What people want and what makes them happy rarely coincide.

[Gx1080]

@Fuchs

Which people? Because, I would say that there's another large number of people who think that you can't make a TTRPG named D&D without that game being about murder-hobos. Myself included.

Which is the crux of the argument.

[Chamomile]

Which people? Because, I would say that there's another large number of people who think that you can't make a TTRPG named D&D without that game being about murder-hobos. Myself included.

They're called grognards and they're an increasingly negligibly small part of the market.

[Lago PARANOIA]

...No. No, it doesn't. Previously, you had a mute character. Now you have a character theoretically capable of speech who just never talks. You aren't going to legislate players into a sense of artistry. Social interaction does not work that way.

What you're not getting is that even though you can't force a horse to drink (going off of that old, you can bring a horse to a water but can't make him drink), you can make it more appealing for a horse to drink from the stream. It's easier to get a horse to drink from a crystal-clear stream of water after you've given him a lot of dry oats and had him trot for six hours than it is to get a horse to drink from a muddy pool of water after he's been sleeping on dew-covered grass.

There will still be some horses who absolutely refuse to drink from the water in the first scenario. And even weirder, there will be some horses who will never drink from the crystal-clear stream but will happily drink from the muddy pool of water. Regardless, this doesn't mean that it's always equally hopeless to try to manipulate the horse into the broad activity of 'drinking from the stream'.

Can they start as an actual king of an actual nation that they are running? If so, then arbitrarily taking that away from them at a later date is a dick move.

This is a dumb statement to make. So if in one campaign I decide to let someone start out as king of a great nation, I have to let them always start out as a king in future games? If I'm running a game that's about the fall of the Midean kingdom and the plucky heroes who try to restore it (classic), it's okay for me to start the story right after the disposed king/prince wakes up in rebel shelter but it's not okay for me to start the game where the king/prince isn't overthrown yet but is on the losing side of a hopeless war?

But he still didn't start with those clothes. This is not a hard concept to grasp. If you allow characters to start out wearing silk, then you are a dick if you later on require them to abandon it because the dice said so.

Who's requiring anyone to abandon it? If the silk clothes devolve into rags while everyone else is wearing furs or the character has a masterwork katana while everyone else has +3 whatevers, no one is forcing the character to pick up a +3 lightning dagger. If his character aesthetic is that precious, that's on his head. Same for people who want to play one-armed characters or blind characters or avariel with their wings cruelly clipped off or mute spellcasters using Still Spell or classical mermaids on land or etc.. In any case, no one is obliged to drop a katana upgrade or Goggles of Truesight or Wings of the Demon or a familiar that can talk or a mechanical legs for mermaids.

You're seriously trying to argue the skull shirt isn't iconic to the Punisher, and that anyone who decided to change that design to something else as determined by die roll shouldn't be fired for it?

What I'm saying that while the skull shirt is iconic, it's also unimportant. If someone had gone back in time and convinced Stan Lee to change the skull to a stylized fist or his vigilante outfit for military fatigues, that would've only marginally changed his character and the stories he was in if at all. But if someone had gone back in time and convinced the original authors that the character wasn't a Vietnam vet (instead a small-town sheriff) or the character wasn't Italian-American who grew up in Old New York (instead being a Chinese-American fleeing communist china) or if the character was single and it was his best friend that got killed the stories would've been very different.

That's what I mean when I say crap like the Punisher's skull shirt and his trench coat and his beady eyes are just chaff. They're just visual cues. And it's fine for him or anyone to have them as long as they don't get in the way of telling or creating a good story. When or if the Punisher filibusters the story that he can't go criminal-killing unless he finds his trademark shirt and flak jacket and trenchcoat or when he bails out of a mission for lack of an M-16 not because it's the wrong kind of weapon he needs but because he doesn't like AK-47s is when I have a problem.

Fortunately the Punisher, despite being one of the most shallow characters ever committed to graphic novels, is not as shallow as a typical TTRPG player so it's never really come up. But it is a problem for TTRPGs, hence why I am dead set against protecting weapons.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Being able to define an enduring aesthetic for a character is a perfectly valid thing to want to do. And yes, weapons are a part of an aesthetic, because stories are full of cultural cliches and symbolism. Barbarians use greataxes because barbarians use greataxes. When the barbarian is presented with a rapier that is purely mechanically superior to his greataxe, no one's going to be happy. Scythes mean death and that's cliche as hell and it works; pretending it doesn't is just dumb.

At the end of the day, the question whether or not to include anything should be based on A.) Is it a net improvement to gameplay? B.) Is it a net improvement to story? or C.) Is it a net improvement to long-term sales/hobby growth? You can tease me all you want about me being perpetually dissatisfied and out of touch with the D&D playerbase, but if the answer to all three questions is 'no' but you insist it should be in there anyway you're just pissing in the wind.

Now that said, here's my counter-response, in two parts.

First part:

You just said that weapons should be allowed to be a static character aesthetic because it's culturally relevant and has strong amounts of symbolism in it.

But you haven't made an argument for why that's good! It's just a straight-up appeal to tradition. You know what else is full of cultural cliches and symbolism? Women being stuck in the healer/support role and Always Chaotic Evil races. Yet I don't advocate for those things being in the game because even though they're memetically powerful and usually irresistible for authors to include they create worse stories.

If you think that's too loaded of a comparison, fine, so here are some other iconic and symbolically powerful themes and tropes that are either bad for the story but still exist due to inertia or are good for a story but bad for a TTRPG medium:

Plucky comic reliefs who are karmically protected from a gory end.
Perfectly timed heroic sacrifices of a major character that completely changes things around.
An uber-powerful BBEG who shows up and is unable to be defeated no matter what crazy scooby doo plan the PCs come up with--but it's okay, she's just there to advance the story.
One of the teammates getting fed up with the group and striking it out on the own. Not permanently, but just long enough to inconvenience the group and himself and learn a valuable lesson about friendship.
A scheming, backstabbing main character who plans to betray the party and make off with all of their gear.
A hero that flat out more powerful than everyone else in the team.

If your response to that is 'yes, even though they have a lengthy history of being included in fantasy stories they're not appropriate for TTRPGs', please explain to me why we shouldn't make an exception for those previous things but we should make an exception for static weapon aesthetics.

Second part:

Now that said, unlike FrankTrollman I realize that totally fighting against character aesthetic is a losing battle. In the end, even though Iron Man's suit is red and gold you can't really do anything about a character who wants to paint it desert camo. If someone wants to put a holographic projection unit on the underside of Darth Vader's helmet so that they get the benefit of his life support and anti-Force abilities but they don't have to hide their flowing blonde locks trying to stop that is a waste of time that won't go anywhere. I have no personal support or antipathy towards people color-coordinating their outfits even though I realize it'd be a straight-up losing battle.

The reason why I'm digging my heels in when it comes to having a static weapon aesthetic is that unlike, say, chainmail bikini it's been my experience that players and game designers actually make it a big deal out of proportion to the amount of story you can extract from it. As much as Chamomile objects otherwise, the number of stories you can extract from the fact that your character wields a scythe instead of a longsword as opposed to being a half-orc instead of an elf is really small. And they tend to be bullshit low-level stories anyone. Again, if this was like chainmail bikini where it would just be an occasional mention of the fact that your drow's rack was encased in gold coinmail every couple of campaigns it would be fine--but for fuck's sake look at this thread! People actually want to spend time discussing the fact that their bastard sword has several inches more of metal in it than a longsword and that they're going to tell you why it's important.

How does that help the game? How does that help the generation of stories? When someone says 'you all should worship Khala and that means no more meat for dinner' or 'you filthy non-elves should be more like us elves' sure it's shallow and cliched and unimaginative and annoying but at least you can build off of it. When someone is all 'I really really like katanas--the slightly curved edge marks its superiority to a European longsword' what kind of story or character development or whatever does that lead to? It doesn't. It's just pointless filler that serves no purpose other than to stroke the ego of the person with said aesthetic. There's no reason to encourage it in the game no matter how much people 'like' it.

[Josh_Kablack]

When someone is all 'I really really like katanas--the slightly curved edge marks its superiority to a European longsword' what kind of story or character development or whatever does that lead to?

This one

[MfA]

They're called grognards and they're an increasingly negligibly small part of the market.

What evidence do you have to back that statement up?

[Kaelik]

They're called grognards and they're an increasingly negligibly small part of the market.

What evidence do you have to back that statement up?

Well see, grognards are the people who like old editions of the game. And the market is people buying the most current editions of the game.

So since grognards rarely buy things that are not as good as the thing they have, of course grognards are a small part of the market, they practically aren't a part of the market at all.

I am confused at how they are an increasingly small part though.

[Chamomile]

And even weirder, there will be some horses who will never drink from the crystal-clear stream but will happily drink from the muddy pool of water.

This is where your metaphor failed completely, as your metaphors tend to. If some players will roleplay better having a defined character aesthetic that doesn't change without some kind of narrative reason and others don't particularly care, then declaring that the desire to have a single, strong character aesthetic throughout as 'the muddy water' is totally arbitrary.

So if in one campaign I decide to let someone start out as king of a great nation, I have to let them always start out as a king in future games?

I don't see how you could possibly have gotten that out of what I wrote, so I'm forced to assume you're either being disingenuous or you're an idiot.

If I'm running a game that's about the fall of the Midean kingdom and the plucky heroes who try to restore it (classic), it's okay for me to start the story right after the disposed king/prince wakes up in rebel shelter but it's not okay for me to start the game where the king/prince isn't overthrown yet but is on the losing side of a hopeless war?

Hang on, someone posted a list of things that work in other mediums that don't work in TTRPGs, let me find the relevant entry.

An uber-powerful BBEG who shows up and is unable to be defeated no matter what crazy scooby doo plan the PCs come up with--but it's okay, she's just there to advance the story.

Starting players out with resources that they absolutely will lose no matter what they do is railroading. The only point where that scenario is viable is if the players are short one kingdom by the end of the first session and they knew it would go that way when making their character, so no one saw their "actually the ruler of a for-real kingdom" character get approved only to have a defining aspect taken away because the GM/dice said so.

Who's requiring anyone to abandon it? If the silk clothes devolve into rags while everyone else is wearing furs or the character has a masterwork katana while everyone else has +3 whatevers, no one is forcing the character to pick up a +3 lightning dagger.

Yes, you are. At that stage you are telling the player he either needs to abandon his character aesthetic or stop playing, because even if his character is technically there, you've given him a steep drop-off in effectiveness. You are punishing him for trying to create a strong character aesthetic and not deviating from it without a narrative reason to do so. That is the antithesis of roleplay.

In any case, no one is obliged to drop a katana upgrade or Goggles of Truesight or Wings of the Demon or a familiar that can talk or a mechanical legs for mermaids.

Hell yes, they are. If a player wants to invest himself in your game by playing an unusual but genre-appropriate character concept, you are being a colossal dick by telling him that he can't ever be allowed to compete with that character because the RAW don't allow it. If the workload for allowing a powerful character aesthetic or concept that is also mechanically balanced is less than five minutes, then a GM should never, ever say no.

What I'm saying that while the skull shirt is iconic, it's also unimportant. If someone had gone back in time

Right there you stopped being at all relevant to the topic at hand. No one's saying that banning something at start should not be allowed. What we're saying is that the Punisher should be allowed to keep his skull shirt because once he started using it, it became iconic, and having him not only change it but roll dice to change it is stupid. The Punisher's character concept is heavily undermined by wearing a Superman costume and using Spider-Man's webshooters, so you need an excessively good narrative reason for him to switch to that. "The dice say it's either wear that or be a gimp" is not even remotely good enough a narrative reason.

[MfA]

So since grognards rarely buy things that are not as good as the thing they have

Pathfinder ...

[Username17]

Yes. You've been thread crapping this thread very hard for a long time. What the fuck dude? Why do you have to be such a dick? If you are not interested in a thread, why can't you just read other threads? Is there some magical reason why you have to drop in on this thread in particular to point out again that you don't have a strong opinion about the things I'm saying?

I sincerely don't give a fuck about the airship combat in Eberron. And you know what I posted in your airship combat thread? Nothing. Because I don't care. And that is what you say when you don't care. As opposed to what you're doing, where you're such a fucking ass hat that you feel the need to actually filibuster threads that you have nothing to contribute to. Stop trolling. Drink either more or less booze so that you can either keep your fucking mouth diarrhea in check or pass the fuck out.

Edit: Because Josh apparently managed to pull his dick out of his mouth and stealth edit his post.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

You can always just paint a skull on that suit of power armor you just found, which is exactly what The Punisher does whenever he needs to raid Iron Man's closet.

[Chamomile]

You can always just paint a skull on that suit of power armor you just found, which is exactly what The Punisher does whenever he needs to raid Iron Man's closet.

Yeah, that can work fine, but he doesn't have power armor, he's got a Superman suit, which means he now has a cape. Or maybe he picked up a Spider-Man suit and, paint job or no, he's now wearing a mask and has the webs on the arms. And what's he going to do about the web shooters? Or literally any other weapon or power he picks up that isn't an actual gun that shoots bullets (or something else lethal, like lasers or knives or other guns or whatever)?

If Speedball rolls up "a whole freakin' bunch of spikes" as his treasure, is he required to either toss them in his handwoven basket or become Penance? Why on earth would you make someone choose between two equally stupid fates for their character just because the dice say so?

[DSMatticus]

My responses in red:

Plucky comic reliefs who are karmically protected from a gory end.
You don't get to declare you are "karmically protected from being hurt" because it's a game and a multi-authorial story and the GM and other players get to influence your story. It's the same reason you don't get to declare "I'm the king of everything!" as a character background. Because your story has to accomodate other people's stories. Declaring you have a comic relief sidekick? Sure, whatever, D&D isn't srs bzns, it depends on the theme of the game everyone has agreed to by sitting down at the table together. But you can't agree to his immortality. This was bullshit.
Perfectly timed heroic sacrifices of a major character that completely changes things around.
Again, you don't get to declare, "I'm going to die, then everything is going to be different because blah!" This is a multi-author story, and everyone else has to sign their name to the shit you do. Which means if you are hamfistedly trying to force a sacrifice moment into the story where it doesn't belong, that's a no. If you have an opportunity to do that and deliberately choose to, why the hell not? That's how stories happen. PC's choosing to do things that make sense.
An uber-powerful BBEG who shows up and is unable to be defeated no matter what crazy scooby doo plan the PCs come up with--but it's okay, she's just there to advance the story.
This is called rail-roading.
One of the teammates getting fed up with the group and striking it out on the own. Not permanently, but just long enough to inconvenience the group and himself and learn a valuable lesson about friendship.
You're terrible at this.
A scheming, backstabbing main character who plans to betray the party and make off with all of their gear.
And not getting any better.
A hero that flat out more powerful than everyone else in the team.
Also nope.

These were all instances where the assertions of one individual were disproportionately large, and that's bad. And you are using that as evidence of why characters getting to make some other assertion, which you have not shown to be disproportionately large, is also bad. To follow your "argument by example" to its logical conclusion: start flipping coins for gender, and telling me why that makes a better story.

When someone is all 'I really really like katanas--the slightly curved edge marks its superiority to a European longsword' what kind of story or character development or whatever does that lead to? It doesn't. It's just pointless filler that serves no purpose other than to stroke the ego of the person with said aesthetic. There's no reason to encourage it in the game no matter how much people 'like' it.

This is closer to an argument that makes sense. "Being able to maintain an equipment aesthetic does not improve the story." Unfortunately, it's dead wrong because the number of characters who have iconic equipment load-outs is huge, and the number of characters who don't have an iconic equipment load-out is small. Now you can pull some BS like, "but even the iconic characters occasionally and temporarily change!" Aaaand that's not actually a response, because the iconic characters are still iconic for something and go right back to that in the next story. Bat Man's entire theme is "rich guy with gadgets" and yet he still manages to have a static aesthetic and very stable parts of his loadout and starts every story almost the exact same. He is modelled much better by a relatively static (but versatile) load out than an ever-increasing treadmill of more powerful and different items.

And the "stroke the ego of the person who said aesthetic" shit is funny, because you don't actually use the word aesthetic when you talk about your character, ever. When you ask someone why they picked scythe, they say "because it's cool." And when you come on the forums and argue with a bunch of people, they say aesthetic as a way of describing why that other guy thinks it's cool because "it's cool" is not sufficiently explanatory to defend a position.

But the number of stories that feature heroes continually picking up ever-increasingly powerful and diverse weapons is much smaller than the number of stories that feature heroes just using the same weapon (or same type of weapon) for the largest amount of time.

[Username17]

DSM: you agree that people don't have the power to narratively decide when the monsters are going to attack, hurt, or kill their character because it is a game, yes? OK: how do you feel about Fuchs' assertion that the player should be able to narratively decide what objects that monsters have in their backpacks?

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

You can always just paint a skull on that suit of power armor you just found, which is exactly what The Punisher does whenever he needs to raid Iron Man's closet.

Yeah, that can work fine, but he doesn't have power armor, he's got a Superman suit, which means he now has a cape. Or maybe he picked up a Spider-Man suit and, paint job or no, he's now wearing a mask and has the webs on the arms. And what's he going to do about the web shooters? Or literally any other weapon or power he picks up that isn't an actual gun that shoots bullets (or something else lethal, like lasers or knives or other guns or whatever)?

But Superman and Spiderman don't get any powers from their costumes. Getting a Superman suit just means that you're going to go around looking like a dork, unlike power armor which actually provides you with protection and cool abilities.

Now picking up the Venom Symbiote, that's completely different. It's also something that Frank Castle actually did.

[Username17]

You can always just paint a skull on that suit of power armor you just found, which is exactly what The Punisher does whenever he needs to raid Iron Man's closet.

Yeah, that can work fine, but he doesn't have power armor, he's got a Superman suit, which means he now has a cape. Or maybe he picked up a Spider-Man suit and, paint job or no, he's now wearing a mask and has the webs on the arms. And what's he going to do about the web shooters? Or literally any other weapon or power he picks up that isn't an actual gun that shoots bullets (or something else lethal, like lasers or knives or other guns or whatever)?

But Superman and Spiderman don't get any powers from their costumes. Getting a Superman suit just means that you're going to go around looking like a dork, unlike power armor which actually provides you with protection and cool abilities.

Now picking up the Venom Symbiote, that's completely different. It's also something that Frank Castle actually did.

Yep.



-Username17

[souran]

DSM: you agree that people don't have the power to narratively decide when the monsters are going to attack, hurt, or kill their character because it is a game, yes? OK: how do you feel about Fuchs' assertion that the player should be able to narratively decide what objects that monsters have in their backpacks?

-Username17

well this debate has reached new levels of intensity.

This seems to be pretty clearly an issue on which there is a spectrum and as long as all the players know where the dm is before they start play it shouldn't create any isues.

If Frank is your DM DO NOT build a character who is must get a +12 hackmaster to stay relevant. If the best weapon you find is a magic whip you better be willing and able to use the dam whip!

If your character class requires a specific weapon to function you either need the ability to craft level appropriate versions for yourself or your class better have a way of keeping your weapon level appropriate (like most incarnations of the samurai.)

There is nothing wrong with this style of play.

In a game run by Fuchs you can play a character married to a single weapon or weapon combination like a jedi-knight or Zorro type. You can feel confidant that even if your weapon combination is extremly esoteric that the gamemaster will help make sure that your weapons remain relevant and you can turn that into extra character power by not taking feats to help you self sustain those character aspects.

I don't see anything wrong with that style of play either.

The whole thing does make me wonder how people handle some other situations.

Say you have the party face a random encounter of some trolls or orgers.
They have treasure, do you roll up the treasure that those monsters have before the party faces them and then arm them with the treasure or do you roll up the terasure when the party finds their lair and takes there stuff?

[Lago PARANOIA]

These were all instances where the assertions of one individual were disproportionately large, and that's bad.

Fine, you were able to connect all of my examples to some overarcing 'this person is hogging too much screentime' problem and using it to dismiss all of those in one fell swoop.

Did you just forget why I gave those examples in the first place? I wasn't arguing about narrative importance, I was saying that just because a trope has a long narrative history does not mean that it should be there just because it has a long narrative history. I put those examples there rather than stick with the 'women are weaker than men' and 'always chaotic evil races' because I anticipated that you would chase after a red herring--that red herring being 'OMG you pulled out the sexism card'. Hence the richer array of choices. But since you ended up chasing after a different red herring anyway it ended up being a waste of time.

Do you really want to do this dance? 'cause like, as much as I hate doing this I have TvTropes backing me up. I can keep shooting tropes and narrative devices at you all day and I think that I can find a few that refute your assertion of 'it should go in because it has rich memetic and symbolic history' long before you manage to special plead your way out of every example.

Of course, this whole dance is avoidable if you stop dicking around and just give me a reason why having an equipment aesthetic improves gameplay rather than trying to include it in some broader category (narrative devices and tropes that have had a lot of staying power) and then arguing for why we should keep the broader category.

This is closer to an argument that makes sense. "Being able to maintain an equipment aesthetic does not improve the story." Unfortunately, it's dead wrong because the number of characters who have iconic equipment load-outs is huge, and the number of characters who don't have an iconic equipment load-out is small. Now you can pull some BS like, "but even the iconic characters occasionally and temporarily change!" Aaaand that's not actually a response, because the iconic characters are still iconic for something and go right back to that in the next story. Bat Man's entire theme is "rich guy with gadgets" and yet he still manages to have a static aesthetic and very stable parts of his loadout and starts every story almost the exact same. He is modelled much better by a relatively static (but versatile) load out than an ever-increasing treadmill of more powerful and different items.

But the number of stories that feature heroes continually picking up ever-increasingly powerful and diverse weapons is much smaller than the number of stories that feature heroes just using the same weapon (or same type of weapon) for the largest amount of time.

This is still just a flat-out appeal to tradition while also not recognizing the differences between the media of TTRPG and serial periodical. And if you ask, I'll be happy to go into detail about why it's important that Batman visually resembles or at least sorta-resembles the person he did twenty years ago. Because even within the confines of his genre Batman has changed a lot in the last twenty years if you ignore the visuals. But it has nothing to do with whether Batman sticking with black and grey enhances the story or his character development so much as it does with marketing. TTRPGs do not have such marketing concerns for individual characters.

And the "stroke the ego of the person who said aesthetic" shit is funny, because you don't actually use the word aesthetic when you talk about your character, ever. When you ask someone why they picked scythe, they say "because it's cool." And when you come on the forums and argue with a bunch of people, they say aesthetic as a way of describing why that other guy thinks it's cool because "it's cool" is not sufficiently explanatory to defend a position.

First of all, I don't mind a person stroking their own ego. If I did I wouldn't be playing TTRPGs, especially one like D&D. However, I do mind someone stroking their ego but not giving back. See, when a dragon tamer or a vigilante out for revenge against the royal family takes ahold of the plot or exposition train there's something for me to do even if I'm not the focus of the plot. Even if my character wasn't personally harmed by the slavers who took a party member's children, there's still some room for my character to make justice and freedom speeches or punch pirates in the face or have a talk with the party member trying to calm them down and not go down the slippery slope of revenge. They still have the majority of the spotlight on them but there's still stuff to do.

Weapon porn however is a selfish character trait and aesthetic. Unless someone else is interested in the same thing (which is unlikely), it doesn't generate plots in of itself, it doesn't give insight into the backstory, it doesn't help develop characters, it doesn't do any of that. The kind of character development that comes as a result of going on the Let's Build a Kingdom In The Middle Of Nowhere! sidequest is different than that which results of the Let's Broker Permanent Peace Between the Dwarves and Orcs! sidequest. The fact that someone was able to seriously suggest that you just dump the Find A Katana! upgrade in the middle of someone else's quest should be ample evidence that it's a character trait that should not be encouraged.

Second of all, if it was just a bullshit bonus in addition to their character, whatever, fine. Chainmail bikinis don't really do much other than make the owner of the character all hot and bothered and I'm not against those. But for weapons, it goes beyond that.

Due to time constraints and the law of conservation of detail, if you make a big deal about an aspect of a story then it becomes an aspect of the story. Wolverine can have a thirty-issue backstory about how he was a samurai in during the Meiji Restoration era without it being little more than a cool adjunct and a font of wisdom for his current adventures. In a TTRPG, if someone brings that up about their character it's either going to be forgotten or almost assuredly become the focus of the story.

I know it's really weird, but in a TTRPG people focus on things not because it's interesting but just because it's there. If you mention that the king's crown looks really weird and has skulls on it or that the elven queen has a third arm people are going to take that as a plot point and devote a non-zero amount of time pontificating about it. We had to take the aristocrat and expert classes out of the game not because there wasn't a need for them in abstract but because a non-zero number of players insisted on being them. Even though the DMG flat-out said that these classes were inappropriate for PCs to play.

When 4E D&D completely wrecked the Swordmage class by focusing on the 'sword' aspect of it more than the 'mage' aspect that's when it became obvious to me that the weapon porn got too far. If the 'sword' part was just some mild flavoring to the class like witches having pointy hats or clerics having prayer beads then it'd be fine, but no.

[rampaging-poet]

What if the obscure item isn't obscure at all and is totally common and I wouldn't even notice if one dropped in one encounter or another? Gosh, I guess you could fucking redefine the situation until we aren't even having a meaningful conversation any more. Or you could go fuck yourself, I don't even care.

I wasn't trying to redefine the problem. My point was a Dire Flail that's mithral, Shocking Burst, and Goblin Bane on one side and Brilliant Energy on the other is actually a possible result of the 3.5 treasure table. It's really specific and highly unlikely to come up, but theoretically it could happen. If it's on the treasure table, it's a possible random reward. If it's not, it has no place in a discussion of random drops and I agree that you shouldn't find it right after deciding not to look.

This isn't a fucking Monty Haul Problem. You know which door the car is behind already and for whatever reason have chosen to get the goat instead. Now Fuchs is demanding to get the carin addition, because he wants it. That is not acceptable. There is no way to frame that behavior so that it is acceptable.

You're right, it's not a Monty Haul Problem because it's possible to earn more than one prize (complete more than one objective) and at least of the prizes might appear behind more than one door. All anyone knows at that point is that at least one car exists, and that a car is hidden behind Door #2. If the car is on the treasure chart, and you use the treasure chart at least once, there is a non-zero chance that there is a second car behind the door they chose in addition to the goat they wanted.

You claim that the party shouldn't get the quest rewards for a quest they didn't actually take. You also claim that some or all of the quest rewards should be rolled randomly. Both of these are solid claims I have no problem with individually, but when the chips are down and a Dire Flail of ArgleBlargle actually drops, one of them has to take precedence.

I don't think players are entitled to highly-specific items, but I also think vetoing items someone wanted is a dick move that undermines the entire point of random treasure: keeping MC out of the loot-dropping process.

EDIT: The reason I specified the adventures hadn't been finished yet is that if you rolled up a Shadow Katana or whatever before you presented the players with any options, then you wouldn't have to make the "find a katana" quest different from the "plunder ancient ruins" quest. They'd just be one quest that happened to satisfy more players.

[hogarth]

This seems to be pretty clearly an issue on which there is a spectrum and as long as all the players know where the dm is before they start play it shouldn't create any isues.

If Frank is your DM DO NOT build a character who is must get a +12 hackmaster to stay relevant. If the best weapon you find is a magic whip you better be willing and able to use the dam whip!

It depends what you mean by "Frank".

If you mean the Frank that makes abolutist statements on message boards whether or not they make any sense in real life, then yes.

If you mean the Frank that totally has no problem at all with a character who likes to use a shortbow, and who is perfectly willing to come up with a mini-adventure to help the player get what he wants, then no.

[Chamomile]

You can always just paint a skull on that suit of power armor you just found, which is exactly what The Punisher does whenever he needs to raid Iron Man's closet.

Yeah, that can work fine, but he doesn't have power armor, he's got a Superman suit, which means he now has a cape. Or maybe he picked up a Spider-Man suit and, paint job or no, he's now wearing a mask and has the webs on the arms. And what's he going to do about the web shooters? Or literally any other weapon or power he picks up that isn't an actual gun that shoots bullets (or something else lethal, like lasers or knives or other guns or whatever)?

But Superman and Spiderman don't get any powers from their costumes. Getting a Superman suit just means that you're going to go around looking like a dork, unlike power armor which actually provides you with protection and cool abilities.

I think you've lost the thread of this metaphor completely. The idea here is that being required to change your aesthetic at random is stupid. We already know that it makes no mechanical difference whether you end up with a fire sword or a fire axe, the argument is over whether having your character aesthetic determined randomly is a good thing or not. So for the purpose of argument we are assuming that things important to a character's aesthetic actually make a difference to their powers, even though that almost never happens outside of roleplaying games.

[souran]

[

If you mean the Frank that makes abolutist statements on message boards whether or not they make any sense in real life, then yes.

If you mean the Frank that totally has no problem at all with a character who likes to use a shortbow, and who is perfectly willing to come up with a mini-adventure to help the player get what he wants, then no.

In this case I mean to simply differentiate between

The group of people who like to play D&D/heroic fantasy rpgs with a reliance on the games random dungeon/treasure/effect tables with little to no DM/narrative intervention whose point of view is currently being exprseed by Frank Trollman.

and

The group of people who play the game is such a way that they do not mind the intervention of the DM in a way that servers the group and or the story. This group is ok with with some of the contrivances/conincidences that occur if you don't randomly generate magical items or equipment because in the end they are going to try and get the things they actually want anyway.

Peronsally, I have never seen a group that remained content to play under first situation. Every game I have ever played or run has been situation 2 because if it is not people can become very upset over how amazingly unfair random chance actually is.

[DSMatticus]

DSM: you agree that people don't have the power to narratively decide when the monsters are going to attack, hurt, or kill their character because it is a game, yes? OK: how do you feel about Fuchs' assertion that the player should be able to narratively decide what objects that monsters have in their backpacks?

Less than stellar. (With both his original assertion and the exaggerations of it that have since followed. This thread is full of gross exaggerations from everybody.) I agree with you that the world should have drops that are relevant to the stories that are happening, not to the player's needs. For the same reason I think players should be able to make meaningful decisions about their own personal equipment loadout. Thematics are cool. When the big bad is using a weapon that is appropriate to his thing, it makes him more interesting than if he is using a weapon that is the character's next +1. Now, you can have overlap (the big bad's weapon is appropriate to him and it is the character's next +1) but forcing that scenario all the time really is limiting the types of stories you can tell in a bad way.

Other solutions I also find less than satisfying, like "big bad had the perfect weapon for you sitting in his armory, even though it was so awesome it really should have been employed in an effort to kill you," or "there always happens to be a lackey with the perfect thing for everyone" or "ye olde magic shop," or "transmute X into Y." I don't like them because they make magic items less exciting, and I want magic items to be exciting.

This conversation is really about a lot of conflicting drives in the underlying game:
1) Magic items are an important part of vertical growth.
2) Magic items are interesting.
3) Magic items have wiiiide disparities in power over the character's progression.
4) The world maintains some versimilitude, instead of looking handcrafted to the PC's.
5) PC's can decide certain things about their character for no reason other than rule of cool/player agency/whatever you want to call it.

You want to jettison 5, because that lets you hold 4 and some of the others. Fuchs wants to jettison 4, because that lets him hold 5 and some of the others. I personally want to jettison 1 or 3. If the sword of fire gives you some swordy fire abilities in line with your level, but doesn't make you any better at swording, characters can say fuck you to the sword of fire to keep a scythe in their hands and not be significantly punished. And if magic items are tighter grouped in their range of powers, then passing up the sword of better fire for the scythe of fire you already have doesn't hurt as much. I want to be a ____master in a world with verisimilitude. And that's totally possible if you turn off the magic item treadmill somehow.

[DSMatticus]

I was saying that just because a trope has a long narrative history does not mean that it should be there just because it has a long narrative history.

I was saying that just because a trope has a long narrative history does not mean that it should go away just because it has a long narrative history.

Let's put this really simply:
1) X is a trope.
2) There exists some trope Y which is bad.
C) X is bad.
See the problem here? That's not a valid argument. The fact that "there exists a trope which is bad" is fucking irrelevant to the discussion of whether or not weapon aesthetic is a bad trope. If we are discussing whether or not chocolate cake is in fact delicious, and you start talking about how white cake is boring, I don't know what the fuck you're doing.

The fact that blah is a compelling trope or blah has a history is totally irrelevant except to demonstrate one singular thing: people might want that in there game. At which point you are left with the task of showing why that specific 'blah' is actually bad, and we should overrule them; not that there exists some 'blah' which is also a trope and IT is bad.

I can show why those examples you posited actually are shit for the game. You proposed them because they were shit for the game, so it was easy. And I can explain what weapon thematics brings to the game; it makes a ubiquitous type of character that people actually want to play possible. Now you're left with the task of making some argument beyond "appeal to anti-tradition," because all I have actually heard from you is "just because it's tradition doesn't mean we have to have it," which is great for setting up the possibility that it might be removed, but does not demonstrate the necessity for its removal.

[Josh_Kablack]

Feng Shui's "signature weapon" schtick means the system supports both characters for whom a particular weapon is a defining trait (James Bond) and characters who will use anything (Jacki Chan) in a fight. By spending a small-to-moderate character starting pick, a player character gets a particular weapon that is both more effective in their hands and immune to random coincidences. Signature weapons can still be stolen or broken as part of a specific villains scheme or main plot, but are never destroyed in random explosions and it's expected that the PC will recover or repair their sig weapon by the start of the next arc. That nicely reflects the way characters from fiction who use distinctive weapons tend to work, yet the system also supports characters who use a variety of weapons - they just pick some schtick other than Sig Weapon.

This is really the only game-mechanical way which can be made to work for people on both sides of the argument about which weapons characters can use. That is to say, if you want to design a game which can support the desires of people on both sides of this argument, then "Character has a particular weapon with which he/she gets a small bonus. This weapon is never lost/destroyed by mere accident/ unlucky roll of the dice; and when it is lost or destroyed the character can expect to recover or repair it by the start of the following adventure" needs to be one single selectable ability at chargen. There cannot be additional selectable abilities to improve it later, there have to be other viable abilities which can be selected as alternatives at chargen, the bonus granted cannot be so big that it invalidates ever using any other weapon; nor can it be so small that it fails to encourage the player to use the weapon in common situations; and if starting weapons go obsolete as part of the usual advancement paradigm, then any such ability also has to provide the selected weapon a way to avoid obsolescence.

Now, if you aren't interested in trying to cater to people on both sides, (and this thread does provide ample evidence that you probably don't want people on either extreme together at any one game table) then you have a number of additional options, as DSM's 5 point list of things you can ditch shows.