Quote from: Imperator;495324Though this has his MO since the beginning, his next post contains some valid criticisms. I think that he's a better reviewer than many people would credit him for, despite he getting hanged up in some petty shit from time to time.

I'd say I get quite a bit of "credit" for my reviews, given the huge amounts of games I get sent to me for review.

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Quote from: Imperator;495324I think that he's a better reviewer than many people would credit him for,

Never called his well-established reviewer cred into question.

Quote from: Imperator;495324despite he getting hanged up in some petty shit from time to time.

I do think that this is one of these times, though.

Quote from: RPGPundit;495468I'd say I get quite a bit of "credit" for my reviews, given the huge amounts of games I get sent to me for review.

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Certainly, but I've seen really stupid criticisms of your reviews around the web, so you could get more.

Quote from: Imperator;495550Certainly, but I've seen really stupid criticisms of your reviews around the web, so you could get more.

Really? I'd be curious to see those.  You can bet they'll be from people who hate the reviewer rather than the review; it has nothing to do with the quality of my reviews and everything to do with people who already despise me for other reasons.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;495612Really? I'd be curious to see those.  You can bet they'll be from people who hate the reviewer rather than the review; it has nothing to do with the quality of my reviews and everything to do with people who already despise me for other reasons.

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Probably, but I don't pay much attention. I think that you can learn a lot both from positive and negative reviews, and yours are thorough and detailed. Even when your personal biases show (and I have nothing against that in a review) there's still a huge lot of useful information.

But I have seen that many people cannot take a negative review. It sucks for them.

Personally I don't see the 'in joke' as a big deal but reading around the net, what does stand out for me is how many people didn't want to like LoTFP because of some of the attitudes of the author but ended up liking it anyway.

Those determined to find something to criticise invariably kick up a fuss over things like it having no monsters.  I'd be a lot more sympathetic to that argument if this wasn't 2012 where products like Labyrinth Lord and a dozen others are available for free (and legal) download.  Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of people making this criticism are doing so while within 30 metres of a set of 1E/2E/Basic/Rules Cyclopaedia, the afore mentioned Labyrith Lord, etc.

In other words the argument is idealogical rather than based on practical play.

Me, I'm running an LoTFP as a sandbox with a few subtle sci-fi elements thrown in.  I've pretty much chucked out the weird fantasy angle and use the rules cyclopaedia for my monsters stats (when I don't just make up new and interesting monsters myself). It is literally no effort running the game that way.

Fiasco, you have a certain point, in that pretty well no one playing this thing won't have preconceived knowledge of, if not direct access to, D&D versions other than this, with monsters.  That's pretty well what I've done, making use of monsters from other printed venues.  However, what matters here really is the "Principle of the thing", the question of the stupid stupid motivations for Raggi's not including monsters or pulling the "lost dweomer" prank.
What's more, the EXECUTION.  That's the worst part of all, because if he really felt so strongly about these things, he should have bothered to make an effort to provide a really good set of rules, guidelines and tables for people to make their own monsters; but he didn't. He just wrote a bunch of filler and what amounts to "make it up yourself". He pretty much proved there that he's really just not very good at putting his money where his mouth is, and not nearly as creative as he and some others may think; or else he could certainly have pulled off a better "make your own monster" section than he did, and could have thought of something far more clever as to how to discourage high-level play than a stupid prank that confuses the rules-set.

As for my reviews, I make no effort to hide my biases in them, and always try to make the effort to find and mention anything that can be "rescued" about a game, any good points at all, even if there's something about the overall game that I find unlikable.

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Quote from: JimLotFP;495126Wrong.

I wanted the spell lists to all match up to a die type to make random spell determination easy.

I had the five 9th level spells I wanted from OGC sources.

There needed to be a sixth to keep the pattern.

But... fuck, 9th level spells, I'm really not interested (note the top two levels of spells have no original content in them), so there's the Lost Dweomer to fill out the list and won't it be funny if people can't figure out why they can't find the Lost Dweomer.

This story is bullshit, by the way. You have "Gate" in the spell descriptions but not in the spell list. There's no reason why you would have needed "lost dweomer" to complete a die type. In fact, you specifically removed Gate from the spell list to include your little joke, fucking up things still further.

So yeah, there was no necessity that caused you to put in the dweomer. You just put it in, fucking up your game in several little ways, because you wanted to, because you have some kind of issue with high-level spells, and think that expressing your resentments is more important than maintaining the quality of the game you're writing.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;496100This story is bullshit, by the way. You have "Gate" in the spell descriptions but not in the spell list. There's no reason why you would have needed "lost dweomer" to complete a die type. In fact, you specifically removed Gate from the spell list to include your little joke, fucking up things still further.

I think you might be mistaken in thinking this was malicious.  The fact is, the whole spell section is a bit of a mess.  Check out the description of Hold Person, for example; out of know nowhere the description starts talking about "tendrils"--what tendrils? The spell description doesn't mention that it summons tendrils to hold the person in place and then suddenly that seems to be the case.

There's also so silliness in there that just comes off as dumb.  Check out Invisibility and how light itself gets mad at you if you attack someone whilst invisible ().

If there is ever a third edition of LotFP, the spell section needs a thorough overall instead of the slap-dash cut-and-paste it got going from the deluxe edition to the grindhouse edition.

Quote from: RPGPundit;496100This story is bullshit, by the way. You have "Gate" in the spell descriptions but not in the spell list. There's no reason why you would have needed "lost dweomer" to complete a die type. In fact, you specifically removed Gate from the spell list to include your little joke, fucking up things still further.

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The Gate spell being in there at all is the error. Summoning was supposed to replace all such spells, Invisible Stalker, Aerial Servant, Conjure Elemental, Gate, all cut in favor of Summon. Not to cut to make room for a joke.

I think it's somewhat funny, but then again I'm a sick bastard.

Would have been funnier if was actually in the spell list and the description was "What, we told you it was lost. No stats for you."

Or if, in the spell lists, the description was in there in some sort of code or cypher.

Quote from: misterguignol;496107I think you might be mistaken in thinking this was malicious.  The fact is, the whole spell section is a bit of a mess.  Check out the description of Hold Person, for example; out of know nowhere the description starts talking about "tendrils"--what tendrils? The spell description doesn't mention that it summons tendrils to hold the person in place and then suddenly that seems to be the case.

There's also so silliness in there that just comes off as dumb.  Check out Invisibility and how light itself gets mad at you if you attack someone whilst invisible ().

If there is ever a third edition of LotFP, the spell section needs a thorough overall instead of the slap-dash cut-and-paste it got going from the deluxe edition to the grindhouse edition.

Well, at this point I'm going by Raggi's own claim that it was done on purpose, rather than as a fuck-up.

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Quote from: Werekoala;496131I think it's somewhat funny, but then again I'm a sick bastard.

Would have been funnier if was actually in the spell list and the description was "What, we told you it was lost. No stats for you."

That would be better, because at least it would have spared the GM time trying to search for it.

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