Is this the thread where I should warn people of Alphonso Warden's adventure modules?

Quote from: Melan;689977Is this the thread where I should warn people of Alphonso Warden's adventure modules?

Yes. I believe you just did, matter of fact.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;689878'cause TheRPGSite is a reactionary forum. The dominate clique are convinced that everything anyone talks about is a dismissive attempt to belittle people who  share their neckbeardy ways. 'cause they're projecting and almost everything they talk about is a dismissive attempt to belittle people who don't share their neckbeardy ways.

Huh?  Think so?  

I signed up for this site a week or so ago.  As a staunch GURPS fan and D&D-hater, I'm swimming against the tide here; most of the posters seem to be D&D players.  Nonetheless, on a forum with much lighter moderation than I'm used to seeing, I've run into very little jeering, and a good number of people who disagree with me but do so civilly and with a modicum of tolerance.  That works for me.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;689777*sigh*

Great. So you created a stupid fucking thread, purely for the sake of trolling someone who dares to like designing games more than playing them. Was that really necessary? I mean we can't have more people having "badwrongfun" now, can we?

Quote from: BenoistWell, I wouldn't give a proportion of games that suck versus those that don't - there IS a lot of cool stuff out there, after all - but I imagine this is indeed one of the major reasons why some game products out there really do suck: because their "authors" are into wanking about stuff in theory, and not really that interested in playing games.

Ditto the wanna-be novelist using RPGs as a substitute venue for fiction writing and composition.

Gary Gygax wrote novels, and he had tons of flavor text in his rpg books. Maybe he was a "wanna-be novelist" too? Never mind; don't answer that...

Quote from: BillPlaytesting with as large a variety of gamers as possible is King.

Listening to the playtesters feedback is useful too.

"La La La my game mechanics are perfect" is not good.

Quote from: BenoistYes, but none of this replaces a personal love of games, a personal practice in playing games, and a particular aim at creating things which are meant to be played by others, first. If you don't like or don't care for gaming, the activity, the actual act of playing games, you can theorize all you want, playtest all you want, your end result is still going to suck, because the buck ultimately stops with you.

It sounds like a truism, but you'd be amazed how many game designers don't play games.

Maybe, but there's no evidence that Ian doesn't play games. In fact, it sounds like he does play games....therefore, Black Vulmea was just engaging in some trollish bullshit, as usual.

Quote from: Old GeezerShrug. If somebody wants to jerk off to math tricks they can. The only thing I don't grant them the right to do is bitch that nobody buys their game.

Games use rules. Even the games that Gygax created were designed via Gygax "jerking off to math tricks". The difference is that he did not so easily verbalize the mathematical processes that he used. That's it.

This thread's just classic. It's got just about everything covered. OTOH, it's entertaining!

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;689988So you created a stupid fucking thread, purely for the sake of trolling someone . . .

Yes, Lambchop, all disagreement is trolling. Well done.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;689988. . . who dares to like designing games more than playing them.

Did you miss the sentence that followed that one, or did you deliberately ignore the context?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;689992Yes, Lambchop, all disagreement is trolling. Well done.

:mad:

Quote from: Black VulmeaDid you miss the sentence that followed that one, or did you deliberately ignore the context?

I didn't miss it. Note that he never said anything about not liking games or not playing games. In fact, it seems that he still does play games. So again, what was the point of this ridiculous clusterfuck of a thread?

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;689994So again, what was the point of this ridiculous clusterfuck of a thread?

Asked and answered several times by a number of posters already.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;689995Asked and answered several times by a number of posters already.

....what?

But I'm asking you, not them. You are the one who created this semi-trainwreck of a thread. It's a fair request, don't you think? :cool:

Quote from: Benoist;689936That post is also a LITERAL quote of Frank Trollman running his mouth about the RPG Site on the Den, without quotation marks. So either gG is a sock puppet of Frank, in which case that's pathetic, or he's such a fan of Frank he reads him and thinks he's some sort of absolute font of wisdom or something, which is just as pathetic.

Either way, . . . Yeah. That's pathetic.

The problem here....

....is that Frank Trollman is right.

This is a reactionary forum. It was initially created as a reaction against rpgnet. Now....therpgsite may have partially evolved beyond that, but we cannot escape that simple truth.....especially since we still bitch about rpgnet every chance we can get.

Furthermore, this place has become increasingly reactive against the very idea of game design. Or to be more precise, people here have been freaking out when other people do a breakdown on how various game mechanics actually fucking work. That's insane.

Seriously...think about it. Many of you have been having a shitfit over other people doing mathematical exercises using rules for D&D. But you can't have a functional D&D game without math, just like you can't have a functional car without an engine.

And with all the bitching lately about both 3e and 4e, it seems like this place is damning itself with a staggering lack of understanding about how or why so many other people play roleplaying games. It's becoming like fucking Dragonsfoot Part 2. I see much more "onetruewayism" here now than I did a couple years ago, and I don't like it one bit.

Trollman is also sadly right about the whole "Magic Tea Party" thing (although I hate that fucking term, and want it to die in a fire). Games require a basic framework of rules, and those rules should absolutely make sense and have a purpose. It is the game designer's job to iron out these rules ahead of time. If a rule can't be quickly and logically explained, then we have a problem. If we must constantly houserule to make simple shit work, then we have an even bigger problem.

And please do not say, "the rules are not the game". It's a retarded statement. That's like saying, "the engine is not the car"....and thus, it remains an utterly pointless thing to say.

Just say that you prefer more modular games that allow you to houserule more easily, and leave it at that. :cool:

Well, I went and actually read that interview... :pundit:

Cliché hipster elitist is cliché.

C'mon, I'm from SF bay area, give me more! Your gonzo is banal; you're trying too hard.

*sigh*
I wasted precious C-SPAN time. Back to my salted lemon juice seltzer.

Some people only buy games that have gloss paper and breasts.  Some people only want anime art in their books.  Then someone thinks a cool RPG can be designed for those illustrations.  Buyers think how cool it will be to generate a character from a cartoon or from a comic poster.

There will always be someone to buy such RPGs.  Then dumb-down the splat books for it.  Eventually, buyers will look elsewhere for an RPG.  Rinse/repeat.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;690003This is a reactionary forum. It was initially created as a reaction against rpgnet. Now....therpgsite may have partially evolved beyond that, but we cannot escape that simple truth.....especially since we still bitch about rpgnet every chance we can get.

Actually the forum began as a forum then the Pundit bought it and started shouting about stuff he didn't like. And yet you can call him a bollocks to his virtual face and not get banned. Try that elsewhere and see how far you get.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;690003Furthermore, this place has become increasingly reactive against the very idea of game design. Or to be more precise, people here have been freaking out when other people do a breakdown on how various game mechanics actually fucking work. That's insane.

This is complete nonsense. I have two seperate threads on the front page about mechanics, one with mechanics in the title, and they've received a lot of positive and interesting responses. Go read them yourself, join in even. There's also a seperate area dedicated entirely to game design, which sees a good bit of traffic.

This is a troll thread where every initial claim has been shown to be either wrong or meaningless, don't read too much into it.

Oh, I dunno, it's a quote that encapsulates a lot of the ennui amid modern design.

Reading broader into the post seems unnecessary. It rather speaks for itself with just a title, quote, and a sigh. But everyone has been rather vigorous whipping it into a froth beyond its beginning volume. There must be quite a bit of latent cooking talent here...
:rolleyes:

Quote from: The Traveller;690006Actually the forum began as a forum then the Pundit bought it and started shouting about stuff he didn't like. And yet you can call him a bollocks to his virtual face and not get banned. Try that elsewhere and see how far you get.

Yes, it used to be Nutkinland. But when this place changed hands (and became Pundit's), it became a reaction against rpgnet. We're rising above that, but we're not completely there yet.

Quote from: The TravellerThis is complete nonsense. I have two seperate threads on the front page about mechanics, one with mechanics in the title, and they've received a lot of positive and interesting responses. Go read them yourself, join in even. There's also a seperate area dedicated entirely to game design, which sees a good bit of traffic.

This is a troll thread where every initial claim has been shown to be either wrong or meaningless, don't read too much into it.

I haven't read those threads, so I can't comment on that. However, I'm talking about people on other forums doing min-maxing discussions using the rules of 3.5, Pathfinder, or 4.x....and people here are whining about that.

I say...let people min-max the shit out of these games, because it lets us find any glaring holes in the rules.

When I first started playing 3e, I didn't know that Toughness was such a shitty feat. I didn't know how horribly weak a 3.x Fighter was compared to a competent 3.x Cleric, Druid, or Wizard. It's good to know these things.

Some people will bleat that these theoretical min-max exercises are missing the entire point of the game. I disagree. The truth is....these types of mathematical exercises can help make it easier for a game setting to make sense, and prevent some classes from being rendered useless. So while I'm not particularly excited by the min-max discussions myself, I do believe they have their place in D&D.