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Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Geronimo is who you are thinking of when you think of a defiant Native American chief. You may not know the name but his influence on cultural perception is enormous.

Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jan 15, 2016

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Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Rand Brittain posted:

They don't actually say that, though? That's something people often attribute to them but it's not really part of the game's description of them.

It doesn't explicitly say that, but they're still based on appeals to Romanticism, and just like real life Romanticism leaves many implicit problems floating around unaddressed. Either the Traditions have a solution to the god-king problem that they aren't telling the class or they don't think the wizard god-king s a problem.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



I remember it coming up in some Greyhawk book that the prices were for PCs only. Peasants get healed for free, but an adventurer with gear expensive enough to buy a small kingdom; that fella has a lot of donations to be doing. After all from each according to his ability.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Libertad! posted:

Oh, that reminds me of something similar. The concept of the cowboy began among Vaquero ranchers in Mexico who set up an efficient system of grazing that they then taught to the newcomer white settlers in Texas and the Southwest. There's estimations that a massive percentage of cowboys were black and Hispanic in the Old West, like 33%. But when Hollywood came along audiences didn't want to see said groups as heroes in their Western tales, which led to the impression that cowboys were all or mostly white.

There were also a decent number of Hispanics who passed themselves off as white after immigrating north among the cowboys, and given the racism of the era they had every reason to pretend they were always white.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



The wall is also by itself why I'd argue no god save Kelemvor can actually qualify as good aligned in Faerun. He was the only guy who looked at the status quo and went "holy gently caress that's evil" and actually tried to do something about it.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Kurieg posted:

The way it works is basically AO is a true neutral rear end in a top hat who understands that Mortals need to exist, but can't fathom a reason to actually care about them. So he can't fathom why the lesser gods would care either, so he created a system where they have to care. The gods are powered by belief, and without belief they wither and die. And to ensure that the mortals would believe, he created the wall of he faithless. Where those who refused to believe would be punished for all eternity. The time of Troubles was AO enforcing the status quo.
The weird this is that Ao didn't make the wall in the first place. Myrkul made it as a way to get power, and to high light why it's a bad idea for an evil dude to be in charge of the realm of the dead. When Jergal was god of the dead unclaimed shades just sort puttered around everywhere, and because Jergal is basically just cheerful old man he left them alone. So Ao observed someone else create the most evil of all possible things and think it was such a good idea he needed to preserve it.

Kavak posted:

Once Ed Greenwood dies, the first thing they should do is permanently kill that rear end in a top hat off or (My personal canon) have someone finally nail him to the wall for one of his countless sex crimes and lock him in Spellhold forever.
Spellhold is from Eberron a much better setting.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Kavak posted:

Theoretically, what would it take to nerf casters in 3.5? Ban the Wizard class (I've already done this)? Demand Concentration rolls all the time? Strip monsters of DR and maybe natural armor so fighters and rogues can actually damage them regularly?

I've got other questions about 4th edition, but that's for that thread.

I don't think most people in this thread actually play 3.P but here's my go at it. You basically just remove core classes from your game. As bards Wizards are replaced with the ultra focused casters like dread necromancers (who only get spells for necromancer), warmages, and mesmerists/beguilers. Fighters and Barbarians are replaced with the book of nine swords style initiators and/or Path of War for Pathfinder. The only classes you keep are bard and if playing pathfinder paladin. Pathfinder paladin can only really do one thing, damage evil dudes, but it does it very well and in a fairly simple manner. So it's easy to keep around for people who want to play uncomplicated bad guy smashers. Rogue is replaced by ninja because having easy access invisibility fixes most of their in combat problems.

Constant Concentration check are dumb and using that for balance just makes the game unfun for the spellcaster's player in the same way stealing spell books does.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



gradenko_2000 posted:

Papyrus, on the cover, as the title is a huge red flag.

EDIT for somewhat unrelated question: do we know if there was a particular reason why Dark Sun never showed up in 3rd Edition, but came back in 4th? Did particular 3rd Ed writers dislike it or was there a deliberate decision to do other things (like Eberron I suppose) or did they just not have the time/inclination to revisit it?

And as a follow-up, did 3rd Edition ever have a "low-magic" setting? Acknowledging of course that it's somewhat ludicrous to have such a thing in WOTC-era D&D such that 4th required Inherent Bonuses hackery, but regardless.


:vince:

The reason I heard was that they were avoiding doing any extra campaign settings due to the possibly correct belief that too many campaign settings is what sunk 2nd edition. So it was just Forgotten Realms for the longest time.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Confirmed Bachelor may be the best Fallout perk ever, if only for making people upset by gay men being strictly better than straight men mechanically.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Rand Brittain posted:

See, I have a hard time reading that as anything other than an in-character statement, because otherwise the game is telling me that every other book they previously published is a lie. I don't think they meant that unironically.

This is the company that released Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



If raping/torturing people is left-wing I don't see why you'd want to be left-wing.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



None of us are saying racist dudes as the disposable mooks shouldn't be in a story. The problem is that the author is clearly mastrubating to how they're killed and literally raped. Sort of like how little girls are fine to have in stories generally but we cannot trust Stephen King to not be a creeper if he includes a woman under the age of 20 in his books.

Alternatively in modern D&D it's generally excepted that you're murdering orcs, but gruesomely torturing them is generally frowned upon even in the groggiest of OSR books.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Does Blue Rose count as feminist?

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Kai Tave posted:

Is there a game so lovely that you won't go to bat for it?
I don't think he defended Bliss Stage.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Also it's a personal thing, but I hate all of those monsters that are totally x monster from mythology but look like normal humans for "reasons". It's some hardcore bullshit that is pulled in tv shows for budget reasons, but tabletop games have no excuse. The "real" monsters in your fictional world should be those monsters not xmen whose theme sorta ties into those monsters.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Well yeah Beasts are Carrie's abusive mom. Trying to teach someone not to use their evil powers with regular abuse.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Young Freud posted:

When you put it like this, I keep thinking that Beast is White Wolf's answer to Monsterhearts.
I was assuming they were just ripping off Buffy and Supernatural again, but you're probably right.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Young Freud posted:

River piracy was laughably minor in comparison and Mediterranean piracy was more an extension of "War of Civilizations" between Christian Europe vs. Muslim Ottomans.

Is river piracy a weird way to say vikings, something to do with mega rivers like the Congo/Amazon that connect places as widely set apart as Mediterranean, or something much less interesting than either of those two?

As for Mediterranean piracy it could make for a good game, but you'd need to go back further, much further. No Christians yet because the golden age of Mediterranean piracy was during the Iron Age before the fall of Carthage.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Halloween Jack posted:

Much of Wick's RPG career can be summed up as "Show me on the doll where D&D touched you."

I thought John Wick claimed to have never played D&D, or was it just 3rd edition he never played?

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Alien Rope Burn posted:

"And now, we show you all the races... near-naked! Why? Well, Pathfinder did it! Why did Pathfinder do it? Well... um..."
Pathfinder did it because 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons did it. Can we find an earlier link the chain or does the buck end with Skip Williams and Monty?

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



The locate city bomb is the result of numerous poorly written feats, spells, and effects being used in conjunction. It's also very difficult to not be hit by your own casting for the spell. It's beautiful. There is no practical application for it as a player character except in massed open space battles, because in a traditional dungeon setting you don't have line of effect to anything but the room you're in an the room's very size constricts how much damage it can do.

So it's either a very complicated way to achieve mediocre crowd control (black tentacles is much better for indoors fights and is also 4th level), or it's a method of killing an entire army/the outdoor population of a city.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Even if it was a revenger fantasy you could do it well. Almost all of the monsters in greek mythology would easily be repurposed into fully legitimate protagonists. You are hated by the universal narrative because of what you were born as/something that happened to you/a belief you hold, time to fight back against that narrative. Make the narrative itself the villain not people who are created by the beast. You could have the God Machine turning random civies into "heroes" ala agents from the matrix. You need to kill the "real" them not the skin suit they're wearing. You could even have something where convincing people to give up hateful ideas makes them immune to "herofication". Even beyond this the end game goal could be to defeat the forces of the narrative itself not just the hero footsoldiers, the narrators and gods of the story if you will. So if you're medusa you don't stop as beating Perseus you go past that to murder the gently caress out of Athena and Poseidon.

If this is incoherent i apologize for my lack of sleep.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Gugs actually do have the compression special quality which allows them to squeeze into smaller than normal passages for their size. It is a universal rule though so they don't bother re-explaining it so they can maintain the holy 1 monster per page rule.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Asimo posted:

A thing to remember about about the lovely premade characters is that they were often made midway through a game's development and any changes made to the rules afterwards usually aren't updated on those sheets, and well, most RPGs don't have any appreciable playtesting so the authors literally don't know what makes a well-designed character or not. I mean this is hardly excuses but it sure does... explain a lot about them.

Well that and what ARB mentioned about them being really useful for filling page count with low effort.

Pathfinder's premades were for individual adventure paths. They have no such excuse.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



The Planescape Cat Lord and the Greyhawk Cat Lord are two different beings. The latter has nothing to do with the large animal lord group.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



SirPhoebos posted:

GIS is becoming less and less helpful for gathering the artwork for my posts. What tools do the rest of you use for getting pictures off of pdfs?

Sorry if it's a bit late but nitro pdf has an extract all images tool which takes all images from a pdf and puts them into a zip for you.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Daeren posted:

This is what I was talking about when I said I had my own thoughts. Family Dinner near-singlehandedly destroys the game's attempts to do an actually interesting experiment with mechanics via Satiety, and once Kurieg goes over Satiety's rules, I'll start posting about why.

So wait. Does this mean a "rehabilitated" beast could hang out with hunters and feed by taking down monsters?

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



unseenlibrarian posted:

TBF according to Bioware like 85 percent of people picked "Male Soldier Shepard with the default appearance" for all playthroughs, so, uh, yeah, a lot of folks -do- jump to the default basic guy. It's why they randomized race/sex/class for the default in DA:I to see if that'd impact things.

Granted but playing Overwatch I can tell you that in any given game 90% of people are playing Honzo, Genji, Reaper, or Widowmaker, or at least it seems that way.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Bedlamdan posted:

While Beast has some writing issues and muddles its intended message badly, its core theme of heaping abuse upon the more privileged by the less is one that I think resonates deeply with us all.
Except the theme is literally about people privileged by birth (in the form of magic powers) heaping abuse on those who have less privilege (also in teh form of magic powers) also by birth. You see Heros are inherently evil because of the Curse of Ham, whereas the Beasts are inherently good because they are the chosen of the Lord.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Bedlamdan posted:

Again, I believe Beast is more a victim of bad writing rather than an overall bad message. Heroes are stand-ins for regressives who are pathologically incapable of acknowledging the Beast/minority's existence, possessing diseased values. It is not required for the Beast to gain a Hero's acceptance or tolerance, or even the acceptance and tolerance of the normie sheep who blindly follow Heroes, as such things are fundamentally unobtainable. Instead, Beasts must strive to undermine Heroes by any means necessary, while avoiding the possibility of turning more normies into Heroes, a good expression of there being "no bad tactics, just bad targets."

Beasts are a perfect metaphor for current-day identity politics, and while some may find this aspect of them 'extreme' or 'psychotic' it clearly has resonated with a lot of people.
I take it that you really liked Bellum Maga

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



It's nice that Onyx Path tried to make another long-form enemy for Hunters, but Beast just isn't as good at making compelling believable characters as Slasher.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Count Chocula posted:

I'd feel better about all the Beast hate, justified though it may be, if so many White Wolf fans in this thread didn't have detailed fantasies about playing the Technocracy and Hunter and gruesomely crushing Mages and Changlings with overwhelming technology and state power.

Why don't Werewolves- anti-modern eco-terrorists and gangs with a Klingon/Viking concept of 'honor' and a hair-trigger temper - get the same hate? They're the ones who'd justify all that Technocracy gun-wank.

Hell if you want straw man reactionaries to fight, the guys who'd probably support building a wall around their territory, doing everything to make their territory great again, and who's entire lives are built around hunting trips with friends are probably your best bet.

I think it's because all the really blatant racism is a much easier target when talking about oWoD werewolf. Like yeah they're eco terrorists, but the racism jumps out at you before you can really get to that part.

Also honestly a lot of things justify the Technocracy; vampires, werewolves, hell basically everything but Changelings (they're annoying but not actually dangerous or justifiable to harm), wraiths, and mummies. Hence why the God Machine is a much better villain. It isn't responsible for any of the good parts of modernity that makes lives better, just the systemic oppression and conformity.

Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Jun 6, 2016

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Revenge fantasy against the patriarchy could be loving amazing, and done in a huge number of ways. Be it something invoking the wierd self destructive inhumanity of patriarchal cultures like a slight tweeked God Machine or overtly Patriarchal Invisible Clergy, or something confronting societal evils in a more grounded pseudo realistic way, or even just Inglorious Bestards but for woman/black people/any other given minority group. I think the problem is your starting position. Are you making a revenge fantasy game primarily because you're really mad an want catharsis through writing? If so I'm sorry but your game is probably garbage and you should keep it to yourself. Are you making a revenge fantasy game primarily because you believe the end product will be fun and/or interesting? If yes you game at least has a chance to be good.

Hell I'd pay for DLC for the new Wolfenstein game where they just replaced the Nazis with Klansmen and made your character black, because Wolfenstein is loving fun.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Well how offensive do you consider Django?

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Even if betterment of themselves comes as the primary goal every single impediment in achieving that goal is caused by the society it can be seen as a revenge fantasy against. So yes helping themselves and their loved ones is more important to the protagonists of Fury Road and Django, but that's just to emphasize the fact that the protagonists are more nobles and moral than their monstrous enemies. You know because they're heroes, legitimately and classically heroic. Something all of the bad revenge fantasies reviewed in this thread lack.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

If you're siding with Count "devil's advocate for any game, the worse the better" Chocula on a point you're probably on the wrong end of an argument, fair warning.
Hey now Count Chocula is a much much better poster than Nancy_Noxious.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Nancy_Noxious posted:

Oh, sorry for not hating Beast hard enough!

Edit: Beast fell to number 16 on drivethru rpg. I guess I will get off the fence and buy it to help the good guys. :dance:

That's okay, but could you please apologize for being an abuse apologist and arguing in bad faith?

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



The last few pages have brought back memories of the Knights of the Scarlet Woman thread. Good times.

That said Count you're a good poster, even if your opinions are sometimes baffling.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Geist is by far the easiest and most rewarding splat to GM for if you aren't already heavily invested in WoD lore. Well Geist and Hunter, but I generally mixed those two for player groups.

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Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Kavak posted:

Not defending von Mises, but Otto was not a Nazi and was decidedly an enemy of them. He was definitely anti-Communist, though.

Which given what communism in eastern Europe at the time entailed was perfectly understandable.

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