that a bunch of random classes like Aristocrat are tied by race. I mean there are obvious ones like you have to be Menite to be an order of the fist, but last game one of our players played an Iosan order of the fist who was an orphan who was raised by a wandering monk in the mountains (because kung fu movies). So it's just a little annoying that they seem to bar off a bunch of cool race/class combinations (who wouldn't want to be a Gatorman Aristocrat Gunslinger or similar) just cause.

I suspect it's either legacy mechanics (in which case piffle, away with it) or "our 3.5 audience immediately made nothing but trollkin warcasters."

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 23:08

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Kai Tave posted:

It probably doesn't help that for decades GM advice sections in books and articles have been full of tips like "roll dice in secret for no reason, then chuckle evilly and when the players ask what's up tell them 'Oh it's nothing, tee hee'" or asking "Are you suuuuuure?" every time they do anything just to make them extra paranoid.

GURPS had an advantage that gave you this, but it was basically ten points and was intended as gutter guards for newbies (either new to RPGs or new to a particular setting). Of course GURPS is also old as gently caress, that might've changed in GURPS 4th.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2015 23:34

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drunkencarp posted:

GURPS has an advantage that gives you bad GMing advice?

I misquoted, I meant there was the Common Sense merit which basically said: The GM will check you if you start doing something totally boneheaded or otherwise getting off the rails. The intent being basically that he would go "Hey that tower probably has like five archers in it and your Climbing is 11. Just so you're clear - still want to do it?"

# ¿ Aug 4, 2015 00:12

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Lemniscate Blue posted:

Oh, don't worry, GURPS does that too.

It does have a compensation in that if you're playing with a lot of points, people can get good value for a shitload of skills with half a character point or can just rely on defaults. However, the system itself is still pretty clunky, that's more of a compensatory mechanism in the creaky old box.

Maybe they need a new, sleek, low impact, clutter free GURPS. in the cloud. iGURPS.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2015 18:22

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I remember how originally Strength determined your fatigue points (used for many things, but perhaps most notably, majikk spellz) and Health determined your HP (which, to be fair, was explicitly labelled as "your meaty integrity," and which came with a number of supplementary rules and so forth letting you avoid being hurt). It was suggested that you could swap these as an alternate rule, on the theory that your muscle mass was probably a better general metric of how many axe wounds you could survive, while Health better reflected cardiovascular fitness... and in turn I think this may now be official rules.

I think the real root of GURPS is that it was built out of a tactical simulator of low-tech fantasy combat, and that engine has been used for tons of other things which were well beyond the original intent.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2015 03:25

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Antivehicular posted:

oh nooo

I failed my trap search and done got Black Leaf'd

guess now I gotta hang myself

I think you'd better let ELFSTAR take control.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2015 08:22

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Where did the psionics thing come from, anyway? I mean monks I can comprehend - I gather the inspiration was Caine from Kung Fu, and it seems like it'd be simple enough to keep the core concept of "religious unarmed fighter" and recast it in whatever local theological environment you prefer. But the psionics business did seem strange, if more for the "why are they calling it psionics instead of mindwitching or some poo poo."

It's me, I'm the grog.

I do remember parsing some statement in the 1E DMG, which I read as a tiny babby, to mean you always regained psychic strength points at the lowest possible rate. (Re-reading it as an adult made it clear that it was saying "If you're on the borderline between these, use the lower rate.")

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 22:32

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Arguably 4E introduces added verisimilitude as the "Bloodied" state suggests you have taken actual non-trivial physical injury, if possibly like when Bruce Lee sees you split his lip.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 23:08

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To encourage you to cast knock instead.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 08:43

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I think osiris is trying to show us all how this shows martial classes in 3.5 were fine all along, 'cuz they can bust through walls (eventually, with tools). In the end, the winner was ~~the laborers~~ the dwarves.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 07:12

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You could take it off its hinges, but I bet the hinges would be inside. Also, if a magically locked door can be so easily dealt with what's the loving point of the spell?

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 08:07

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 15:19

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These guys seem to be really unwilling to accept the power of magic. :smaug:

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 18:47

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