TG Chat Thread 2017

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Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Didn't we just have a discussion a dozen pages ago about the subjective preference for sourcebooks as teaching tools vs. reference tools? You can absolutely talk about the best way to achieve a certain goal in this context, but there's a lot of room for personal preference in what those goals should be.

I suppose it just depends on if you want people to play your game or read about your game.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Or to reiterate my (thoroughly subjective) position, the first purpose of an RPG sourcebook should not be to teach you a thing, it should be to enable you to do the thing it describes as quickly, easily, and effectively as possible once you've achieved relative mastery. You only have to learn how to do something from scratch once; you have to actually carry it out many times, at least hopefully.

Once you've achieved mastery you aren't going to need the book at all. But you're never going to get that mastery if the game doesn't teach you in the first place, because if people can't figure out what the game is or how it's played they're never going to reach the point that you're aiming at. You're not just putting the cart before the horse, you're giving people a cart and telling them that the horse is their problem.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2017 18:30

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 05:14

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Bedlamdan posted:

I've done my part to keep this community going by re-regging. If my tenbux can delay or prevent a murder-suicide, then I have a moral duty to do so. Am I a hero? Yes, definitely. I am a hero.

I pissed someone off enough to buy me a red title, then bought a new avatar a few days later. This, I believe, makes me a double-hero.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 19:13

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Man I remember the days of Lowtax having to fight with hosting places just to get them to believe he needed 1TB of space. :allears:

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 22:05

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Evil Mastermind posted:

I can't wait to see the paid D&D GM market saturate itself in less than a day.

People try to do it all the time on roll20 and I hardly ever see any of those games take off. Half the time it's some NEET trying to get people to pay him to run Rise of the Stormlords or Kingmaker so mom will stop yelling at him to get out of the basement, and the thread is a bucket of "we will run fully RAW including rolling on tables for everything so I have the least amount of actual DM work to do". The other half is some dorklord with an Original Setting Donut Steel and 63 pages of house rules for 3.5e that he expects everyone to have memorized for game time, also fill out this 15 page questionnaire about your character to be submitted with character sheet for a coveted spot in this game (and since I put all this work into it the price is $25/hr per player). 99% of the time, both kinds of threads get one person hard up enough to pay for a game, who trades off with the DM on bumping the thread for a couple weeks before it just dies. Whether it gets suddenly full after a page of bumping or if the DM just gives up, :iiam:

# ¿ Nov 13, 2017 22:48

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Nessus posted:

Are you saying that the US armed forces are secretly controlled by Juggalos??

Secretly?

# ¿ Nov 22, 2017 01:50

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Crossposting from PYF where I saw it because holy lol GW is even shittier than I could have ever known:

# ¿ Dec 1, 2017 17:07

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

funmanguy posted:

in a hypothetical fight between literally anyone and goku, goku wins

goku vs a hurricane

but the hurricane is named hurricane goku

# ¿ Dec 9, 2017 03:31

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

"I want to use something from dndwiki" is code for "I am a terrible roleplayer and a terrible person, please beat me with an old garden hose".

# ¿ Dec 11, 2017 19:24

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

potatocubed posted:

I'd like to nominate the half-mimic as an exception.

Well, maybe not for actual use; I just wanted an excuse to post it again.

I don't know how but I am going to work in a half-dragon mimic somewhere in a game I run at some point, just to make my players consider the logistics of such a creature's existence.

Edit: of all the things to page snipe with.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2017 22:05

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

senrath posted:

Half-dragons are overused, and in that case the logistics are almost certainly a ~~wizard~~sorcerer did it. What you need are one of those 3.5 abominations with a dozen different "half-" templates stuck on it.

I think half-field and half-celestial are more "a wizard did it", and half-illithid already involves weird body horror but nothing that hilarious. I guess dragons also have shapeshifting more often than not. half-fey maybe?

# ¿ Dec 11, 2017 22:51

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Helical Nightmares posted:

Patreon canceled their fee change!

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 22:26

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Rand Brittain posted:

I was just informed that I've been placed in a lower rank because my skill was below the minimum required after five games. Wow, seriously? Some of those games I thought I even did pretty well in, and I certainly had three golds in one of them.

EDIT: Also the Overwatch thread apparently turned into this one.

Aim like this is why you didn't make gold.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2017 23:56

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

theironjef posted:

What is that supposed to even be? Is the girl in the bubble on the other side of the table? Is it supposed to be one of those "how to translate the inscrutable things a nerd might say" deals? If so, why is what he's saying just a melange of various popular RPG names? How is "Let's eat dinner" translated to "What do you want on dinner?" Is this what it feels like to watch Big Bang Theory?

In order: An attempt at a "nerd joke", probably not, yes, because the author doesn't know anything except D&D-alikes, because lol nerds only ever eat pizza, yes.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2017 01:30

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Halloween Jack posted:

What's hosed is when STR and CON are two different scores

It's because I can walk/jog for 10 miles no problem but that does not affect my ability to lift a pallet of paper bags.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2017 16:52

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

hyphz posted:

So can anyone explain the weird deal with Roll20 at the moment?

They have a "player directory" where you can search for players by system, and even the more unusual systems tend to have at least a page of "actively seeking group" players. Yet if you search the actual games that are running, most entries for anything other than D&D 5e or WoD are blank.

Also, their categorisation system is bizarre. They lump all PbtA games in a single category, except Dungeon World for some reason. All FATE games are also in one category. They lump a lot of things into a big "Other Games" category.. yet at the same time they have a specific searchable system category for loving Maid. (And not for Golden Sky Stories, which I'm pretty sure is much more popular.. but it's just Other Games).

roll20 is worse than useless for literally everything except their virtual tabletop and having a personal forum for your game.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2017 18:07

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Hostile V posted:

I think my only takeaway from that is that LaMarche is probably gonna do his Orson Welles voice for the dwarf character and all things considered that'd actually be pretty great. It wouldn't make me care about it, but I'd be fine with that choice.

I just wanna hear him say "what luck, there's a french fry stuck in my beard" in as many contexts as possible.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2017 19:30

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

I think Strike is bad but people are allowed to like bad games so wtf ever

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 15:47

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

hyphz posted:

As for Strike!, what�s so bad? I keep trying to get it to our local table and need to know if there�s any problems. I did read it had the Status Dead problem (dead is better than any status effect) and I agree the first half of the book is a bit of a wall of text explaining the base resolution system, but it still looks pretty good to me.

For me, it's poorly written, poorly edited (by which I mean "this looks like a rough draft"), there's a ton of snarky editorializing that is incredibly off-putting, and there's a lot of :airquotes: mechanics :airquotes: that are little more than "gently caress it do whatever". If this were my first RPG I definitely wouldn't have picked up another.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 18:37

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

SirPhoebos posted:

Is the thread title a Megatokyo reference?

Yes.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2017 14:52

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

gradenko_2000 posted:

it's closing in on midnight where I am, so I wanted to wish everyone in TG a happy holiday. 2017 has been difficult on the whole, but you folks have helped, and I hope I have been entertaining in return

special shoutout to my D&D group - we've come a long way, and there's still a ways to go!

# ¿ Dec 24, 2017 18:04

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Star Man posted:

My FLGS owner might be the dumbest mother fucker on the planet. I have no idea how this mother fucker's been in business still after four years.

This is the opening to a story, but it could really do with a body and conclusion.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 02:53

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

WrightOfWay posted:

Weren't there bows in 3.X that let you add your Strength mod to damage?

Yeah all bows have a strength rating that adds to damage, but you have to have at least that strength mod to properly fire it. If you don't have at least that much, you take (iirc) a -2 to hit. So if you have a 16 str you can shoot a bow with a +3 str rating and do +3 damage, but if you get hit with some effect that gives you a -4 str you'll only be getting +1 damage and you'll take a -2 to hit since you're now under the minimum str rating.

Zerilan posted:

Speaking of crossbows, aren't they garbage in PF and 100% inferior to normal bows, with the devs saying that it was an intentional trap option?

Crossbows are indeed crap since they take like 3 rounds to reload and don't get any bonus to damage. Wouldn't surprise me if they were designed to be a trap option, those fuckers love trap options and loving over non-casters and hating anything that looks like a gun.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 20:55

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

FMguru posted:

Crossbows in PF were also key to the crappiest trap feat ever printed (the infamous "Prone Shooter")

Is that one of the "does nothing" feats or one of the "actively makes you worse at the thing it's supposed to enhance" feats?

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 21:49

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Zerilan posted:

I can never hear SKR be mentioned without thinking of that stupid point cost system for feats he came up with.

I only partially remember that abomination, specifically that weapon focus was like 10 points because "well obviously it'll give the fight a +1 on all attacks!" but Maximize Spell was only 2-3 because "it has a built-in cost to use!"

# ¿ Dec 28, 2017 00:47

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Auralsaurus Flex posted:

As cool as stuffing nerds into lockers is,
.

Wrong leverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

# ¿ Dec 28, 2017 04:31

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

LuiCypher posted:

I hate 3.5e, but it did have a Prestige Class called the Cragtop Archer that came with an ability that allowed them to make a single attack (as a full-round action) against any target up to the maximum range of their weapon with no range penalty.

It also had abilities that increased the maximum range to 15x the weapon's range increment (as opposed to the normal 10x) and also stacked with the Far Shot feat. It's not AMAZING (note that the full-round shot does not negate cover), but it is pretty cool to have an archer with the ability to hit something miles away with no penalty on the roll (that actually gets a minor bonus on the damage roll if you're at a higher elevation).

Yes, you're still taking a full-round action. Yes, anything with damage reduction is a hard counter to this (only a single attack). However, it's very hard to get rushed down at that distance.

Nevertheless, I feel that it's still an unfortunate byproduct of the '3.5e as a physics engine' school of design, however.

3.0 had the Deepwood Sniper which reduced concealment penalties by up to 30% and gave you bonus to crit threat and crit multiplier. With a dip into any of a handful of other PrCs you could easily be firing arrows that always crit if they hit and had a x7 multiplier. It was a surprisingly good PrC for what it was intended for.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2017 00:14

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 05:14

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

theironjef posted:

Isn't Furian what Vin Diesel was in the Riddick movies?

Yes.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2017 01:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Chat Thread 2017

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