Quote from: Venka on December 18, 2023, 03:10:51 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 18, 2023, 01:16:21 PM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on December 18, 2023, 10:18:00 AM

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics on December 18, 2023, 09:39:44 AM
Whistling by the graveyard, possibly, but at least the Transformers haven't been turned into homosexuals.

  No, but the series mentioned does have a nonbinary Transformer asserting 'they/them' pronouns ...

Yep. The culture was has seeped into the Transformers. Like everything else.
Transformers are heavily anthropomorphized. They have human faces and general body layouts (2 arms, 2 legs, head, hands, feet, etc) and very human personalities. It's easy to put some culture war crap into the franchise.

I actually don't think this is culture "seeping" anywhere.
In the original incarnation, all the transformers appeared to not have a sex, and indeed, in a couple episodes they just flat out created adult transformers out of stuff.

There are different original incarnations. Even within individual sources. The comics had the Transformers being evolved machines, which implies some kind of replication analagous to biological reproduction.



The cartoon wavered between Transformers being built, and that's that, to being built but requiring Vector Sigma to give them personalites.

Then the comics retconned the origin of the Transformers to be the divine creation of a nearly godlike being called Primus.

The animated film introduced the idea of robot "children". They weren't specific as to whether they were Transformers or not. And Wheelie is said in his bio to be childlike.

Then the cartoon retconned, at least the beast form Transformers, to being created by Primacron.

(I didn't watch Beast Wars, but that's the series that introduced the idea of Transformer souls, called sparks. I have no idea if they went into Transfomer reproduction.)

Then the live action movies had the Allspark being the mysterious macguffin that makes Transformers out of existing machinery.

None of these origin stories preclude sexual reproduction, and some imply it. Though I actually prefer the live action films origin. Or second to that Vector Sigma.

QuoteThey didn't waste much time introducing female transformers though, and one of their longest lived lores had the idea that some of their progenitors were female and most were male and everyone kind of descended from one of those when their sparks were made or whatever.

Yep. Like I said, the Transformers were heavily anthropomorphosized. The look like humans in robot suits. Except for some notable exceptions. Human, sex specific voices. Most of them are close enought to human male bodies to be recognizable as such.
It wasn't long before they made female characters simply because humans are writing the stories, and write about stuff they know.

QuoteSo that was different enough, and alien enough, and didn't pose any complex questions about robot sex or made up crap like "gender".  No problems here, because it was offtopic!

But once the top down order came to inject ideology into all products, the transformers line simply had to retcon to make this happen.  Suddenly, we have the most famous and first female transformer, Arcee, having had a "female spark" that for some reason manifested a "male body", or something, and then sought out sex reassignment surgery from some mad scientist to become the lady robot we all know.  This was later retconned a bit, but Arcee is still in the current canon a transwoman. 
Here's the thing- this is a top down excuse, changing tons of established stuff, to shoehorn a transgender story into a robot story.  It's not culture seeping in, it's the art equivalent of unprovoked violence.

No argument from me on that.

Quote from: Venka on December 18, 2023, 03:38:29 PM

Quote from: daft on December 18, 2023, 01:48:53 PM
I think he makes some good points about players moving GMs to the VTT and the "evergreen rules" when they go digital.

This is a really good video, and it absolutely shows a pretty big risk- once D&D Beyond has a top tier VTT with full integration with absolutely everything, there will be an audience of players and DMs who want nothing else, because it will be official, real, and fast.  Over the last fifteen years players who never cared before now care about "immersion", and these are not young people- these are players who were there over a plastic battlemat and even no stupid map at all!  It's a reasonable assumption that many players will start with a slick presentation and of that, some number will decide that that's all that they want, and they won't mess with other options.

What Proffesor DM gets wrong IMHO is that the exects Hasbro hired from Microsoft won't try and implement microtransactions.

Every major Vidya studio is doing it with a few exceptions here and there, of course they'll at least try to milk every last cent out of their player base.

Hey, if it works for them, and their Consoooooomers are happy more power to them. They take the loonies out of the Table Top RPG scene and that's a win-Win-Win from where I'm standing.

Quote from: Venka on December 18, 2023, 03:38:29 PM

Quote from: daft on December 18, 2023, 01:48:53 PM
I think he makes some good points about players moving GMs to the VTT and the "evergreen rules" when they go digital.

This is a really good video, and it absolutely shows a pretty big risk- once D&D Beyond has a top tier VTT with full integration with absolutely everything, there will be an audience of players and DMs who want nothing else, because it will be official, real, and fast.  Over the last fifteen years players who never cared before now care about "immersion", and these are not young people- these are players who were there over a plastic battlemat and even no stupid map at all!  It's a reasonable assumption that many players will start with a slick presentation and of that, some number will decide that that's all that they want, and they won't mess with other options.

Indeed. And if they manage to roll out a good VTT reasonably close to the BG3 hype, I think there could be a decent number of converts popping over and checking the 'paper' game out online.

It's going to be interesting for sure. I am personally very done with D&D, but I rarely (read never) play. I buy rules and supplements because I like reading them, but never actually manage to find games online for the systems I like lol

For me to actually try out the new VTT and D&D again, WotC would really have to shape up and fix their issues.

The thing is, a BG3-ish battle map takes considerable work and expertise to build.  You don't just crank a couple out on an idle evening while prepping for your game that weekend.  Most GMs aren't going to be equipped to make them, so they're going to be relying on whatever library of maps WotC has.  Did you want a pretty particular map for your campaign?  Good fucking luck.  And whatever maps you can get on their VTT you can bet will not be free, and I expect not inexpensive either.  Right now for my Shadowrun game I've tossed a Patreon animated map guy five bucks a month for hundreds of maps.  I am awash in urban dark futureish maps for like sixty bucks in total, because I'm too lazy to do my own mapping.  Is WotC going to be offering their full-bore 3D maps for under a buck apiece?  I sorely doubt it.  But right now with Foundry I could drop a grid and draw out a map on the fly if I had to, drop on a bunch of monster tokens that I pulled off of a Google search for nothing, then roll for initiative.  And I could do it for basically any modern system in the world.

The only way WotC's VTT would become attractive to me would be if I suddenly hit the jackpot in Vegas and didn't care about having to buy all the maps, monster models, and optional rule add-ons that you know they're gonna nickel and dime everyone for.  Not to mention it would require me to want to play 5th edition in the first place, since you know they aren't going to make it backwards compatible with the older systems.

It is likely inevitable that one of the machine learning tools will be able to give you an 80 to 100% complete fresh map meeting your requirements.  I'm sure this isn't going to be coming out any time soon, but it is almost assuredly something that will exist sometime within the next six years.

I play in person with real dice and actual character sheets. These digital offerings don't have anything that I need.

Quote from: Valatar on December 19, 2023, 03:45:04 PM
The thing is, a BG3-ish battle map takes considerable work and expertise to build.  You don't just crank a couple out on an idle evening while prepping for your game that weekend.  Most GMs aren't going to be equipped to make them, so they're going to be relying on whatever library of maps WotC has.  Did you want a pretty particular map for your campaign?  Good fucking luck.  And whatever maps you can get on their VTT you can bet will not be free, and I expect not inexpensive either.  Right now for my Shadowrun game I've tossed a Patreon animated map guy five bucks a month for hundreds of maps.  I am awash in urban dark futureish maps for like sixty bucks in total, because I'm too lazy to do my own mapping.  Is WotC going to be offering their full-bore 3D maps for under a buck apiece?  I sorely doubt it.  But right now with Foundry I could drop a grid and draw out a map on the fly if I had to, drop on a bunch of monster tokens that I pulled off of a Google search for nothing, then roll for initiative.  And I could do it for basically any modern system in the world.

The only way WotC's VTT would become attractive to me would be if I suddenly hit the jackpot in Vegas and didn't care about having to buy all the maps, monster models, and optional rule add-ons that you know they're gonna nickel and dime everyone for.  Not to mention it would require me to want to play 5th edition in the first place, since you know they aren't going to make it backwards compatible with the older systems.

I think there's a "dungeon creator" included? But yes, it certainly will take some effort at least.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 19, 2023, 04:21:59 PM
I play in person with real dice and actual character sheets. These digital offerings don't have anything that I need.

Yep. Maybe others prefer online bling, or that's the only way they can get people together is online. But I prefer in person, and I really am not fond of the inevitable microtransaction model that WOTC seems to be aiming towards.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 20, 2023, 03:22:34 AM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 19, 2023, 04:21:59 PM
I play in person with real dice and actual character sheets. These digital offerings don't have anything that I need.

Yep. Maybe others prefer online bling, or that's the only way they can get people together is online. But I prefer in person, and I really am not fond of the inevitable microtransaction model that WOTC seems to be aiming towards.

There's only ONE thing that should give them pause:

They plan to charge the players AND the GM, currently you can play on roll20 totally free, and if your GM pays for a subscription you as the player get to enjoy whatever he paid for for free. But let's say you as a group pitch in so the GM can buy the subscription, it's still less than what WotZi will want to charge you as a player on top of what it charges the GM.

The new thing and all I don't think that's a good business plan, most people will not want to pay.

Quote from: Venka on December 19, 2023, 04:20:16 PM
It is likely inevitable that one of the machine learning tools will be able to give you an 80 to 100% complete fresh map meeting your requirements.  I'm sure this isn't going to be coming out any time soon, but it is almost assuredly something that will exist sometime within the next six years.

What do we think is the likelihood that WotC will prevent users from uploading custom maps? Whether on day one, or at some point in the future.

Given what we saw with the attempt to change the OGL at the start of the year, what is the likelihood that WotC attempts to claim ownership of any custom maps users upload, to resell to the rest of the user base?

I am not opposed to virtual tabletops, and it's ludicrous to think WotC couldn't put together a quality piece of software given the money they have at their disposal. I'm quite convinced that the shitstorm is far from over, and it's going to take more than a few youtubers raving about the program to change my mind. They can have a high quality virtual tabletop program and still fuck up the release. Next year WotC could easily invent five new ways to piss off all of their customers.

Let's put this into perspective. Who would have thought that putting a woman in charge of brand marketing in 2023 (so stunning and brave) and celebrating the transeses (so inclusive) would have blown up in a company's face so bad that other multi-billion dollar corporations backed off of their rainbow flag avatars in June? It seems so obvious now, but at this time last year, if any of us heard that, we would have thought there would be some right-wingers grumbling, and the stock would have risen 5 points. That was an entirely new way to fuck up a brand that no one thought was even possible.

WotC hired the same diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think there's a complete fucking disaster coming down the pipe. We only think the OGL thing was a major scandal, but we're going to find out it was just a minor misstep.

Given that there are several RPGs (even good ones) that are 100% free, a table can run games with nothing more than the cost of paper and pencils.  Many more tables play paid for games with only one copy of a book so the total expense is borne by one person or defrayed across the table to be nearly free.

When a hobby that costs less than $5 a month to play suddenly jumps to $100 or more a month, some people are going to have to take a deep look at their budget.  I suspect that this will result in more losses to the "D&D community" than the developers anticipate.

Quote from: Corolinth on December 20, 2023, 11:45:23 AM

Quote from: Venka on December 19, 2023, 04:20:16 PM
It is likely inevitable that one of the machine learning tools will be able to give you an 80 to 100% complete fresh map meeting your requirements.  I'm sure this isn't going to be coming out any time soon, but it is almost assuredly something that will exist sometime within the next six years.

What do we think is the likelihood that WotC will prevent users from uploading custom maps? Whether on day one, or at some point in the future.

Given what we saw with the attempt to change the OGL at the start of the year, what is the likelihood that WotC attempts to claim ownership of any custom maps users upload, to resell to the rest of the user base?

I am not opposed to virtual tabletops, and it's ludicrous to think WotC couldn't put together a quality piece of software given the money they have at their disposal. I'm quite convinced that the shitstorm is far from over, and it's going to take more than a few youtubers raving about the program to change my mind. They can have a high quality virtual tabletop program and still fuck up the release. Next year WotC could easily invent five new ways to piss off all of their customers.

Let's put this into perspective. Who would have thought that putting a woman in charge of brand marketing in 2023 (so stunning and brave) and celebrating the transeses (so inclusive) would have blown up in a company's face so bad that other multi-billion dollar corporations backed off of their rainbow flag avatars in June? It seems so obvious now, but at this time last year, if any of us heard that, we would have thought there would be some right-wingers grumbling, and the stock would have risen 5 points. That was an entirely new way to fuck up a brand that no one thought was even possible.

WotC hired the same diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think there's a complete fucking disaster coming down the pipe. We only think the OGL thing was a major scandal, but we're going to find out it was just a minor misstep.

WOTC Management: "What do you mean, these 19 year olds with pink hair living in their parents' basements, and working at coffee shops part time; aren't willing to pay to play in our awesome digital walled garden?  Haven't they realized by now, that assimilation is their only option?"

I do believe that during the OGL shitstorm there were claims that the plans for D&D Beyond were to charge everyone and not be the "GM pays/players free" setup that a lot of current VTTs go with.  IIRC, it was that things like character options and minis could not be shared by the GM and had to be paid for by the respective players; I don't think they were proposing that both the GM and the players would have to pay separately for an adventure module or things like that.

But that was from a leak and was not substantiated, and it's also possible they've altered course when the whole thing blew up on them.  We won't really know how they propose to monetize their system until it comes out.

Quote from: Valatar on December 19, 2023, 03:45:04 PM
The thing is, a BG3-ish battle map takes considerable work and expertise to build.  You don't just crank a couple out on an idle evening while prepping for your game that weekend.  Most GMs aren't going to be equipped to make them, so they're going to be relying on whatever library of maps WotC has.  Did you want a pretty particular map for your campaign?  Good fucking luck.  And whatever maps you can get on their VTT you can bet will not be free, and I expect not inexpensive either.  Right now for my Shadowrun game I've tossed a Patreon animated map guy five bucks a month for hundreds of maps.  I am awash in urban dark futureish maps for like sixty bucks in total, because I'm too lazy to do my own mapping.  Is WotC going to be offering their full-bore 3D maps for under a buck apiece?  I sorely doubt it.  But right now with Foundry I could drop a grid and draw out a map on the fly if I had to, drop on a bunch of monster tokens that I pulled off of a Google search for nothing, then roll for initiative.  And I could do it for basically any modern system in the world.

The only way WotC's VTT would become attractive to me would be if I suddenly hit the jackpot in Vegas and didn't care about having to buy all the maps, monster models, and optional rule add-ons that you know they're gonna nickel and dime everyone for.  Not to mention it would require me to want to play 5th edition in the first place, since you know they aren't going to make it backwards compatible with the older systems.

I have ZERO desire to deal with a fully rendered 3D battlemap monstrosity.  First the assets are going to be limited, and then the cost.  I can find free tokens and art and import them in now for Dungeondraft or Dungeonfog no problem.  I can export dungeondraft in full VTT format and my Fantasy Grounds imports the walls and sets everything up for me.  The 3D shit is going to be very costly to add content in I'm sure nice $5 to $50 "art packs".  Fuck that, Fuck Wotc.  I'm good with Fantasy Grounds and modding my own shit.

In the land of D&D I've never moved away from 1e AD&D. Since I'm not a customer Hasbro doesn't care what I think, and I only care to watch them fail. It's fun to read folks' comments, and fun to watch the blunders. I can't imagine an owner of the IP, whoever they might be, coming up with something that would "lure me away" from the game I've had a blast playing for over forty years. I've played lots of other games, and many of them I like, but 1e AD&D remains my favorite. I can always find players for the classics.

So fire up the barby and pass me a cold one.