|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Even just 2D-based vector movement in a TT game gets really ugly, much less 3D- I've seen several games do it but I can't think of one that did it gracefully. It's a gimmick that's best abstracted unless your name completely centers around it. It works better in games where you don't track movement and position down to the 5' square. Conan, for example, just has "zones" and you are generally 0 (in melee), 1 (maybe in melee if you're really big or have extreme reach), 2, or 3 zones away from your enemy. The exact size of a zone is highly variable and dependent on how easy movement might be... so it could be individual rooms in a house, or an open clearing the size of a football field might only have 4 zones in it. Defining zones in 3d isn't much harder than 2d, particularly since miniatures and a board aren't entirely necessary, and at that point you can have characters deliberately moving from zone to zone if they can, or drifting through zones by momentum if they can't. Or just go full-blown theater of the mind, gently caress it. Leave the fully-simulated 3d zero-g tactical combat to computer games.
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2018 05:52
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 19:23 |
|
|
Kurieg posted:It helps that, so long as there are a maximum of three ships in the combat, you can represent everything on a 2d plane. Now add orbital mechanics...
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2018 06:00
|
|
|
drat. I wanted the heroic taxi driver to be real.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2018 00:53
|
|
|
Thranguy posted:Why don't more people write rants about how hit points are almost entirely morale, fatigue, and luck, and therefore a spell that heals wounds shouldn't be able to restore anything but the last 5 or so (and negative ones); curing serious wounds shouldn't do anything to a fighter who is at 50 of 100 hp because he hasn't taken a scratch yet and would receive more benefit from, I don't know, an inspiring speech or something... Hit points don't make sense in any fashion and never have, so someone who understands they're an abstraction doesn't need to wonder why healing spells are also an abstraction. Oh wait, was that a rhetorical question? 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2018 03:11
|
|
|
Sampatrick posted:Comparing a game against an ideal that does not exist within the genre is pointless. 4e is an incredible game but it escaped lfqw by exiting the genre and doing it's own thing; a game operating within the D&D-alike genre is stuck with the baggage that forces lfqw. Everything you say is true, except that "D&D and it's descendants" isn't a genre. The genre is swords & sorcery fantasy roleplaying games, and there are many examples that avoid the LFQW trap. D&D 4E didn't exit a genre, it just rejected sacred cows that Pathfinder customers weren't (and probably still aren't) willing to let go of.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2018 01:38
|
|
|
Sampatrick posted:The sacred cow that 4e rejected was just one of the genre trappings of the D&D-alike genre (or subgenre or whatever); that magic does things in combat and out of combat. There's a reason why people complained about 4e D&D not feeling like D&D. It may have been a dumb critique of a game, but it's definitely true that 4e took huge strides away from what had come before it. Call it a subgenre or whatever you want to call it, but at this point there are certainly some trappings that a D&D or D&D-like game needs to have in order to feel like it's a D&D or D&D-like game. I don't think there's really any argument at all that those trappings exist and form a subgenre or genre or whatever, and non-combat magic is definitely one of those trappings. OK well, it's not that important, but 4E absolutely does have noncombat magic (both rituals, and utility powers with noncombat uses), and I think the core thing those people were objecting to was that non-wizards had Powers that acted exactly the same as wizard Powers and kept up with them in capability throughout the tiers of play, more or less. And then also what you're getting at sorta, that 4E tried to take away the tendency for noncombat magic to replicate (but be better than) skills and other classes' noncombat capabilities. But nevermind, because really I'm getting at this: gradenko_2000 posted:if the idea is that Linear Fighters Quadratic Wizards will never be "solved" by DnD because any game that doesn't have Vancian casting, doesn't limit Fighters to terrestrial capabilities, and doesn't have arcane spells with universally-useful effects is by definition not DnD, that's only tautological in that you're using an excessively narrow definition of what DnD is. 4E D&D really was still D&D. It was a classed-based leveling everything-and-the-kitchen-sink high fantasy RPG with all the same races and classes (eventually, plus some), equipment grind, beholders, and swords +1 you'd care to have. It had hit points and the same six ability scores and armor class and size categories and ten foot poles and on and on and on. It did somethings very differently of course, and sometimes what it did didn't really work (skill challenges) or felt underdeveloped (rituals) and it was probably a tactical error to leave out some beloved races and classes in the first set of core books. But yes, it is actually D&D. Too much so in several respects, actually. Anyway, all I'm really trying to get at is that I think Paizo is in a bind with this product. I'm sure it's possible to make some improvements to the mechanics without necessarily completely abandoning the things that attracted their 3.5 customers in the first place, but they're walking a tightrope, and the (in my opinion) most important weaknesses of the game can't be solved while still belonging within that so narrowly defined "genre" (or whatever). As an aside, I don't like that term as applied here, but I'm struggling to find a good term that categorically includes D&D through 3.5, plus Pathfinder, plus some of the retroclones, but excludes all other fantasy sword and sorcery games. e. Liquid Communism posted:I mean, notionally it's an easy fix. Just scale magic to combat, and remove non combat magic from casters entirely to the realm of magic items and plot macguffins. I think Pathfinder fans generally (I'm sure there's exceptions, don't @ me) don't want magic to "feel mundane" or for non-magical characters to have abilities that "feel supernatural" and that invariably means powerful magic has to trump even the most powerful non-magical people's abilities. And they're also not willing to hand off that powerful magic to exclusively be the domain of NPCs and other antagonists, which is how some other games deal with that. I don't see how Paizo can fix this problem while not offending these fans. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Mar 10, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2018 02:51
|
|
|
The Dungeon Siege movies are basically D&D movies too. e. Also Conan the Destroyer, and for that matter, Willow is probably the best D&D movie ever made
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2018 05:17
|
|
|
It's often hard for people to accept that people they know, or like, or are friends with, have done something awful, and when all your employees are your buddies you may not have the intestinal fortitude to fire them (and accept you're also likely ending your friendship and possibly making an enemy). People behave irrationally and this is a good example. I don't know for sure if that's the reason of course, but it fits with my own experiences.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2018 03:00
|
|
|
Welp gently caress that guy, I guess. Especially gently caress his constant use of the word "we" when describing his own assumptions, beliefs, and experiences.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2018 21:52
|
|
|
FMguru posted:My bold, visionary corporate concept: a workplace, but one where people gently caress all the time. And where we totally ignore the power imbalance and exploitation inherent in having executives trying to seduce their own employees, yeah.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2018 21:57
|
|
|
RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Atari had a similar culture and that's mostly what most the dialogue about Nolan Bushnell has been about. Yeah, they were partying all the time but it was super exploitative for him to seduce employees or make them do things like get into hot tubs with the male executives while they're having a "meeting." Yeah, I read that article too. Some differences: it was the 1970s, Atari was massively breaking ground by employing tons of women and paying them properly to do jobs that were completely male dominated up to then, and... the interviews were mostly with women who claim to have been fine with it. That does not in any way excuse the behavior, though, because undoubtedly there were women who were not fine with it, and did not get interviews in fancy articles about it. But the country's first sexual harassment lawsuits did not come about until approximately 1977, so ignorance of a potential legal liability is excusable, even if the behavior itself isn't. I simply do not accept that excuse for a 1990s game company's executives. Nobody in management can ignore or claim ignorance of the inherent power imbalance of their position, and even if they're just a super likeable nerd trying to create a "new kind of company" (actually not new at all in that respect), if they cannot understand that this creates a hostile workplace for everyone who isn't totally 100% down with loving their boss then they are incapable of running a company. Even if you ignore the moral hazard (and you should not!), they're exposing their shareholders to ruin via legal hazard, and that on its own is grounds to be fired by the shareholders. You have to be a goddamn moron to think you can run a company in blatant disregard of the law and then be surprised and upset when you're dismissed as a result.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2018 00:19
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:I mean, that's the whole Silicon Valley thing, isn't it? "We're a new kind of company, the rules don't apply to us, hey wait what's this lawsuit, I'm the good guy here". Specifically, it's the thing with companies run by young people with no experience running companies, and is not unique to silicon valley; but there are a disproportionately high number of high-tech startups run by such people in silicon valley. Wizards was seattle-based, anyway. I have seen an article recently about tech companies in the bay area doing the same sort of "we're all swingers" sex party bullshit recently, too: but I suspect that it's not quite as universal as the hyperbolic articles would suggest. Certainly a lot of silicon valley workers work at huge companies with thousands or tens of thousands of employees, and the wild swinger sex party thing is not typical of such companies. Leaving aside the sex party stuff? Yeah the whole "disruptive technology" thing is about taking the wrong lessons from the likes of Apple and Amazon. Amazon disrupts the bricks-and-mortar retail business model, therefore I can disrupt the on-demand car transport model or the hotel room model, and we'll just helpfully ignore that amazon isn't blatantly breaking the law by arranging to ship boxes of stuff to people (although it may well be abusing its warehouse employees) whereas I'm dodging hotel taxes and taxicab badge regulations.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2018 00:38
|
|
|
RocknRollaAyatollah posted:I was going to mention that it was the 70's and they employed a relatively large number of female employees in regular, well paying positions but it just seemed to be making the wrong point. Bushnell has apologized and some of the women interviewed had a boys will be boys, we were all crazy kids partying attitude but I didn't want to come off as thinking that made it better or excusable. I do agree that the 70's and all that came with it make it seem much better than the Wizards situation since that was all unknown territory and corporate culture in the 60's/70's was incredibly toxic relative to the nightmare it is today. Yeah exactly, and I meant to elaborate on what you were saying rather than imply that you were defending Atari. "He's just young and naive" doesn't fly with me. You don't get to run a multi-million dollar corporation with dozens or hundreds of employees if you're willfully naive about legal liability, and it's just not plausible for any adult in the 1990s to claim they have no idea there's issues with having free-for-all drunken sex parties with your own employees.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2018 00:56
|
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nicholas18jul18-story.html Sorry, when I say "you don't get to" I do not mean "we live in a just society where people who do this always get their just desserts" but rather "you may not do this, and do not have an excuse for doing this, and should rightfully be punished for doing this, including at a bare minimum removal from your position by your investors." And you do not have to be some kind of legal expert to understand that sexual harassment is a big deal with big legal liability potential. If you're incapable of understanding that, as an executive, your behavior at work can have legal consequences, then you ought not to be trusted to run that company by your investors. Undoubtedly many people are trusted anyway, because we do not live in a just world, but I don't accept that there are legitimate excuses for this sort of thing, including in particular, ignorance. The article Alien Rope Burn posted attempts to excuse that behavior by claiming it was naive, and implying by tone that it was excusable. It isn't.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2018 01:33
|
|
|
Warthur posted:The big problem with the ideal of the fuckparty office is that it does things backward - makes you an employee first, setting up a power imbalance, then tries to glomp you into the polyamorous network. This would only work if 100% of your employees got into the company that way, and they never changed their minds. And it'd still be a legal quagmire, because eventually every company finds itself needing to fire someone, and that someone now has all the ammunition they could want for a big expensive lawsuit.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2018 18:32
|
|
|
Yeah you avoid the conflict of interest, but not the assumption of unwarranted legal risk. If you're all also the 100% financiers of your venture, then I guess your legal hazard is lowered. At that point, though, you're still restricting your company's growth potential, which is a fairly bad idea. e. gently caress, beaten on all counts hah
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2018 18:37
|
|
|
What is even the bar to clear to get a nomination? I can't imagine it takes all that much.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2018 21:27
|
|
|
There are countless war sim games where you can play as germany in WWII and that is not the same thing as "making a game where you play as Hitler." Most people draw a pretty clear line between enjoying the strategic and tactical challenges of a game about war, and endorsing or glorifying in any way the person responsible for the Holocaust.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2018 22:35
|
|
|
I GMed an RPG session in which the players fought demons which as GM I controlled, therefore the makers of that RPG were selling a game in which I "play as Satan." I played Axis and Allies when I was a teenager, so obviously not only did I "play as Hitler" I also got to "play as Stalin" so obviously Milton Bradley has been promoting the holocaust since the 1980s, why hasn't anyone taken them to task over that??? e.goddamnit
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2018 22:39
|
|
|
Yup it's entry-level whataboutism, except also framed to cast shade on anyone who complains about problematic things as being inconsistently unreasonable because why aren't they also mad about <totally different thing that is nowhere near as problematic>
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2018 23:59
|
|
|
A person could easily make that argument, yes. Are you making that argument, Bedlamdan, or are you just saying that a person who is overly sensitive about things could make that argument, and this would be evidence of their excessive sensitivity, which you are surprised hasn't happened because of course the complainers out there are obviously overly-sensitive?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2018 00:03
|
|
|
Just for context, people have been up in arms for decades about violence of all types in video games, so maybe those theoretical people are more concerned about the visceral and immediately shocking violence in hundreds of a-list top tier games for all this time than they are about the implied violence and obliquely-implied historical horrors of a strategic wargame.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2018 00:06
|
|
|
Like maybe first they can focus on games where you can beat up and murder prostitutes, and then worry about grognardy WWII sims later.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2018 00:06
|
|
|
The answer to the ethical question "what do you do when it's impossible to maintain your career without tacitly endorsing terrible poo poo" is "change careers, obviously." There's no like universal rule that you get to have an (ethical) career in making roleplaying games just because you want to and are good at it. And I think that gets at the core of where this thread goes when it's not having 20-page focus groups about werewolf/vampire game controversy. I think we're at a place right now with the pen-n-paper RPG industry where the only way to have a full-time career with decent pay that you can support your family on is to work for one of a handful of big companies all of which have serious ethical problems with their products and/or conduct. Alternatively you can work for any of dozens of indie outfits (or just on your own) making small-press content that will be immensely rewarding and fun to work on in many ways except financially, so you need a main gig and to do this as a side gig or hobby. Have I got that right? Are there any unequivocally good companies making pen'n'paper RPGs that can also maintain well-paid full-time staff? Like... maybe FFG? I'm too out of touch with the PRG industry nowadays to know just off the top of my head.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2018 19:48
|
|
|
Idran posted:Are there any unequivocally good companies period? Like, what career could you change to where you aren't tacitly endorsing something horrible by working in that industry? Of course there are. You could, for example, work for an NGO or nonprofit promoting environmental justice, or you could become a doctor or a social worker. That's even if you accept the really quite annoyingly tired catchphrase quote:There's no ethical consumption under capitalism, and there's no real ethical employment under capitalism either for exactly the same reason. which creates a terrible false equivalency such that  I guess it's OK to tacitly endorse the terrible poo poo my employer is doing, because they're all the same. Of course you then immediately contradict that point with quote:You have to pick and choose what you're willing to do and support. Exactly. An RPG contract worker cannot escape the consequences of tacitly endorsing a lovely RPG company on the basis that it's what he has to do to have a career. Because you can pick and choose what you're willing to do and who you're willing to support, up to and including realizing you need to change your career in order to avoid supporting people and ideas and behavior that you know you shouldn't support. So we're back to where we started. Even if you're a full-on full communism now type person (which I think it's safe to say most of us in this thread are not), you still have some degree of choice in what you do with your career and can dedicate yourself to causes that you believe in. I'm really sympathetic to people who don't really have career choices - plenty of people are basically stuck in some manual labor job where they lack the resources necessary to "just make a career change." But in this case we're talking about basically doing creative writing as a career - if you've got the resources to survive writing RPG content, you can probably swing yourself to a writing career in some other field instead. Or accept the consequences of your tacit support. You work for that company, you choose not to disavow them when you find out they're doing something you are not on board with, then you own that, and "but it's my career" doesn't fly as an excuse. That's my answer to Kestral's ethical question. If you genuinely have no choice of employers because of the constraints in your personal situation, then you accept that and look for opportunities to escape that situation. If you do have a choice, though, then you don't get to divorce yourself from the products of your work just because owning them potentially threatens your career.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2018 20:30
|
|
|
A lower production run also drives up per-unit prices. e. And frankly $60 ought to be the starting point for a basic RPG book, given how terribly most RPG contributors are paid. Probably more than that. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Aug 2, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2018 22:35
|
|
|
Perspective. Average cost of a single NFL ticket, not including parking, to an average team's game: around $200. Bring a partner and add parking and concessions and you're pushing $500. Average cost of a single weekend vacation to a touristy spot, for two people (one hotel room), including gas, hotel, restaurants, and a couple souvenirs... probably around $500. Average cost of a subscription to HBO for a year: around $240. Average cost of a single competitive Magic deck: around $300, maybe? A bit more? The BLS says the average "consumer unit" expense on entertainment for 2016 was $2,913. (Consumer units include families, single persons living alone or sharing a household with others but who are financially independent, or two or more persons living together who share expenses.) Exactly how much you should spend on your hobbies is a matter of personal financial situation, of course. But I think the above numbers suggest that A) even a $500 expenditure on a hobby, if it only happens a few times a year, is entirely in line with normal entertainment spending, and B) One does not have to have above-average means to afford or make such expenditures. For some people, blowing $500 on a single game is too much money to spend. For others, it's fine. I don't think it's reasonable to judge someone on this dollar amount unless you know something more about their personal finances. e. For the record, I think Cook's game isn't worth $500, but mostly because I think he's a hack and the quality is lacking in that respect, not because I think too many people can't afford a $500 product. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Aug 14, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2018 22:41
|
|
|
Gorbash, I really think you are right about this being a poorly-priced product in terms of ignoring the normal pricing of competitive products. But I think tying the price point into a discussion of privilege is something of a stretch. All products that are available in several different kinds and price points include some that are priced at the high end, and that's hardly a situation unique or special to gaming. It's not like Monte Cook is deBeers, part of a gaming cartel conspiring to keep game product prices high: if anything, most RPG products seem to be priced so low that almost nobody can make a living making them. Maybe Monte Cook pricing this thing at $500 is a tiny step towards normalizing the idea that RPG products should cost enough to provide a living wage to the people who make them...
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2018 22:49
|
|
|
Yup. And I suspect that RPG players who self-identify as such spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on games they'll never play, which... well, still isn't necessarily a waste, if reading and collecting those books provides entertainment value. I do not want to defend Cook's thing. All the impressions I've gotten of it, from when it was first kickstarted to now and based on others' discussions of it, is that it's definitely not "worth" $500. But luxury products exist and they're all tied into systems of privilege and income inequality etc. and singling out monte cook's latest box game as a notable instance of privilege and inequality feels to me like an especially underwhelming and unimportant data point.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2018 23:03
|
|
|
sexpig by night posted:I mean, I don't 100% disagree that it's not a crazy amount and all but you get a major issue with thinks like plummeting vacation rates and NFL stadiums and all is that a huge amount of people super can't afford to have those as 'hobbies' either, right? Like, yea man I agree for a hobby dropping a big chunk of change for a long term enjoyment thing isn't unusual but yea there's a fairly statistically significant amount of people in the country that can't do that without assistance and the whole thing of recreation slowly becoming more and more of a 'higher income' world is a pretty real pressing issue when talking about issues like privilege and social dynamics. Sure. Income inequality and wage stagnation are real and pressing issues. Monte Cook's contribution to them is so trivial and insignificant as to be absurd to even bring up. e, and more broadly I think it's generally an error to place blame on the creators of luxury products; I'd much rather see people getting paid better and see the wage gap closing.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2018 23:21
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:It's a truism that good writing comes from working within restrictions. Writing without a word budget is a quick way to get bloated text. You wouldn't be getting more good stuff, you'd be getting the same stuff spread out over more text. The restrictions I work under, as a well-paid writer, are deadlines. I'm often told to keep things concise, but I have the authority (and the skill and experience and have established trust) to dictate how long a piece of content I'm preparing needs to be, in order to be complete, focused, accurate, accessible, etc. But I'm a software technical writer, so instead of being paid a few pennies a word, I'm paid a comfortable salary. My colleagues who work as contractors typically negotiate a daily or weekly fee, and provide time estimates and content length estimates during the initial specification and evaluation stages. (Hourly rates pretty much work out to around $35 to $120/hr, give or take, depending a lot on the type of work, btw... but nobody contracts for like, exactly 25 hours of work or something. More like a three-week project, or perhaps three months or even six months, really depends on the work.) Practically nobody still bothers to print such ephemeral content as software documentation, which often has a lifespan of maybe two to five years at the most, and is expected to be updated regularly in the interim. This is clearly different (still, although I suspect not for a whole lot longer) than the RPG scene, where a publisher has to plan for page counts long before content is complete. Nevertheless, even if there is a specific page or word count limit, I do not feel it is necessarily or even usually the case that word count is the most important restriction, without which writers necessarily produce bloated text. To put it another way: writing is never perfect. My constraints of calendar and budget invariably limit quality. I've told more than one manager who asked me "how long will it take to do this" that I can do it in anything from an hour to a year... because quality and scope are both variables. Tell your contract RPG writer that you need some content about X by next Tuesday and they should be able to do that, constraining scope and quality depending on what you care to prioritize for them. Of course, their capabilities may be commensurate with the compensation you're offering... publishers should not be surprised to get poo poo bloated wordy product when they pay by the word and that pay is something in the vicinity of minimum wage, once you account for a reasonable amount of working time. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Aug 17, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2018 02:23
|
|
|
in any society conspicuously awash in luxuries, not getting to partake in luxuries is literally a form of psychological torture, and the attitude that the poor are stupid for buying luxuries is pernicious and wrong. Particularly given the degree to which the wealthy actively promote luxuries. The question of privilege is irrelevant here because monte cook is not exploiting privilege, really; he's selling an inferior product at a premium price, and that's a different category of exploitation... not of privilege but ignorance. Or, perhaps some of his customers know exactly what they're getting, and what they could get instead, and still want it at that price, I don't actually know, but that is the crux of the matter. From the perspective of "how's the trad games industry" at least it shows there's still a significant customer base with money to spend, and that's a good thing.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2018 07:31
|
|
|
ESTA Visa Waiver is for both work and pleasure travel. I believe having it canceled doesn't mean you can never enter the country, it means you can no longer enter without a visa. Supposedly the main reason you'd have it canceled would be if you lied on the ESTA forms, or otherwise should not have been issued a visa - like you're on the no-travel list for example. You would also be denied entry if your passport expired, and could be denied if you are coming on too many back-to-back visits (the officer thinks you're trying to actually live in the US), or you have a contagious disease, or were convicted of "a crime of moral turpitude" whatever that means. I'm fully on board with DHS being awful and highly mistake-prone, plus the current admin's obsession with keeping out the 'undesirables' etc., but I'd be surprised if it came down to work vs. non-work travel.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2018 17:29
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:Should I even ask what 2988 is meant to stand for? probably he was born feb 9, 1988
|
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2018 22:03
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:What about an idea following chinese thought, that those who are player characters are less special and more aberration? Not held up high, but cast down. Or is this just another variant of specialty veiled by a too-similar-logic (totalitarian maoism)? I'm gonna think this through out loud a bit, and apologize in advance for a bit of a mental diarrhea post. The protagonist(s) of a story are generally special at least by virtue of being the protagonists; I'm not sure how you could make a role-playing game in which the the players are not portraying the special focus of the story (and this problem is not escaped by playing the antagonists, either). From the point of view of not being appealing to fascists, I suppose "special" here is meaning, physically or mentally or morally extraordinary compared to the common person. But given that role-playing games in addition to characters and settings typically have plots - however arrived at - and given that plots are typically conceived-of as a series of scenes or encounters or events, each of which involves some kind of conflict, how could you have the characters be unremarkable in every way, and yet still routinely succeed at the challenges they face? I guess you can have games like Cthulhu, where the investigators are presumed to be doomed. In other words, they don't succeed, at least eventually. (Ironic, given the problems with Lovecraft's stances on things like race, gender, etc.) So you can have very typical and ordinary by human standards protagonists in stories where they muddle along and any success they enjoy is down to luck (or player cleverness not reflected in character abilities, as sometimes happens in any RPG) rather than the benefits of the characters being special in some way... that does not sound very appealing to me though, outside some very niche game types (Paranoia springs to mind, where the goal of the game is just to betray your fellow characters faster/harder/funnier than they betray you, in a larger context of certain failure). Even with games like these, I think you need to give the players something interesting on their character sheets to engage with. Is fun or engaging to play a role, if all the roles are "normal" or average or unremarkable in every way? Aren't we playing RPGs at least in part as a form of escapism from our own personal normality? I guess you can try to make all the interesting parts happen in the setting and plot rather than in the characters, but I think most folks would agree that good stories should have points of interest in all three. Can mundanity ever be sustainably interesting? I'm not sure even if you started with totally mundane characters if it'd be possible to prevent your creative players from endowing them with unusual attributes during the course of play, anyway. In the end I think this is all silliness based on the fallacy that because fascists cling to tropes about their own specialness, we therefore cannot have special characters without promoting fascism. I think various games will sometimes appeal to fascists as a side-effect of the kind of game they are, and that it's a mistake to then automatically reject or criticize those games solely on that basis. The goal should not be to make games impossible for fascists to like, but only to make games that do not actively or directly promote fascism. That's a much easier goal to achieve, and I think the only reasonable approach.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2018 22:38
|
|
|
That Old Tree posted:InDesign has been capable of living references for about a decade, but OPP is still having writers create documents with the same extremely simple markup WWish books have been using for literal decades. Considering the turnover, I wouldn't relish trying to wrangle more complex markup for dozens and dozens of writers turning in hundreds of documents all probably formatted just a little bit wrong. InDesign was capable of embedded page references at least as early as when I learned it in college, and I graduated in 2000, so 19+ years now. You can also do this in Microsoft Word. In some of those really old applications you had to actually click on something and tell it to update page references rather than it doing it totally automatically, but that's still fairly automated. You don't have to use an authoring environment that exposes markup to the writer, really. I can't think of a word processor or authoring environment that doesn't offer some method of automated internal cross-references (and indexing, for that matter). It really just comes down to people not knowing how to use the feature and not bothering to find out.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 29, 2018 17:30
|
|
|
Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:wtf is banning on an unpaid forum? You block their IP address, and then when they figure that out and re-reg using a proxy IP or VPN or whatever, you discover and ban their new accounts because they can't help but post in the same style about the same stupid poo poo in the same exact places. If they manage to change their posting habits enough to be impossible to associate with an old banned account and also not doing things to draw attention and get banned again, then... you've succeeded anyway. e. but I'm very convinced that having to lose :tenbux: every time you have to re-reg is a pretty effective filter for this stuff too, discouraging a lot of the casual impulse poo poo and generating constant revenue streams from the really dedicated assholes.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2018 03:44
|
|
|
Red text avatars are also a useful thing, despite frequently being abused too. The fact they cost money (and more money than the user's own cost of updating their av), but the ability for the community itself to cause every user's post to reference their worst behavior for all to see. We're not a flawless community and I personally do not like Lowtax, not only because of his bad opinions and bad decisions about who to associate with in the past but also his bad posting and his infatuation with some of the worst subcommunities on SA; but I also think that SA itself is a worthwhile community worthy of preservation in part due to its structure. I know a lot of people, including some in this thread, tend to stick to a particular subforum that matches their interests, and their experience of SA is likely to be quite different from someone who sticks only to a different subforum. I have hopped around more; I'm a regular in AI, BFC, TFF/TAQ, SAL, and TG, and I have dabbled in GBS, D&D, GWS, SH/SC, T&T, TFD, the dorkroom, and more. Every one of those subforums have threads that are simply incredible resources for those interested; I've gone from "I think I can change the oil" to "I replaced my own automatic transmission" by hanging out in AI for a decade, I've started on a new woodworking hobby because of DIY, I learned how to photography, I fixed my finances and became competent at long-term retirement investment and planning, I learned how to play poker, and I became a fantasy football addict, all because of various SA threads and the people who post in them. And I've extracted and shared genuine joy and positive outcomes from things like running the TG secret santa. I've seen SA send hundreds of thousands of dollars to a dirt-poor elementary school in Haiti, save the life of a homeless goon in los angeles and an addicted goon in seattle, financially reform multiple goons in BFC threads, and save countless goons time money and effort by diagnosing their automotive problems, computer problems, cooking problems, home repair problems, etc. What I'm getting at is there's a lot here worth preserving, and I'm not willing to bail on it in order to make a futile and ultimately unnoticeable gesture in protest of Lowtax's worst tendencies. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I thought he hadn't learned anything, or was actively and presently hurting people... or perhaps I'm just rationalizing, and while bedlamdan is drawing a very false equivalency, he does correctly point out that we tend to rationalize failure to act 100% ethically when doing so means giving up something we value. But there's also such a thing as a net good. I genuinely think this particular community has done far more good than harm, and that is not only despite but at times because of its owner's decisions. No doubt somewhere there's a gaming group playing retro D&D games that also reached out to one of its members in serious trouble and saved them. But I don't think there's any aspect of the retro gaming community's leadership or structure or rules (formal or informal) that produces that outcome in particular, or any aspect of the game movement that makes it more likely than in some other gaming community. SA is different. It's got its flaws but it also has a proven, long-term track record of being a net positive for a lot of people, including literally saving lives. Shmorky or no shmorky, irrespective of Lowtax's deep and abiding flaws, we're the best forums community on the internet, I'm fully convinced of that.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2018 18:28
|
|
|
My current av is effectively a redtext that has been a good reminder to me to stop constantly contradicting people with long, know-it-all posts. Or at least that it's irritating. I mean, obviously it's only just barely having an affect, but... I appreciate its power. I know they've been abused, but I don't see that abuse as categorically different from people posting stuff that is against the rules; mods/admins can take a while to respond to reports on posts, too, but they do act and when the bad post or red text is clearly rules-breaking, they take care of it. Meanwhile people who post pro-alt-right bullshit in D&D can't wander into the automotive questions thread in AI and ask for help without everyone seeing them for who they are. It is an actual solution to the problem of unknowingly helping or supporting someone whose outspoken beliefs would make you shun them, if you actually knew about them, but you don't. It's a form of this: Terrible Opinions posted:Public shaming is something all forums should engage in and the failure to publicly put "user was banned for this post" with a little blurb why is probably the largest failure of social media sites around. Public shaming. Just like real public shaming, there has to be recourse for those who are unfairly targeted, or being abused for being a member of a protected class, etc.; but it's very not good to be able to behave intolerably in one place and then go to another place and have nobody the wiser that you're an awful person who does not deserve even the most basic courtesy.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2018 18:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 19:23 |
|
|
Orks of Thar, best orks.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2018 03:28
|
|