Quote from: The Traveller;701283Mostly though what he's saying is that any game which uses a d20 isn't fun for anyone.

Mostly he's just tweaking your nose. Can't you recognize when someone's having one on? Besides, isn't that quote from Burning Wheel Classic? He removed most of that brand of sarcasm by BW Revised in 2004.

Quote from: Zak S;701345Not at all. There are many good reasons to like his (or nearly any) game.

When I say "aphasics" I am referring specifically to the people who like it out of frustration with D&D and, in particular, to the vocal contingent who seem to believe their own personal inability to make D&D do what they want it to is a universal condition of all would-be gamers caused by the game's design rather than simply a personal thing.

Also, the subculture around D&D has so much goddamned baggage and people (including people who don't know forums like this exist or what the Forge or OSR are) telling eachother they're doing it wrong.

A coworker of mine (who thinks 4e makes it harder to role-play because that's what the LGS owner told him) started a Pathfinder game recently, and when I mentioned I ran a game of Moldvay Red Box for some friends, his reply is "Yeah, but there really wasn't any role-playing with those games back then."

Like, what are you supposed to do with that?  I kindly explained that that wasn't (and isn't) the case with old-school D&D, but there are a lot of people I've met who aren't involved in theory or the internet debates but who wholeheartedly believe their edition of choice or techniques for play are the right and proper way to play D&D.

Quote from: Noclue;701348Mostly he's just tweaking your nose. Can't you recognize when someone's having one on? Besides, isn't that quote from Burning Wheel Classic? He removed most of that brand of sarcasm by BW Revised in 2004.

If you're gonna tweak someone's nose, be funnier. And removing evidence of stupidity doesn't make you less stupid.

And he's said so many obviously and earnestly insane things...

Quote"I have no clue why my friends stuck with my through the bad years. We had plenty of screaming matches, quittings and walkouts. I imagine that they'd give the reasons that you proposed and that they'd also say that in between the bouts of bad, there was a whole lot of good. Which there was.

A main goal in the rules design was to smooth over those rough patches so we got more good stuff in a shorter time. It worked."

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?328694-Burning-Wheel-Anti-GM-Bias&p=7352528#post7352528

(Screaming matches? Walk-outs? WTF? This person should be in therapy, not designing games.)

Quote"All of the games talk about fun and fairness, enjoyment and entertainment, but then they break that cycle by granting one member of the group power over all of the other members of the group. It's classic power dynamics. Once you have roles of power and powerless, even the most reasonable and compassionate people slide into abuse.

Please ignore those facts!"

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?328694-Burning-Wheel-Anti-GM-Bias&p=7360617#post7360617

And there's the time he accused J Eric Holmes of being an accessory to a felony...

http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/comment/360306

... that I see no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Quote from: Zak S;701361And there's the time he accused J Eric Holmes of being an accessory to a felony...

http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/comment/360306

... that I see no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, it's hard to know from just that one article whether it was as skeevy in person as it comes across in print.

Quote from: Zak S;701361(Screaming matches? Walk-outs? WTF? This person should be in therapy, not designing games.)

When BW came out, I did a whole lot of reading on the BW forums and what became pretty obvious is that Crane's adventuring group was very "dysfunctional" in that there is constant competition between the players, the airing out of personal grievances through characters, all the stuff that comes with playing with RL friends that are more like family in that there's a love/hate relationship (they always know how to push each other's buttons because they are the ones that installed them).

If you read the early BW, you'll see that the structure, rules and limitations put into place are there to avoid and mitigate this conflict.  Crane wants to limit the power of a GM because he doesn't trust himself to not let all that personal shit get in the way, and he admits this in the rules text.  Agendas coincide = Forge Favorite.

The rest of us just realize that some friends we don't game with.

Oh, I saw my fair share of snit fits back in the day too. We were teenagers after all. Screaming fits? A few. Walk outs? Some.

Sure, BW puts a few constraints on the GM. They're still firmly in power. They're the source of all conflict, the final rules arbiter. The decide if you can roll, what you can roll, how hard it's going to be and how hard you're fucked if you fail. The BW GM has massive amounts of power.

QuoteOnce you have roles of power and powerless, even the most reasonable and compassionate people slide into abuse.

lol

Stanford Prison comes to D&D.

Quote from: Noclue;701674Oh, I saw my fair share of snit fits back in the day too. We were teenagers after all. Screaming fits? A few. Walk outs? Some.

Sure, BW puts a few constraints on the GM. They're still firmly in power. They're the source of all conflict, the final rules arbiter. The decide if you can roll, what you can roll, how hard it's going to be and how hard you're fucked if you fail. The BW GM has massive amounts of power.

I don't care if the DM has power or not. What I'm pointing out is all the stuff I quoted Crane is saying is stuff only crazy people would say.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;701717lol

Stanford Prison comes to D&D.

I love that little spot of pseudo-intellectual drivel.

Quote from: Zak S;701722I don't care if the DM has power or not. What I'm pointing out is all the stuff I quoted Crane is saying is stuff only crazy people would say.

People can be wrong without being crazy. Saying something like "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" isn't by definition crazy, even if you think it's misapplied to RPGs.

I think Luke jumped to conclusions without context with regard to the article you posted. I jumped to the same conclusions initially myself, assuming the female player was resisting and the males were pressuring. It's pretty obvious there's an implied OOC communication going on, but without her side of things, we really can't tell what her POV is. I don't think I would have written it up that way though. It does lend itself to certain interpretations.

Quote from: Noclue;701737People can be wrong without being crazy.

Let's take a look at Luke's Sanity Score:

Saying "D20s are no fun for anyone": either crazy or (your theory) obscurely trolling for no earthly reason and to no comic effect. Which is crazy.

Saying his game was characterized by fights and walkouts and screaming matches (this anecdote was, unlike yours, not qualified by Luke saying 'when I was 13'): Crazy.

Saying when confronted with all the evidence available anyone with Google has to the contrary that "absolute DM power corrupts": Crazy, or, at the very least so willfully ignorant or apathetic to the existence of other humans it's staggering he manages to get the toothpaste into his face in the morning.

Publicly accusing J Eric Holmes of being an accessory to a felony without even bothering to, like, be sure or to raise it as maybe a possibility rather than a certainty: Crazy.

Every single other thing he says in that Holmes thread about the rest of the game being "everything wrong with gaming": Crazy.

And this is leaving out other random bits of nutjobbery in the BW rulebook like assuming the reason GMs make players check skills more than once in complex situations is because the GM wants to see the players fail or the barely-coherent "don't use these rules" section which seems to be picking some imaginary fight with some ghost only Luke can see: Crazy.

And, even if not crazy, wrong so often in so many contexts while staring headlong into the headlights of tremendous evidence to the contrary that, yeah, clearly dumber than a brick.

Is someone saying reptiles don't exist while being swallowed by a python crazy or just spectacularly stupid? I don't care.

Quote from: Zak S;701747Is someone saying reptiles don't exist while being swallowed by a python crazy or just spectacularly stupid? I don't care.

What do you mean by existence? Have you considered the possibility of multiple meanings of that word, one of which proves you're wrong?

Also, how in the fuck do you read that story games crap? I couldn't get past the second page bitching about Holmes...

Quote from: Zak S;701747And this is leaving out other random bits of nutjobbery in the BW rulebook like assuming the reason GMs make players check skills more than once in complex situations is because the GM wants to see the players fail or the barely-coherent "don't use these rules" section which seems to be picking some imaginary fight with some ghost only Luke can see: Crazy.

Did you pirate Classic or something?  Even Edwards denounced that essay as horrible and it hasn't existed in the books since...probably before I was in college (so like, earlier than 05).

And actually I kind of like LIR if you ignore the implied reasoning for it -- maybe would be better in the form of advice like "GM, don't dawdle and ask for zillions of rolls for the same stuff, keep shit moving forward", but, mreh.

Let it Ride is a really solid principle of GMing. Just because some of this stuff is motivated by Luke's apparent attitude to GMs doesn't mean that it can't be useful to those of us who don't have the same issue.

Quote from: Zak S;701361And there's the time he accused J Eric Holmes of being an accessory to a felony...

http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/comment/360306

... that I see no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Quote from: Zak S;701747Publicly accusing J Eric Holmes of being an accessory to a felony without even bothering to, like, be sure or to raise it as maybe a possibility rather than a certainty: Crazy.

I don't know about most of your other claims.  However, I argued on your side on that thread last year - and this particular accusation is nonsense. Luke referred to handling of the in-game seduction as date rape - which is not the same thing as claiming that real-life date rape occurred.

Quote from: Zak S;701747And this is leaving out other random bits of nutjobbery in the BW rulebook like assuming the reason GMs make players check skills more than once in complex situations is because the GM wants to see the players fail or the barely-coherent "don't use these rules" section which seems to be picking some imaginary fight with some ghost only Luke can see: Crazy.

This is another example I know, since I played a BW campaign for a year. The rules for "Let It Ride" are in no sense crazy.