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Elizabeth Mills posted:it's important also to mention that it is very bad, which it shares with PF and 5e, but somehow that hasn't translated into poor sales, which I find very frustrating. Starfinger is a success because they've cornered the market on D&D 3.5 nerds who won't even change what system they use under pain of death. So all they had to do was make the same product with a sci-fi flavor to it and their fanbase would come salivating like Pavlov's dogs and buy it all up. It's the classic 'identify your whales and sell aggressively to them' model. I'm pretty sure when they debuted it at Gen Con they deliberately under-printed the rulebooks to create a scarcity problem and increase demand, much like Plaid Hat did with Dead of Winter and Seafall. Honestly, the reason why D&D5e is so aggressively mediocre with clear 3.x influences was probably to prevent Paizo from manufacturing another edition war to drive their sales. If 5e had been too much like 4e they still could've gone "WIZARDS IS STILL COMING TO TAKE YOUR 3.5e BOOKS AWAY FROM YOU, BUY PATHFINDER", because, y'know, no true D&D fan likes anything other than 3.x.
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Feb 15, 2018 19:37
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whydirt posted:Where did the meme of calling it Starfinger come from? I think it was a misprint in their core rulebook? Alien Rope Burn knows much better, since they wrote the FATAL and Friends entry on it. Edit: You owe it to yourself to read that entry, especially all of the quotes from the creative director. I'm not sure I would've let him anywhere near a group designing an RPG, let alone Pathfinder. I definitely would not have let him speak in public. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Feb 15, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 20:29
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In terms of space combat, I do like that Rogue Trader handwaves a lot of it by saying that combat is more along the lines of traditional naval combat and that your actions do take a lot of time. It's generally assumed that you're doing all of these things that might involve vectors/3D space but in the long run just turn out to be modeled best in the typical 2D format. Instead of worrying about physics and vectors you get to focus on doing more interesting things, like riling up the crew with motivational speeches, pulling a Scotty in the engine room and getting 'just that much more out 'o 'er cap'n', using your spooky psychic powers to explode ordinance inside the enemy vessel before it gets to fire them, and in general just focusing on the broader level of things that you can do as part of naval combat. This is a setting where you can fight literal space whales too, so I'm pretty OK that it doesn't try to go too hard for verisimilitude.
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Feb 19, 2018 17:33
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FMguru posted:Ugh, I can't believe people are still falling for Fred Hicks's obvious scam of combining audience engagement with prompt and cheerful customer service. I know, right? I personally can't stand it when an RPG company actually tries to treat me like an actual human being instead of regarding me as a filthy peasant. But realtalk - streaming probably does a much better job giving people an actual point of reference for how to play the game as opposed to the 'how to play the game' section in RPG rulebooks that describe a scene.
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Feb 19, 2018 23:23
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Lemon-Lime posted:There was an update on the One Shot podcast investigation: http://oneshotpodcast.com/uncategorized/harassment-investigation-stament/ Please repost/tweet this at Green Ronin and ask them how the timeline is coming along.
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Feb 24, 2018 00:42
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Xotl posted:And... I mean, if you really want to get nitpicky about the details, what is he defining as 2e? Are we defining AD&D 2e as definitively 2e, or are we willing to say that the original AD&D (1977-79) is actually 2e? To go even further, what's he defining as 1e, because that in and of itself had a ton of revisions (that would be worthy of a sub-edition like 3.5e) up until AD&D 2e released in 1989. The short of this is - it doesn't matter because it's Dancey making the claim, so he's probably disingenuously assuming whatever definition fits his claim.
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Feb 28, 2018 18:07
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I feel like dieselpunk is a term that the designer of said bad RPG created because he wanted to do steampunk... but better! And different! (it isn't any different at all, is it Steve?)
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Mar 2, 2018 22:43
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DalaranJ posted:The action economy changes in general seem pretty drastic. It's almost like they should describe them using 'Minor, Move, Standard'.
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Mar 7, 2018 21:05
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I think the quote that does it for me is: https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/978124816292069376 Wants all the cookies for pandering sums up Paizo quite nicely.
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Mar 26, 2018 19:26
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admanb posted:Probably because, no matter how much people tout the "combat puzzle" aspects of modern D&D, most people don't actually want to solve elaborate puzzles every time they take a turn in an RPG. Do what Mansions of Madness does and force your players to play Mastermind when they try to solve a puzzle. Give them a set number of moves before you move the action forward. Yes, you might be doing the 'same puzzle' every single time, but it can't be any worse than the Fighter 'hitting it with his sword' every turn in combat. LongDarkNight posted:According to my buddy that works there a bunch of the WWE performers already play a lot of D&D. They're talking about doing a web series. Is World Wide Wrestling just too close to home for them? That having been said, my favorite character archetype to unleash on a GM is the pro-wrestler, ideally 'Macho Man the [x]th' with the backstory being that the title of Macho Man has actually be passed from person to person since ancient times (although called 'Macho Man', the title has no restrictions on gender - men and women alike can become the Macho Man). The ritual to pass the title changes according to the player's wishes, but the last time I did it the former holder passed on the title to my character once he saw them cut a promo, moonsault off of a building, explode a man they landed on, and get up without suffering any injuries.
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Mar 29, 2018 16:59
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Everytime I see someone talking about what [name asshat of the week] posted on ENWorld, I just read it as E/N World and that's all the context I need for understanding their rants. Dawgstar posted:While I have no opinion one way or another about Phoenix it is impressive that he's is able to turn the importance of representation into a bingo game. He sounds like a perfect fit for Paizo, given that Representation Bingo is the game they play to create NPCs in order to give the appearance of representation without actually engaging in representation.
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May 17, 2018 17:46
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Greg Stafford posted:I found D&D to be almost illiterate, poorly organized and not worth my trouble to sort out. I guess some things never change (or if they do, they change back).
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May 24, 2018 16:53
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At least Mike is trying to do right by his backers - just look into any number of failed video game Kickstarters that amassed $50k+ where backers are getting approximately zip in terms of refunds or communications from companies that mysteriously vanish into the wind. Trad Game Kickstarters have actually been a fair bit better to me in terms of actually delivering something and communicating delays, whereas Video Game Kickstarters (no matter how slickly produced the campaign video is) are now much more likely to do jack squat. That being said, my Trad Games Kickstarter portfolio does not include Far West (like others' do).
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Jun 26, 2018 22:34
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The number of people who can do nuanced alt-history settings in the RPG industry is relatively slim because it's the kind of thing that's really enhanced by an deep understanding of history and politics. Chad Walker, on the other hand, works in IT security. Which is likely why Cryptomancer was much better received, but he has it in his head that his education and profession makes him "a foreign policy thinker by virtue of my security career and academic discipline", which, uh. Sure, if you say so. Granted, I'm not saying you have to be a Masters Degree in history to write a game where you have orcs attack 15th Century Korea, but it helps. He probably needed to consult less people with fringe political opinions and more just... historians. It turns out one is more likely to have objective views than the other! This reminds me of my favorite joke/sad reflection on reality that I like to tell when I explain why I majored in Political Science/International Relations: The best thing about Political Science is that everybody has a say in it - by merit of voting in the United States, everybody has an opportunity to voice their opinions/beliefs and contribute to the body politic. The worst thing about Political Science is that everybody has a say in it - very few people actually have an informed opinion, yet their votes carry immense weight/consequences. The very structure of the U.S. political system by the founders suggest that they were very, very cognizant of this dichotomy as well. Similarly, just because people believe they're intelligent doesn't mean they're going to be well-informed about International Relations theory/History. IT Security/Computer Science are not at all the same field as IR/History (although in the realm of cybersecurity, there is a little bit of overlap). Moreover, quite a few people believe that just because they've read a book on the topic means that they are officially qualified as an expert in that field. I can tell you that it is extremely frustrating to hear about every goddamn rear end in a top hat who read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel start expounding on the topic like they had a Ph.D. in IR/History. I imagine that this RPG setting is no less frustrating. On a related topic, it's part of why I really like King Arthur Pendragon - you can tell from the first 20 pages of the book that Greg Stafford knows his poo poo about Arthurian legends (like Chretien de Troyes' contributions to Lancelot and the overall concept of courtly love in the Medieval era) so you don't have to worry about him going completely off the rails when it comes to building the world, the systems, the rules, and how they all interact. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Sep 24, 2018 |
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Sep 24, 2018 21:52
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Plutonis posted:I feel like that's hard to discern because it's very possible that you have a large knowledge of politics and international relations but disregard that in lieu of your ideology Comrade Gorbash posted:It's still possible to discern between people who have done the homework but have come to different conclusions due to ideology versus people who haven't bothered to learn poo poo first. Impermanent posted:it is, but only once you know enough to not fall in to the second category. Until then, you will perceive yourself as being in the first. I think the real key - and this is part of what I liked about King Arthur Pendragon again - is that you have to be clearly communicate your sources and explain why you deviate. If you can't do that in good faith and willingly understand when people point out the flaws in your logic, you've got no business trying to position yourself as knowledgeable. My favorite example of this is Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Your average, run-of-the-mill free-market libertarian will crow about Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand' of the market and how government's got no business interfering with the free market. What they failed to do was actually read The Wealth of Nations - not long after talking about the 'Invisible Hand', Adam Smith goes on to talk about the need for government regulations in the market because corporations are inherently predatory. Going back to SIGMATA, it's clear that the author really only possesses conventional wisdom about political violence. In other words, they simply adhere to the idea of either 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' or 'hey, we have this one thing in common we shouldn't kill each other'. Even just a cursory study of Syria reveals the profound amount of bullshit this logic is: ISIS and other rebel groups may have the common cause of 'bring down Assad's Alawi government', but that's clearly not enough for them to even consider working together. They know that if they prevail over the Assad government, they will fight each other - ISIS will try to vanquish everyone else in order to consolidate power, and other rebel groups will try to vanquish ISIS because it's hard to have a party in a democracy whose stated agenda is 'absolute power for ourselves'.
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Sep 25, 2018 17:17
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Anniversary posted:There's a 2+ page tangent in the books about how Assad (took actions which) created ISIL so Russia could aid him militarily and the US could avoid aiding the resistance. He claims that this is an example of "the Signal" failing. I'm reading that interview that ARB linked, and my god is he an insufferable rear end in a top hat. Also, the tangent is incorrect. Not to mention: Haystack posted:The idea of brazenly trying to apply observations from Syria into a recent-history United States situation is just... stupid, really. Even ignoring the author's bad takeaways, little details like, say, the fact the US doesn't share borders with four to six squabbling, high-strung neighboring states means that insurgent warfare would be completely different, jesus christ. That this is also correct. I made this same mistake earlier too, and I think this is a really important point. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Sep 25, 2018 |
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Sep 25, 2018 19:04
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Liquid Communism posted:A serial harasser so bad that WoTC banned him from Magic, and a dude he decided to accuse of hitting him and which literally nobody with the power to investigate as a crime seems to believe actually happened. But hoo boy is shitlord Youtube trying to say that it did.
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Sep 26, 2018 00:36
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Bedlamdan posted:Then stop having a goddamned fit every time someone says something even vaguely negative about the forums. It's not just me, I've noticed that any time someone else brings up the fact that we've got a history of multiple predators on the site's staff, you act as if that's unfair or mean and that the mature thing to do is just to keep on pretending that it never happened or that it wasn't really a big deal. Sir, this is an Arby's.
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Dec 5, 2018 02:16
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Nuns with Guns posted:It was always implicitly about alignment. Later on when Raistlin finally gives in to the evil voices in his head, his robes turn black anyway, but he was also a selfish dick before that happened. Doesn't Raistlin also travel back in time and cause the Cataclysm? I feel like that was the plot of the one Dragonlance book I read. Also, there was something about him finding just the right woman to overcome his incel shittiness. Thinking about that, hoo boy there is a lot of bad poo poo to unpack there if I remember it correctly.
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Jul 13, 2019 17:25
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Kwyndig posted:It's like some kind of crime to show Grave of the Fireflies without an upbeat chaser, even if it's just a short. It's probably a warcrime then to show it with Perfect Blue.
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Jul 15, 2019 18:45
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Cessna posted:If I'm not mistaken they all meet in a tavern. The Inn of the Last Home, no less. It's meant to make the fact that they've all changed since then (and what those changes were) particularly meaningful. Like, the differences between Raistlin and Caramon are even more stark now since Raistlin now has completely white hair and looks like he's wasting away, but now he can cast spells. Goldmoon has this mysterious staff made out of blue crystal that she gained during the interim along with visions of the gods, and oh wouldn't you know it there are some asshats going around kicking down doors looking for her and the staff. Sure the start definitely leans into some bog-standard fantasy tropes, but some thought was actually put into making that start work for the campaign.
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Jul 16, 2019 15:31
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Lurdiak posted:E: Why are we talking about Dragonlance so much in this thread. Because Fewmaster Toede poo poo his pants at the Inn of the Last Home on the last day of Sol Con '17.
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Jul 16, 2019 17:56
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Darwinism posted:brb putting up a $15k KS for my larp group to get filmed, this can only go well Obligatory posting of A Night's Work for the uninitiated. Spoiler: It's exactly what you would expect a LARP group being filmed to look like. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jul 22, 2019 |
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Jul 22, 2019 16:22
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PST posted:Ice raids as a joke suggest not: 'Wokeness has been commodified' bears all the hallmarks of a fascist argument - it's using the language of the left (e.g., wokeness, commodification) in order to try to convince people that what they're selling isn't an intellectually bankrupt product meant to appeal to fascists/persuade people to their ideology.
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Jul 22, 2019 18:06
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Serf posted:the real reason that post is hilarious is that an automatic rifle will not save you from that many hogs. its even funnier because they also generally avoid humans unless you specifically go after them Why do these chuds keep going on about needing an automatic rifle to kill feral hogs? I thought all they needed was a katana and a trenchcoat.
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Aug 12, 2019 19:07
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moths posted:The thing is that INT has in-game benchmarks so it doesn't matter how a character meets them. It's irrelevant whether they studied real hard, have a natural affinity for jamming spells in their skull, preternatural cognition, improvised quickly, or whatever. It's hard to argue that the representation of intelligence is not problem or not tied to mental capabilities when Gully Dwarves exist and are a thing. Their mental disabilities (which are played for a joke) are tied directly to their Intelligence score. (Source: http://www.mojobob.com/roleplay/monstrousmanual/d/dwargull.html) You can even look at 3e racial templates for Gully Dwarves and they receive a whopping -4 to Intelligence to represent this.
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Aug 19, 2019 17:41
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BetterWeirdthanDead posted:And walking can be the most dangerous thing you do each day. Nothing matches the palpable sense of fear that an experienced party of 40k RPG players feel whenever they encounter a set of stairs.
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Aug 20, 2019 20:08
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Omnicrom posted:I've seen this as a passing reference a couple of times, what's up with 40K RPGs and stairs? Is it just that Space Marines are the size of fridges and four times heavier? The original falling rules as written are outlandishly lethal. You take 1d10+1 damage per meter fallen, and armor doesn't help. Normal humans have fewer than 10 wounds (hit points) and have - at best - a toughness bonus (soak) of 4, so a one-meter fall (remember - this is about three feet) has a very good chance of sending you straight into criticals. A fall of two meters has a decent chance to kill you (especially if you fall on your head), and three or more (remember - three meters is around 10 feet) will probably kill you. And, if we're going by the impact critical tables, will do so by pulverizing your arm/leg/head clean off in a rather gory fashion. Space Marines only have marginally more protection. While they have nearly 20 wounds and a toughness bonus of around 6 or 8 (meaning that falls of just one meter are inconvenient, but might still hurt), larger falls - like say, being pushed down a flight of stairs - can still kill you outright. There is a 'up to your GM' catch all by saying that the GM is free to modify the damage based on ambient conditions (e.g., low gravity), but in your typically falling situation 1d10+1 per meter is what you're going to use. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Aug 20, 2019 |
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Aug 20, 2019 20:51
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Kurieg posted:
Hugging the Cactus? More like Touching the Poop.
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Aug 26, 2019 02:00
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:I’m not entirely blaming it on them, but you can pretty much laser pinpoint the rise of “ironic” verbal racism to the first few seasons of South Park, especially anti Semitic jokes. Actually, I would attribute this more to teenage boys being inherently lovely rather than South Park. Part of me is less thinking it's inherent shittiness and more of a general lack of appreciation or awareness of boundaries/limits, though - and that's not something that's new to the world since South Park was invented. Regardless - even though South Park existed, it never spread anti-semitic shittiness faster than the educational video "To Jew Is Not A Verb" that they showed us in 8th grade. Up until then, we didn't even know it was a derogatory slur (it's synonymous with 'to gyp' which tells you how European the term is). But once kids in my grade heard it, it entered the lexicon.
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Aug 28, 2019 19:42
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moths posted:Being a brawny athlete is also useful out of combat, it's just that games typically give physicality a chance to fail while magic always "just works." And when you complain about that to someone who plays nothing but D&D, they always insist that it's 'balanced' because "you can keep trying with physicality, but you actually expend a resource with magic" while forgetting that the way D&D handles rests and spells consistently allows these characters to completely negate the consumption of that resource. A lot of other RPGs have solved this problem by balancing spellcasting in a number of ways - and what's notable is that even if there's a great consequence to it, it doesn't 'always work' like it does in D&D. For example, I actually really like how the FFG 40k RPGs handled that by giving 'casters' the ability to use their magic ad nauseum but put increasing levels of risk on it. If you want to cast your spell safely, it'll hit like a wet fart compared to what most characters are able to output (and it still has a chance to fail outright instead of 'always works'). If you cast it normally, there's a small chance that something could go wrong (and an even smaller chance that something could go fun), but it'll be pretty effective. If you absolutely, positively need that enemy's head to explode this turn though - you can push it to the limit, but something will go wrong and there's a fair chance that it could result in a great deal of fun (safety not guaranteed - I have only done this once before). I also enjoy how Call of Cthulhu and its derivatives make you consume your most valuable, hardest to replenish resource - Sanity - in exchange for casting a spell (and it is also not guaranteed to 'always work' despite the resource expense, although it is dependent on the nature of the spell).
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Oct 9, 2019 18:04
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Is the guy who poo poo himself outside a Chick Fil-A at Gencon the 'scumbag serial harasser' mentioned in this article? I get that there's a lot of them on Twitter, but given the industry and the MO it sounds a lot like a dude who serially shits his pants outside Chick Fil-As. https://kotaku.com/board-game-designer-eric-lang-suspended-from-twitter-1844329777
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Jul 10, 2020 14:41
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