TG July Chat Thread: Practical Transhumanist Roleplaying

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG July Chat Thread: Practical Transhumanist Roleplaying

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

If your players aren't big FR geeks and you're running around northern Sword Coast, colonization of some buttlove continent way over there won't ever matter. If it ever becomes meaningful, you can always go "hey uh I'm not very comfortable with this whole thing" and then crowd-source a solution that fits your game best.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2015 10:51

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 13:18

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Isn't there a goon who's in the gaming store business? I remember someone posting about their shop a year or two ago.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2015 17:21

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

I used to hang out in the Giant in the Playground forums way back before 4E and people knew. New folk would come in and go "hey so this Vow of Poverty is pretty OP huh" (because hot drat this is a whole lot of stuff for a feat!), and then the section of people who actually knew of the wealth by level guidelines would laugh at them. The consensus was it was actually worse than just talking your DM into just giving you the magical crap you needed to function, because you were missing out on all the actually good magical enhancements people with gear would have. Like flight or a million dice of elemental damage or whatever it was back then.

Of course, people of groggy disposition would then go "oh but in my game the players are not entitled to owning a royal treasury in the first place :smaug:

" and then they'd get beat over the head with the concept of magic items being necessary for the high-level challenges.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 12:01

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

This is making me wonder what the favourite RPG of France is.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 15:53

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

I don't know about wiki software, but a shared Google Docs or Dropbox folder ought to work better than Pastebin.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 22:13

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

remusclaw posted:

It's a problem inherent to the gaming pastime, traditional or video. Violence is simpler and easier to model than everything else*. The problem is how you game up the other stuff without trivializing it, and how you make it fun.

*Not real violence of course, but the cinematic model. MMA gaming is a good example of this, as they still have quite a bit of trouble making grappling and groundwork fun.

Racing is just as simple to gamify as violence, and I'd argue it also lends itself to better models of both reality and fiction. Tradgame violence hardly ever resembles the action movie spectacle, and many video games struggle as well.

This is my bimonthly rant against violence in games.

It's just a big loving rut we've been stuck in since Gary wrote that stupid wargame supplement. A bunch of dudes wander deep into a perilous dungeon, risking their lives for treasure, which is cool and all, but every sodding game since has followed the formula of "A bunch of dudes [delve/stumble/are drawn] deep into [danger], risking their lives for [a commodity or goal]." And I just realized the common denominator here isn't violence, it's that lives are at stake. You just can't have drama without the highest stakes am I right? Violence is the easiest solution because it's all about them lives at stake.

And even that's been hosed up now that we're all too cynical to believe the protagonist would ever die, or at least not get better. Now it's other people's lives that are actually on the line, because that's the easiest way to keep stakes high while making sure the game won't grind to halt at failure and we can sell the next part of the adventure path to these guys.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 13:08

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Edit: Oh poo poo you guys posted a whole page when I was writing this thing.

paradoxGentleman posted:

That being said, that is not exactly true. Off the top of my head, I can think of no less than three games that don't necessarily expect your character to lose life and limb, and I am not the most knowledgeable person on the subject here.

Monsterhearts, Monsters and Other Childish Things and Chuubo again, in case you were curious.

There are actually a bunch of others, you're right. Golden Sky Stories got mentioned too, there's Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, and there's a couple of other expressly nonviolent games. And there's also a handful of games that have explicit rules for escalating the violence, which means their default stakes are somewhere below "rip its spine out or be de-spined". Fate, Burning Wheel derivatives and, hilariously enough, old-school D&D spring to mind.

It's nice to have these things, yes. And I'm a big dumb for not actually playing any of these games. (Especially since I even own a bunch.)

Maybe the real windmill that I'm trying to tilt at is how few things characters really have that make an actual game difference, aside from their hit points. To manage, y'know? Used to be a fighter had a whole drat castle to run, and his cleric buddy had a congregation, and that meant something because if you didn't take care of them when the GM sent the orcs into town, you'd have to hire people to go into that dungeon you found. Even money meant something because you'd have to spend it on people to get poo poo done.

Or something, I don't actually have a clue how old-rear end D&D worked. But you get what I'm getting at, right?

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 22:22

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 13:18

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

ProfessorCirno posted:

The idea that ALL MEDIA FOREVER involves a lot of violence because of crazy ol' Gygax and his wargames is pretty silly at best.

I don't want to say Gygax ruined ALL MEDIA FOREVER (although man I could use a little less violence in my ALL MEDIA FOREVER too) but considering how the next big RPG thing going Statesways seems to be D&D: German Engineer Edition and nobody bats an eye, his ghost kinda haunts the hobby pretty bad. :v:

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 22:31

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