Quote from: FunTyrant;456417Or maybe...just maybe! You guys have terrible opinions on games.

Quote from: theuglyknight;456419What if I play 2e AD&D but instead of deciding my characters actions by what I think he'd do, I decide them on what's most interesting for the story? Is the game a story game all of the sudden?

EDIT: nevermind.  Talking about mechanical focus, not anyone's given playstyle.  My misunderstanding.

Quote from: FunTyrant;456389What's funny about this is that you think they care.

Quote from: Peregrin;456395I only dabbled in 4chan when I was in college, so I'm complete oblivious to SA.  What is the relevance of grognards.txt?  A collective of "grognardy" content and quotes?

Quote from: PeterWellerWait, why are random encounters terrible on their own? They're pretty shitty when there's an equal chance of running into lost merchants, goblin raiders, or an adult red dragon. And they can be needlessly complicated with Gygaxian subtables. But what's so wrong with, 'here is a random table of level appropriate challenges the players can encounter if they're just dicking around.'

Now granted, I'm the kind of DM who just picks whichever option looks to be the most fun for my players in that sort of situation. And I agree that rolling to see if something happens based on a timer is pretty ridiculous and probably a sign of generally lame DMing. But I don't see anything inherently wrong with writing a random encounter table for the part of the world your in which the PCs will be spending their time.

Quote from: My Lovely HorseYeah but they bring all that stuff up as the very reasons why they loved the old editions so often that, without meaning to draw any comparisons to religion, I'm practically forced to assume some sort of mental illness.

Quote from: unzealousNic brings up a very valid argument that, because they were hanging out with friends, having fun, but also happened to be consulting table 17c: random contents of house within wealth limits of chart 35, they now associate this kind of behavior with positive feelings and now erroneously believe that depriving the game of this system will negatively impact their play experience. I guess you could call it a mental illness in that they tend to ignore rational arguments backed by evidence in favor of a long held belief they adhere to simply because they've believed it for so long, but that's going to lump just about everybody into it for one reason or another.

Actually the more I think about it the more sense this makes, given how much of the time in 3.5 and prior editions was spent rolling on tables and establishing unimportant minutiae in the game world. A good example is knowing just how much a fighter can carry by checking a chart in a completely unrelated section of the book thinking "It's not so bad, I only have to do this once" and then getting hit by a curse, lowering your strength and spawning a massive argument as you and the DM scramble to find the table again to see whether or not the fighter collapses under the weight of his gear, because he needed to carry all the enemy armor back to town to sell as that is the accepted way of gaining income. And thus 20 minutes is spent tesults of a single turn.

Quote from: FMGuruI always associate grognard rage with people who haven't achieved much in their lives, so their conquest of some patch of nerd-dom (like 3E CharOp or a mastery of the details of Forgotten Realms) becomes the crown jewel of their existence. And when that becomes obsolete, even in the little sub-sub-culture that spawned it, these people take it very very badly, because it's a real threat to their whole self-image.

Quote from: Halloween JackBy the by, I cannot even fathom the mindset of people so demented that they look at minions and say "Minions only have 1 HP when they fight PCs...that means they must be incapable of surviving cold weather or stubbing their toes! Minion creatures can't logically exist!" I'm beginning to sympathize with Ron Edwards claiming that playing obsessively simulationist games for too long damages your ability to think.

Quote from: Red_MageThe frankly disgusting thing about pathfinder is its success in spite of its extreme laziness. It doesn't really fix any of 3.5s problems, especially the underlying system problems that other (better) products tried hard to address. Their idea of a playtest was to release an alpha and a beta and then just do whatever the fuck they felt like. It doesn't really innovate, its new ideas are rehashes of other people's material for 3.5/4e presented in a more grog friendly framework. The primary draw of pathfinder from an objective standpoint would be to publishers who want to cling to the OGL. The average player shouldn't care about the OGL TBQH, but for someone reason they do and pathfinder is doing well. And that is really distressing. It is hard for me to stress about the retrogaming renaissance bullshit because it is just people who never let go looking to make a few bucks on nostalgia, and then a few people taking it very seriously, but Pathfinder's success is troubling because it does the opposite of innovate. For an industry to draw new players and get "better" you need to be constantly pushing the envelope and trying new things, not pandering to the same fanbase, because eventually they will stop buying product, and you will be so invested in their desires that if they dont bring in new customeers, you are boned. You end up like model railways, or pre TNG Star Trek, Or Pre-revamp Star Trek, or model railways(seriously I dont want roleplaying games to be the new model railways).

Quote from: GerundAbility Score appeasers are the first against the wall.

The most defining thing about "the game" is probably the and all the associated system baggage which it comes with. Getting rid of ability scores that are the most restrictive, difficult, unappealing, inefficient parts of D&D would improve the game immensely.

Quote from: KarandrasAbility scores force your theme and mechanics to be related. If you want to play a fighter that isn't super strong then you just flat out suck. Likewise if you want to be a strong guy but your class doesn't use strength to attack then you also suck.
Ideally you should be able to play a smart fighter or a strong fighter and still be just as good (but perhaps have different skills or something).

Quote from: GerundA real big thing is that some people are rightfully being dickish about Death To Ability Scores because y'all are being pussy-footed about what the movement actually means.

Without ability scores, you don't have to have "Giant thief who has bad Dex" or "Sorcerer with bad Charisma", because you don't have those stats to begin with! Fighter gets a +5 to Doing What Fighters Do, and it doesn't particularily matter what that character is defined as being. Your Wizard is blunt and swole and whatever because you don't have to define your characters in the Gygaxian roleplaying style of "This Stat Good! That Stat Bad!" because the system doesn't break by having a effective Wizard that is also strong as fuck.

Getting to a 5th level of any class in the D&D power accumulation game, it is assumed that your character is a hero by all ways of looking at it, so why should we conceptually cripple characters with being dumb or deaf or ugly if you don't have dumpstats?

Quote from: OtspIIIHe does have a bit of a point. I do have to admit that every time one of you guys goes 'You have to remember these are the people who literally believe _______', as if every grognard shares every one of their opinions with every other grognard, it makes me die a little inside. There's still a lot of good shit in this thread, but there's been a little less 'DM Masks' type stuff and a little more 'this person disagrees with me, also has slightly grating e-personality' type stuff lately, which is a shame.

Quote from: ProfessorCirnoWhen a grognard says "all the classes are the same" what they mean is "which one lets me be a properly smug piece of shit compared to the others? None? Fucking video games!"

Quote from: Gerund

QuoteSwords & Wizardry is easily compatible with just about all the other games here, so you can use that supplemental material for just about any retro-fantasy RPG.

Who woulda thunk, the crabs infesting Gygax's dead flaccid dick are almost completely similar!

It really says something that every single review is an exercise in teasing out the minor differences in the vast Grognard shared delusion of nostalgia.

Quote from: Fuego Fish"I am no longer an excitable 14-year-old kid who wants to fight orcs and save princesses, I am instead a petulant and mirthless 30-year-old. However, I do still live with my mother. To me, D&D is only fun when it instills in me a sense of nostalgia and reminds me that I wasn't always a 250lb failure whose greatest achievement in life has been reaching a postcount of 50,000 on RPG.net. Therefore the best edition of D&D is the edition I played when I was that kid. Now if you'll excuse me, my pizza rolls are done. Good day, sir."

Quote from: angrylinuxgeek4E has been simple enough for a new player since the beginning. I've been teaching folks for a couple of years with no problems. Especially with the number of people who know play video games. Explaining a Fighter to someone who has played WoW is really, really easy, because Marks bear such a strong resemblance to aggro in video games.

It's hard for me to see Essentials as anything besides pandering to grognards. The Red Box art, the simple martial classes, Wizard Supremacy, and even writing favorably of old editions in an article like this.

Quote from: ProfessorCirnoThe "DCC RPG" looks honest to god flat out terrible. Even with other shitty grog-clones they at least have nostalgia to wank off to, but this just looks like garbage from every angle. I cannot find one single good thing about it.

Quote from: NorgLylePeople here enjoy poking at Pathfinder/3e players but usually only when they go around talking about how those games aren't unbalanced nightmares.

Quote from: Red_Mage

Quote from: Halloween JackBy the by, can someone explain how supporting third-party publishers, let alone including their content on the DDI, is supposed to help WotC? Even theoretically?

because ENWorld and RPG.net are functionally retarded. They assume that what is good for small third party publishers (the ability to make PDFs at practically zero cost and have a few sell) is good for WotC. I am honestly amazed that wizards let the OGL go on as long as it did, it was a really goddamn stupid idea.

Quote from: ProfessorCirnoThe more third-party publishers you have, the more Points you win when you fight about editions online! Or at least, that's the only thing I ever actually see it being used for!

Quote from: Chaltab

QuoteWhy not just take that small additional step and have characters respawn close to the dungeon with all their gear? God forbid a dead party member gets left behind or some other factor causes them to lose their stuff. Or have un-fun trips to get raised or otherwise be out of the action for more than five minutes. Some of the 4e community is dismissive of ôthese tired comparisons of 4e to MMORPGsö but ľ the truthĺs the truth. This is a pure computer game move.

Are my eyes decieving me or did this grog slip up and admit that there is something more important to him in an RPG than the players having fun? How tellling.

Quote from: Red_MageDude the most talked about grog essay is one decrying the tyranny of fun and how fun-havers ruined ttrpgs.

Quote from: FMGuruEh? What? Grogs hate fun. RPGs are supposed to be "challenging" and "realistic" and if you get your levels drained or turned to stone or one-shot critted, well, this table is no place for crybabies, son. You're supposed to earn your right to have fun, one undetectable corridor trap and permanent anti-magic field at a time. Otherwise, what's the point?

Sorry if you don't have the patience to stick with it when things get hard. It's called AD&D, not ADD.

Quote from: Halloween JackThey could be amazingly good modules and guides and it wouldn't make a difference, except for the worse. Practically no one chooses one game over another on the basis of how many sourcebooks are available for it. The Pathfondlers are completely right that their favourite game has a ton of support, but the thought of playing Pathfinder feels like the taste of dogshit and I don't want to eat a ton of dogshit more than I want to eat a pound of dogshit.

Quote from: MaddmanCan we still use 3tard to refer to pathfinder players?

I think I'm going to start telling people my hobby is storygames, not roleplaying games. Maybe they won't associate me with fatbeards living in their mother's basement any more.

That's it Pundit. You win.

Quote from: Locus CosecantMike Mearls is a contard-sympathizer piece of shit and I weep that he is at the wheel of Dungeons & Dragons.

(Mike Mearls took my idea for fixing Aid Another and he fucked it up because he doesn't care about verisimilitude.)

Quote from: ProfessorCirno

QuoteThe polls from mearls are very clearly not 'market research.'

It's not 'market research' - if it were market research, they might actually listen to the responses. No, it's just a way to try to generate some imagined support for the most egregious **** they're pulling. Like '25% /like/ the idea of having their fighter shafted!' Yeah, right, keep spinning like that, Mr. Mearls, and you'll reach the antipode in no time...

Quote from: Vanilla BisonD&D teaches children that their success or failure will be determined partly by chance, partly by skill, but mostly by the arbitrary whims of someone in power who has no particular qualifications.

Quote from: Jeb Bush 2012Well, I am saying that verisimilitude matters a bit. This should be obvious, it's not a coincidence that 4e resolves combat with mechanics that have bits representing moving and hitting dudes and so on, rather than, say, resolving it with games of backgammon.

People invoke it a lot in support of bad ideas, but the knee-jerk "hit reply, type MY VERISIMILITUDE" reaction TGD likes to go for is still dumb.

Quote from: OtspIIII can not explain it. The group I'm in now uses random chargen and I thought it was going to be terrible, but it's actually really fun somehow. It helps that character turnover is relatively high, but I'm actually really enjoying the chance to play a bunch of characters I wouldn't have thought to come up with under normal chargen conditions.

The idea of a character not being able to choose what they are, but distinguishing themselves through their actions and struggles. The fun in RPGs for me comes from overcoming challenges and hardships, and I'm totally okay with making chargen just one more of those hardships.

And I totally understand that this all sounds a little nutty, and I'm not entirely sure why I feel this way. I'm having fun, though, and I'm not going to force myself to stop enjoying something just because theory says that I shouldn't.

Quote from: rantmoAt the game store I play Living Forgotten Realms, they've recently added a Pathfinder module to go along with it. Last night I heard terms like 'DR 5/slashing' and I died a little inside from the memory of that terrible system.

Quote from: Halloween JackI understand where that guy is coming from. I feel genuinely sorry for people who've suffered whatever abuse it takes to make you think you're enjoying OSRIC.

Quote from: Lemon CurdistanThere is only one Game, and Gary Gygax is its Prophet.

(Basically, grogs are Christian fundamentalists who ignore the whole undercurrent of egalitarianism and forward-thinking in the Bible in favour of chaining women to the kitchen sink for raping.)

Quote from: OtspIIIFor me, the big difference is the audience. Traditional stories are made by an author having an idea, thinking about that idea really hard, pumping out a coherent story, and editing it a bunch to make sure there's no wasted words or scenes that distract from the core of the story. The audience then reads this carefully pre-constructed world and gets to see the world through the author's perspective for a little while. RPG stories are made by hitching the minds of all the players (I'm including the GM as a player, here) together, complicating the vision with the randomness that dice give, and creating an unpredictable hodgepodge story that's explicitly not under the guidance of any one mind. Even weirder, the audience is the players, the same people who are basically the authors.

When the author is the same person as the audience you really can't measure it by the same standards you would when they're separate. If you have the power to make sure that every thing that happens in the story happens because it's the appropriate thing to have happen at that moment it drains all the tension out of the game; you can't be in suspense over what's going to happen next if you're the person who gets to decide. You need to hand over some degree of the decision-making process over what happens in the story to forces that won't always just give you exactly what you want, and that's where die rolls and impartial GM calls come in. They don't always give you exactly what you want, but knowing you're always going to get exactly what you want isn't something most people want.

Quote from: Lemon CurdistanBasically, grogs are Christian fundamentalists who ignore the whole undercurrent of egalitarianism and forward-thinking in the Bible in favour of chaining women to the kitchen sink for raping.

Quote from: Lemon CurdistanBasically, grogs are Christian fundamentalists who ignore the whole undercurrent of egalitarianism and forward-thinking in the Bible in favour of chaining women to the kitchen sink for raping.

Quote from: Lemon CurdistanBasically, grogs are Christian fundamentalists who ignore the whole undercurrent of egalitarianism and forward-thinking in the Bible in favour of chaining women to the kitchen sink for raping.

Quote from: Lemon CurdistanBasically, grogs are Christian fundamentalists who ignore the whole undercurrent of egalitarianism and forward-thinking in the Bible in favour of chaining women to the kitchen sink for raping.

Quote from: Lemon CurdistanBasically, grogs are Christian fundamentalists who ignore the whole undercurrent of egalitarianism and forward-thinking in the Bible in favour of chaining women to the kitchen sink for raping.

Quote from: Lemon CurdistanBasically, grogs are Christian fundamentalists who ignore the whole undercurrent of egalitarianism and forward-thinking in the Bible in favour of chaining women to the kitchen sink for raping.

Quote from: Lemon CurdistanBasically, grogs are Christian fundamentalists who ignore the whole undercurrent of egalitarianism and forward-thinking in the Bible in favour of chaining women to the kitchen sink for raping.

Quote from: FunTyrant;456389What's funny about this is that you think they care.

Quote from: Melan;456438And so on. :hatsoff:

QuoteI understand where that guy is coming from. I feel genuinely sorry for people who've suffered whatever abuse it takes to make you think you're enjoying OSRIC.

Quote from: Halloween JackBy the by, I cannot even fathom the mindset of people so demented that they look at minions and say "Minions only have 1 HP when they fight PCs...that means they must be incapable of surviving cold weather or stubbing their toes! Minion creatures can't logically exist!" I'm beginning to sympathize with Ron Edwards claiming that playing obsessively simulationist games for too long damages your ability to think.

Quote from: Peregrin;456423You're implying there is somewhere on the net where people don't have strong and sometimes misguided opinions. Please, tell me of this magical place.

Oh, and if a 'swine' like myself can read this forum without getting my balls twisted, I don't know why you give such a fuck about what people here have to say.  Its the fucking internet. People post a metric fuckton of opinions and ideas. Pointing out the bad ones is like pointing out cow shit on a dairy farm.

Quote from: One Horse Town;456441You obviously do.

Quote from: FunTyrant;456454Maybe so, but it doesn't make you guys above mockery.

Quote from: Peregrin;456455So you're lumping a 4e and story-games player in with the rest of the so-called "grogs"?  That's brilliant.

Quote from: Evil Mastermind aka FunTyrantThey're actually grognards.txt-ing grognards.txt.