Quote from: Imperator;421219You mean by houseruling?

What I meant was that a lot of the tone and flow of the game comes from the set-up.  But I'm also good with optional rules.

Treating all rules as optional is one of the reasons Hero and D&D 3.5 run pretty quickly and smoothly for my group.  Optional rules can be a wonderful thing if you understand when to use them and not to use them.

Quote from: Imperator;421219My point is that Internet has changed all that, forever. What happened in the 90s cannot happen again due to the Web. That is my opinion.

I often wonder if the future of the hobby will be amateur rather than professional for-profit efforts.  

Quote from: Imperator;421219Anyway, your opinion is very similar to mine. I would simply add that many indie games allow for different levels of power when creating a PC

Lots of big games do, too, including GURPS and Hero and other similar point-buy systems.  Personally, I prefer competent characters and there is nothing stopping you from starting your D&D game at level 3 or 8 or whatever by giving the PCs a bunch of free experience points.  That's another way a group can tune a game to their tastes without throwing the whole thing out for something radically different.  Instead of D&D pacing things to that players go from level 1 to 30 in about a year (or whatever their ideal pacing is), give the GM some advice on starting out the players at higher levels and advancing at a different pace.  You don't need a whole new set of radically different rules to do that sort of thing.

Quote from: jibbajibba;421224Well actually I was trying to hint that there is a degree of nostalgia in Koltar's original point.

As far as I know, unless he's been lying for years now, Koltar is still role-playing fairly regularly.  I don't see him advocating for some sort of glorious past that no longer exists but what he plays now.  The "false nostalgia" charge is a convenient way to dismiss any defense of the status quote on the basis of misguided motivations rather than flaws in what they are actually saying.  There's that pesky post-modern obsession with motivation leading the discussion down the road to logical fallacies again.  If what he's saying is so off the wall, it should be easy enough to shoot down without resorting to armchair psychology and making fun of the fact he enjoys dressing up as a Klingon at conventions, where that's hardly damningly unusual behavior.

Quote from: jibbajibba;421224People have been dragging the hobby in a new direction as soon as there was a hobby.

Yet the core of the hobby remained what it was for decades despite that.  And for all the Internet bluster surrounding Indie story-games for about a decade, they remain a niche.

Quote from: jibbajibba;421224The Tea Part analogy is was becuase they do they same thing in politics they harken back to a simpler age when the sides were clearer and gas was cheap. When The American's traded Coke with Columbians and used it to buy weapons for Iraq. When 1/3 of the world was at war with America but they were commies so you could see them easily cos they all wore red pyjamas

The vast majority of Tea Party people are not pining for a return to Jim Crow, women in the kitchen and without a vote, and various other unpleasant realities of the past any more than the vast majority of Barack Obama's supporters are pining for a totalitarian communist state to quietly murder millions of political enemies.  Defining any group by their most extreme elements is a great way to dismiss them, as is claiming they are ignorant and stuck in the past but, again, we're down the post-modern logical fallacy rabbit hole once we start playing armchair psychologist and talking to the motivation rather than the argument.

Quote from: jibbajibba;421224The point is that stuff is always complex and difficult and mutli-layered with competing factions. Life is never simple and everything always changes that is just how it works.

Yet you have no problem dismissing the Tea Party and Koltar with simplistic stereotypes, right?  Yes, life is complicated and people simplify it to talk about it, especially when they are ranting out of frustration.  Why?  For much the same reason as people use pronouns, even though they are less precise than nouns.

Quote from: John Morrow;421575If what he's saying is so off the wall, it should be easy enough to shoot down without resorting to armchair psychology and making fun of the fact he enjoys dressing up as a Klingon at conventions, where that's hardly damningly unusual behavior.

The one Klingon I've ever met is a top-notch fellow.

Quote from: jibbajibba;421187Now the risk of this of course is that the time that Koltar harks back to never really existed, there were always multiple strands in RPGs and completing ideas and memes.

I gotten crap about using Battle System in a couple of AD&D campaigns back in the day. They turned out well in the end.

Quote from: John Morrow;421575making fun of the fact he enjoys dressing up as a Klingon at conventions, where that's hardly damningly unusual behavior.



.

This had nothing to do with any argument or refutation of any statements. It was trolling; who is imagining motivations now, sir?

That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Quote from: John Morrow;421575

Quote from: jibbajibbaThe fact that in the 80s when he was doing that some other kids were experimenting with diceless games, or storytelling games using cards or games with complex social rules and so on is irrelevant because he didn't know about it or care.

People have been dragging the hobby in a new direction as soon as there was a hobby. What do you think Gygax was doing? He was innovating changing adding stuff rejecting other stuff. At the same time he was far more guilty than most in trying to control the direction of the hobby and recast it in his own image.

Yet the core of the hobby remained what it was for decades despite that.  And for all the Internet bluster surrounding Indie story-games for about a decade, they remain a niche.

As far as I can see, these aren't incompatible claims.  People have been trying out new stuff as niches within the hobby since there was a hobby - like diceless games, larps, and so forth.  That's what story games are, and it seems like jibbajibba's point is that there isn't any harm from having such niches.

Quote from: jhkim;421593As far as I can see, these aren't incompatible claims.  People have been trying out new stuff [is]as niches[/i] within the hobby since there was a hobby - like diceless games, larps, and so forth.  That's what story games are, and it seems like jibbajibba's point is that there isn't any harm from having such niches.

It can become a problem when people confuse a niche for a trend that everyone jumps at, whether we're talking about disco, the housing bubble, or AD&D 4th Edition.  People talking about wanting the whole hobby to change or evolve are not talking about live-and-let-live niches.

Quote from: Aos;421579This had nothing to do with any argument or refutation of any statements. It was trolling; who is imagining motivations now, sir?

Oh, I'm sorry, but am I supposed to be more impressed by trolling than an ad hominem argument? :rolleyes:

Quote from: John Morrow;421600Oh, I'm sorry, but am I supposed to be more impressed by trolling than an ad hominem argument? :rolleyes:

Apparently Aos thinks he score points with crap like that.


- Ed C.