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What I don't understand is when was the action economy in D&D a huge problem? Both 5e and PF 2 are making shows of being strict about it but even in 3.x, barring "bag of rats" silliness it wasn't a major issue.
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Mar 10, 2018 04:38
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ProfessorCirno posted:AD&D combat was not assumed to use a grid. It assumed you used minis and a ruler, but even then, it wasn't that important. That's because pre-3e D&D was a dungeon crawler through and through (though this also gets more true the farther back you go; by 2e, it was trying to shed that a lot). I'd argue 2e made the biggest change here simply by removing the "1 gp = 1 xp" rule. That rule really emphasized that getting the treasure was the priority, everything else was incidental, whereas 2e wanted to be less "Monty Haul". The problem being, the awards for non-combat XP were kept vague so combat became the main source of XP (and the 2e DMG even says that story/quest XP shouldn't be as high as combat XP), and with low level characters still being super fragile this meant slow progression, as anyone who ever played Baldur's Gate can attest.
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Mar 11, 2018 23:27
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remusclaw posted:Honestly, any number of the various D&D novels could have made for a decent if uninspiring film adaptation. For some reason, when the big movie did get made they instead seemed to have tried for the tone of a modern Zucker brothers movie. Among other things that's because it wasn't a big movie. It was a low budget indie that spent years in development as they tried to come up with something they could afford to make. Even then they didn't use their resources well: two plot-important scenes were cut because they didn't have the money to do the CGI, but they did have the money to put in a couple of CGI beholders who don't actually do anything in the story, and a dracolich that's actually just a brief illusion from a trap. On top of which it just was indifferently made. The best part is Jeremy Irons hamming it up (though the Richard O'Brien and Tom Baker cameos are also fun.)
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Mar 13, 2018 01:12
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My one data point for Paradox is that while the right likes to valorize the Crusades as good and just because it was against Muslims, Crusader Kings II accurately portrays them as a hopeless clusterfuck where the European nations score some early victories then blunder around the desert, withdrawing troops as soon as the Pope will let them.
Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jul 10, 2018 |
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Jul 10, 2018 01:13
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Yeah basically it's, if you don't join you risk being excommunicated, but everyone has their own poo poo to do so they want their boys back as soon as possible.
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Jul 10, 2018 02:10
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Yes and why is that a bad thing Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a stretch goal for?
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Aug 16, 2018 06:48
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I mean Fascism has never been entirely coherent as an ideology- it co-opts a lot of little things to help sell itself. It’s right wing but it’ll implement some social programs to keep the plebs happy (and co-opts class rhetoric by placing the blame for inequality on an outside “elite”). The swastika is a symbol in Buddhism and some Native American lore but they ruined it. They discard whatever’s really threatening to their authority but keep whatever looks nice. The Nazis called themselves “national socialists” because socialism was starting to look nice in wake of the Weimar Republic not working, even attracted a few actual socialists, then killed them in the Night of Long Knives. That’s why debating with fascists never works. You cannot point out logical flaws in their reasoning because logic isn’t the point. They have no code.
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Sep 24, 2018 00:26
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The new policy is unexpected, but welcome, and probably unavoidable. Like I don't think anyone COULD make any kind of argument for the Trump Administration on RPG.net without inevitably breaking the rules already in place, so may as well nip it in the bud.
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Oct 30, 2018 00:12
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grassy gnoll posted:Thar Ork. Thar castle. Why are you talking like that?
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Nov 4, 2018 06:45
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Mors Rattus posted:So, fun fact: this is actually untrue now! Those who have been following this have reported that there is no evidence of Disney gearing up for another fight over it at all. If nothing is passed by January, public domain begins its march again. Also even if Disney loses the copyright on Mickey Mouse, they’ll have the trademark as long as they keep it active, and that’s all they need to make money. After all most of their Princesses are based on characters in the public domain, but that doesn’t stop their Ariel and Belle and Snow White from selling merch. They control those precise likenesses and certain materials relating to the movies and that’s what people care about.
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Dec 12, 2018 01:27
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Ghost Leviathan posted:It's not even like Mickey Mouse is one of their major moneymakers anymore since they haven't done anything really notable with him in years besides the occasional half-decent cartoon short on YouTube. Well I mean, that's true, but they still sell a poo poo ton of stuff with him and all the related characters. He's a mascot. So all they really need to control is the branding. Like if Steamboat Willie went into the public domain, I would be able to write a story with Mickey Mouse in it (ONLY using material from Steamboat Willie as a basis, mind you- couldn't include anything from work that was still under copyright), but since the trademark is still Disney's, I would be very limited in how I could package or promote that story. I would have to make it very clear that this was not a Disney product, or at least do nothing to suggest that it was.
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Dec 12, 2018 08:04
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Look it’d be one thing if you had any substantial criticism beyond “it is a generic system and therefore flavorless gruel”. As is that’s basically your only point and it’s a bit like pointing out that Red Dead Redemption is set in the Old West, or King Kong is in black and white, in that two seconds of looking at the product itself will tell you that.
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Dec 23, 2018 07:27
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Yeah I’m willing to accept that if Mearls says anything it’ll have to be thoroughly vetted by PR first and so could take a while. But this won’t stop me from folding my arms and staring at him going “You have some explaining to do”. Metaphorically of course.
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Feb 13, 2019 00:45
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Piell posted:Saint's row 2 had the best story. It’s probably the best point of reference for BitD, but SRIV has like some of the best comedy writing in any game ever.
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Mar 2, 2019 03:50
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Brexitus should be something that's been going on for like 5000 years and they keep just passing extensions and debating the issue over generations
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Mar 30, 2019 19:03
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theironjef posted:Eternally must the sanctum of psykers vote no on each and every measure. The emperor keeps offering or promising or threatening to retire and no one can tell if it's a good or bad thing. Oh poo poo maybe this is why the Emperor is kept alive, because letting him die would violate quorum
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Mar 31, 2019 22:34
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Yeah, that explains a lot. The worst thing you can do with Paranoia is skimp on the setting- the rules are always going to be just functional (to let the GM deviate from them without screwing anything up), so Alpha Complex is the main thing you have. XP gave so much good detail in a way that allowed you to change individual parts that it really remains the standard for presentation.
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Apr 7, 2019 20:06
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Advanced D&D in specific seems to have been where they got the idea of "use this for any fantasy world!" In particular 2nd leaned on this heavily, and with 3rd it got extended into "use the d20 system for everything!" That has been dialed back since, 4th was very much "this is about dungeon heroics", though with 5th you do see a lot of "let's use this for random concept I have" due to its popularity.
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Jun 22, 2019 23:20
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Bruceski posted:Is that movie as amazing as the plot summary makes it sound? It's very weird but has its problems. For one they clearly couldn't afford to animate the whole script so a few scenes get glossed over with narration.
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Jul 15, 2019 02:29
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I think he's convinced this will all blow over at some point.
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Sep 28, 2019 23:51
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Man and nobody's even brought up yet that Wendy's is HUGE into anti-abortion lobbying. They kinda spin that by focusing on adoption with their charitable work but they're a big anti-choice donor.
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Oct 4, 2019 20:25
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Now I'm hearing that it may be a case where the publisher (even a banned one?) can edit their information field?
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Dec 9, 2019 01:28
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Okay if I've been played on this I'm legit angry
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Dec 9, 2019 01:40
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Perdido Street Station spends a lot of time establishing an interesting world and peopling it with compelling characters only to then spend much of its length effectively removing said characters.
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Dec 22, 2019 01:45
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hyphz posted:Very surprised there’s been no mention of Battlestations as a group space combat game. I got the first edition a long time ago and ran into the problem that you have to roll to accelerate. Like, it's a skill check and if you fail, the ship doesn't speed up but you also somehow get an Out of Control modifier. Same for turning, you can fail to turn the ship, stay in a straight line, but still be going Out of Control which makes further actions more difficult. I know there's been a revision, did they fix this?
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Jan 4, 2020 18:59
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Josef bugman posted:Like, did he pay no attention during the game itself? The player had told him to his face that they weren't comfortable and the big brain response to this is apparently "do the exact opposite of what makes people comfortable". Like... how do you do that? This is the thing which struck me when watching the video. He has several opportunities to turn away or even walk back, the players even say "I'm calling for help" and that was established as sort of a safe word/x card, but he not only plows on he says "let's end it right there." It's actively inconsiderate. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 08:08
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If only we knew that running a multimillion dollar brand with a skeleton crew plus a bunch of “freelancers” and part time employees would have negative consequences
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Jul 4, 2020 02:20
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Yeah but even then there's a distance between person and filmmaker such that you can go, "Ah, gently caress off QT" and easily disengage. In an RPG it's more like the artist is there next to you reading you his erotic poetry.
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Jul 4, 2020 09:30
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Dale: "A white dragon cannot breathe fire, or cast spells of a high enough level to simulate the effects of a fire breath weapon. My character therefore cannot be on fire and I refuse to roll for damage." One idea from earlier about wanting to play suboptimal/ineffective characters- I feel this is another case where the specifics of D&D get in the way. D&D has always had a sort of gamist structure, you've got a goal, you want to clear the dungeon, get the treasure, get experience and become more powerful- and it has clear conditions for losing. Your character dies, they're out unless they can be raised, and if everyone dies that's TPK and game over. Thing is, this failure state is generally not fun and you have to put in work to get things moving again afterwards. So, people try to avoid this. The DM has to avoid making the dungeon too deadly unless they're one of those types, so you want rigorous rules for encounter design and knowing how powerful monsters are and how much damage they can do. Relevant to this, though, on the player side it means that making a trash fire character is potentially harming the group's fun- you're not pulling your weight. And you can extend that beyond the obvious case of creating a deliberately inept character, to cases of trap options, or unclear rules, or suboptimal decisions made for the sake of a concept or theme. This is why class balance and such is so crucial in designing a game like D&D, and you can even extrapolate that to playing characters who make bad decisions or do comically unwise things or whatever- take that too far and you wreck the party's chances of success. So the solution for a player who wants to play a failure goofball would honestly be a game where this is not a problem- where the stakes aren't quite so high and death isn't a question of a couple of bad dice rolls or stepping on the wrong tile. Or maybe death is that frequent but nobody cares (Paranoia with its replacement of characters via clones is the obvious example.) You have to step outside the design paradigm where one of the direct mechanical outcomes of the rules is "you don't get to play this character anymore", where succeeding at tasks is the only way for the game to move forward (we're slowly getting past this), etc. So wizard magic going haywire is a bad mechanic in Dungeons and Dragons but in a game where, look, it's no big deal that your left hand is now made of eyes and the party is now in the fifth layer of Hell surrounded by angry adulterers because someone forgot the proper wards, looking at you Dave, we can handle this- well, that's a different story. Now I want a good dark comedy fantasy RPG. Archer with fireballs.
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Jul 22, 2020 09:26
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I'll never get over WW making a game about superpowered demigods in an over the top fantasy world with page upon page of fancy combat moves and they have to warn you about not getting into fights too quickly because they still have the Storyteller combat system.
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Aug 13, 2020 04:15
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I do feel like that rule is specifically because of 3.x and the absurd volume of supplements and third party books, each of which had to include multiple new PrCs and feats and spells, and so could lead to some seriously ridiculous combos- but as others have mentioned things like Bear Druid or CoDzilla were core rules issues.
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Aug 31, 2020 03:00
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I feel like there are two ways to go. One, just folks. There are some bad factions of orcs just like there are bad groups of people. Enemy orcs in a dungeon are a part of some band of raiders or soldiers of a necromancer or something, other orcs just hang out at the tavern and play darts. The other way is to have creatures that aren't really recognizable as a "culture" or a people at all- they don't have families or even breed in a familiar way, they don't make tools or weave clothing, they're kinda mindless. Like, say, the demons in Doom, the Xenomorphs in the Alien movies, etc. It's hard to make "orcs" or "goblins" into that kind of thing, I think their cultural baggage is tied up in them being intelligent beings. So yeah I generally just err on orcs as folks, and if the PCs REALLY need something they can kill without asking questions, it's easy enough to set up a scenario where the bad guys are bad because they're doing bad things.
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Oct 17, 2020 02:19
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The thing about the Star Wars CCG is it had so many cards that only worked with other cards. There were so many mechanics that needed multiple cards to even come into play. Also for the longest time, the major characters- Luke, Leia, etc.- were rares and there were cards that only worked with them.
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Oct 17, 2020 04:33
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That Old Tree posted:I'll admit, Dune might reach a broader audience if there were speed lines and giant drops of shame-sweat during a solid five minute exposition on ecological transformation. “As you know the Imperium is balanced as a tripod, the most unstable of all structures. The CHOAM company controls all commerce but the Spacing Guild makes such commerce possible...” This works too well
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Oct 17, 2020 20:31
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I found a poo poo ton of Middle Earth cards for cheap. It’s a weird system but kinda creative, and of course they had access to great art.
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Oct 17, 2020 20:32
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Rand Brittain posted:The prices for games need to go way up even if the costs of printing don't. I'm not sure trying to force price-fixing is the answer to our problems here.
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Jan 25, 2021 06:17
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The problem, with 5e reintroduced, is "tradition" requires these monsters have abilities that don't fit on any scale and can just instantly neutralize a PC or require some special weapon/defense and it only works if you put them in the right context and give the players some way of anticipating that there's gonna be a medusa ahead, etc. 4e only made it work because they made sure those abilities were scaled, there was no "you need a +1 weapon or better" bullshit, etc.
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Jan 27, 2021 07:56
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Xiahou Dun posted:By which you mean 4e vaguely flirted with good game-design, maybe they made out at a party once. I mean on this score they succeeded pretty well- there's nothing in the Monster Manuals that's way over-levelled or under-levelled because even the pre-MM3 monsters are built on a scale. The problem was with specific numbers, HP, defenses, etc.
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Jan 28, 2021 01:05
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If any game needed just plain ol' hit points and lots of them, it's Exalted. The PCs are all basically SNES-era Final Fantasy characters anyway. Reminder that First Edition had a sidebar that encouraged everyone to take Ox-Body Technique just to survive combats because default health levels were awful.
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Jan 28, 2021 21:00
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mellonbread posted:Selling two separate male and female versions of the product is old meta. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk0i0yTPJBY
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Feb 26, 2021 09:12
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