What people want and what makes them happy rarely coincide.

[Fuchs]

Frank really cannot admit when he is wrong.

[virgil]

Can anyone on this forum?

[Username17]

This is why bitching about how bad wishlists are is a giant fucking distraction. No one here has said "wishlists are the best solution," or "wishlists are the only solution." No one has even said, "wishlists are objectively good things!" The only thing Fuchs has actually said is that "having wishlists is better than not having players choosing parts of their equipment," and pointing out problems with wishlists is not a fucking refutation of that position!

Please refrain from attempting to tie yourself to Fuchs' bandwagon, because he is an idiot. Let's go look at his actual position:

Also, there's a wee bit of a difference between "I want a +2 keen shadow rapier" and "I want a rapier upgrade". The first is a wishlist, the second is a basic expectation to be able to upgrade your gear, which just about every player has - whether that means actually upgrading the rapier you have, or getting a better rapier.

OK? He claims that a wishlist that is slightly vague is not only "not a wishlist", but is in fact a right that every player has regardless of character abilities or circumstance. Not only does he advocate Wishlists explicitly, he say that "just about every player" has the basic expectation to make a wishlist and have it fulfilled.

So he advocates a level of player entitlement that would make even players of Fate blanch (since even they would expect to pay a Fate Point for the privilege of mandating the existence of a rapier upgrade, Fuchs expects it for free). Really. He said that. That he then attempts to distinguish that from "wishlists" in a half-assed way to trivially nitpick his way out of the argument is beside the point. Actually it's another point, which is that Fuchs is a giant idiot who can't argue his way out of a paper bag.

Fuchs' "vague wishlists" which he puts forward not just as a possible system but in fact the default system that everyone is playing under and which the DM is personally fucking you over vindictively if he is not using, does in fact have all of the hallmarks of a wishlist system, because it fucking is a wishlist system. In fact, not only does it have every single problem that 4e's wishlist system has, it has one more: the potential for bad blood caused by misunderstanding. See, since the wishlists are vague in Fuchs' ideal world, it is entirely possible for the DM to put down a sword that they believe in good faith fits the player's wishlist demand only to have the player feel ungrateful because in reality it did not meet their implied expectations.

So: get your own fucking position. Chiding people for taking Fuchs to task for being an idiot is not going to win you any points, because Fuchs is an idiot. And the specific ways in which he is an idiot are completely on topic for this thread and he has dozens of posts in this thread making him more integral to the thread's discussion than the original poster. And since Fuchs is a giant idiot and his position is revolting and antithetical to cooperative storytelling, coming out and saying that you unreservedly support his position is a losing position to be in too. Get. Your. Own. Fucking. Position. Stake it out. Defend your position. Fuck, I might even agree with whatever the fuck your actual position was if you sufficiently divorced it from the shit-wagon that is Fuchs actual stated and repeatedly reiterated position.

-Username17

[violence in the media]

Tangental question to this whole argument, but when someone changes the Earth Hammer to the Earth Longsword, or the Ruby Cape to the Onyx Cape, is there any possibility of a former owner, friend of a former owner, or well-informed 3rd party recognizing the item? Does anyone ever contract people to get items back for them? What objects aren't totally morphic and how do people relate to the objects that are?

[Fuchs]

This is why bitching about how bad wishlists are is a giant fucking distraction. No one here has said "wishlists are the best solution," or "wishlists are the only solution." No one has even said, "wishlists are objectively good things!" The only thing Fuchs has actually said is that "having wishlists is better than not having players choosing parts of their equipment," and pointing out problems with wishlists is not a fucking refutation of that position!

Please refrain from attempting to tie yourself to Fuchs' bandwagon, because he is an idiot. Let's go look at his actual position:

Also, there's a wee bit of a difference between "I want a +2 keen shadow rapier" and "I want a rapier upgrade". The first is a wishlist, the second is a basic expectation to be able to upgrade your gear, which just about every player has - whether that means actually upgrading the rapier you have, or getting a better rapier.

OK? He claims that a wishlist that is slightly vague is not only "not a wishlist", but is in fact a right that every player has regardless of character abilities or circumstance. Not only does he advocate Wishlists explicitly, he say that "just about every player" has the basic expectation to make a wishlist and have it fulfilled.

So he advocates a level of player entitlement that would make even players of Fate blanch (since even they would expect to pay a Fate Point for the privilege of mandating the existence of a rapier upgrade, Fuchs expects it for free). Really. He said that. That he then attempts to distinguish that from "wishlists" in a half-assed way to trivially nitpick his way out of the argument is beside the point. Actually it's another point, which is that Fuchs is a giant idiot who can't argue his way out of a paper bag.

Fuchs' "vague wishlists" which he puts forward not just as a possible system but in fact the default system that everyone is playing under and which the DM is personally fucking you over vindictively if he is not using, does in fact have all of the hallmarks of a wishlist system, because it fucking is a wishlist system. In fact, not only does it have every single problem that 4e's wishlist system has, it has one more: the potential for bad blood caused by misunderstanding. See, since the wishlists are vague in Fuchs' ideal world, it is entirely possible for the DM to put down a sword that they believe in good faith fits the player's wishlist demand only to have the player feel ungrateful because in reality it did not meet their implied expectations.

So: get your own fucking position. Chiding people for taking Fuchs to task for being an idiot is not going to win you any points, because Fuchs is an idiot. And the specific ways in which he is an idiot are completely on topic for this thread and he has dozens of posts in this thread making him more integral to the thread's discussion than the original poster. And since Fuchs is a giant idiot and his position is revolting and antithetical to cooperative storytelling, coming out and saying that you unreservedly support his position is a losing position to be in too. Get. Your. Own. Fucking. Position. Stake it out. Defend your position. Fuck, I might even agree with whatever the fuck your actual position was if you sufficiently divorced it from the shit-wagon that is Fuchs actual stated and repeatedly reiterated position.

-Username17

Frank, you're pathetic. You cannot admit tha your position is wrong, and you stoop to picking on points already past. My point was and is that if the only way to get a signature weapon is a wishlist, then a wishlist it is, since even a wishlist is better than random loot.

That you have no fucking clue how a game is played, and that no one really does all the random upgrades you advocate since those are not fun for a lot of players, and that fully random loot does not prevent anyone from being unhappy is just icing on the cake.

Grow the fuck up, and start defending your "signature weapons are bad" position with some actual arguments.

And yeah, you sad excuse for a liar, every player has the fucking expectation that if he picks a stick such as sword or spell, that he gets upgrades to his stick, not to some randomly determinded other stick. That's what a player is entitled to - it is what levelling up brigns with it. Wizards gets spells, warriors get weapon upgrades. And a warrior who specializes in long sword gets damned long swords as a fire wizard gets fire spells and an illusionists illusions.

That you actually try to paint those expectations as unreasonable makes you look evne more pathetic.

Grow a spine, and stop trying to "save face" by constructing arguments that are more ridicuouls than intelligent design.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I think that this quote is relevant to this topic:

The job of a game designer is to find ways to inject randomness into a game that don't seem so random.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Frank really cannot admit when he is wrong.

Can anyone on this forum?

A while ago, I had this idea for an RPG where half the PCs were laser turrets and the other half were mobile robots. They were part of a terraforming facility on a hostile planet where all the humans were in stasis waiting for the environment to get friendlier, and something weird had caused half the AI inhabitants of the station to go crazy.

There was this "Aid Another" system where you could shift the TN of someone else's dice pool up or down. That was a terrible idea, and I am somewhat ashamed I had it. Hard to keep track of, and it did horrible things to the probability curves.

---------

My stance on wishlisting is that there's nothing wrong with asking Mister Cavern to make a crashed spaceship dungeon with cool techy stuff for the PCs to use inside it available as a quest at some point in the next few adventures. But it's even better to talk to the other PCs, try and sell them on the idea, and collectively present it next time Mister Cavern asks for feedback / new ideas. If you are the only one interested in stabbing robot spiders in the face and taking their death rays, you should try and find something else more people are interested in to advocate.

[Username17]

Frank, you're pathetic. You cannot admit tha your position is wrong, and you stoop to picking on points already past.

Already past? It was a post of yours from the previous page. Fuck, when I started the post quoting it, it was the current page. You know what? Fuck you. I am going to put you on ignore, because that is going too far. You just called me out for quoting you from nine whole posts earlier in the thread. Apparently nine posts (and less than 3 hours) later constitutes "the past".

Well you know what else is the past? Me reading your fucking posts, asshole.

I've really had it with shit posting: you can go ahead and disagree with me and even be disrespectful, but if you make arguments that are based around purposefully misreading shit I say, I'm just going to put you on ignore. Do not pass Go. There is simply not enough time in the day for me to deal with assholes who have nothing better to do than to argue that the sky is not blue on the grounds that things that are literally recorded in an open forum were not said.

-Username17

[souran]

Frank's argument has become somewhat crazy. The idea that assuming that your weapons have upgrades without forcing you to switch weapons away from ones you spent feats or character resources on is:

advocat[ing] a level of player entitlement that would make even players of Fate blanch

Is to dumb for words. Of course players assume that there weapons have upgrades. Hell, half the reason some people play is to find upgrades for there shit.

Further, the idea that it somehow breaks verisimilitude to enclude weapons that the players LIKE to use instead of random shit is unbelievilibly stupiid. What breaks verisimilitude even more is the idea that EVERY ORC in the whole fucking world was born with a two handed axe in his hand. Sure Salamander's have +3 long spears in the monter manual but the idea that they all are armed as such is LESS believeable than the idea that the Salamander has a +3 greatsword this time instead.

FFS, in most rpgs playres go to "long lost" places and into crappy hellholes and other places that adventures go. The idea that somehow its unbelieveable to find anything in particular is carzy. The whole game is unbelievilable shit happening every few minutes of game time.

And without the backing of the stupid verismilitude/believability arguement what the "I hate wishlist" poeple have backing there argument is... playerstyle preference.

[hogarth]

Frank's argument has become somewhat crazy.

The problem is that Frank is arguing against an ultra-strict, 4E-style, player-mandated list of compulsory equipment. It's a great argument with many wonderful points, but the problem is that there's nobody arguing for it. But instead of acknowledging that, he's pretending that Fuchs is on that side of the argument (even though he's clearly not). That's why Frank looks crazy; he's essentially in agreement with Fuchs (replace "katana" with "shortbow"), but he's still arguing!

[Maj]

Tangental question to this whole argument, but when someone changes the Earth Hammer to the Earth Longsword, or the Ruby Cape to the Onyx Cape, is there any possibility of a former owner, friend of a former owner, or well-informed 3rd party recognizing the item? Does anyone ever contract people to get items back for them? What objects aren't totally morphic and how do people relate to the objects that are?

I guess you could say that like NPCs, we had named treasure drops and random treasure drops. Named treasure drops were immutable - they were specific objects that were important as-is to the PCs. Or rather, they were immutable because they didn't need muting.

Some of those items were things the PCs began the game with. Some of those items belonged to specific NPCs. Some of those items were unclaimed historical relics. Some of those items were thank you gifts to the intrepid heroes. Some of those were bought at ye olde magick shoppe. They were universally, however, pieces of equipment the PCs wanted/asked for.

For whatever reason, weapons and armor didn't change form in our games (even though that would have logically followed from the previous reasoning), and tended to be named items, rather than random items.

Regardless, named items could include plot hooks. Random treasure was exactly that: unclaimed crap that the DM rolled up at the end of an adventure. It came with no plot hooks attached, no previous owners to come after it (unless you count that one time where a dragon's family came looking for the hoard that was looted by the PCs - but that was a special event).

Most of the players in our games have one or two items that they put on their wishlist* and the rest is left to random treasure tables for serendipity - because sometimes you do roll up something better than fodder for ye olde magick shoppe.



*After all the discussion on wishlists, I have no clue what it actually means, so I'm using it in the sense of "I'd like a breastplate" without the details of what enchantments are on it, or "I'd like a mithral sword" without preference as to type of sword. Occasionally, there's a wishlist with an enchantment on it for something already owned: "I'd like my sword to be flaming/keen/defending/whatever."

[DSMatticus]

Frank, what's actually happened here is that Fuchs has been suckered into defending a (slightly accidental) strawman of his own position because this conversation has so many fucking topics neither you nor Fuchs have any fucking idea what the other's position actual is. It doesn't help that you both love to cherry-pick quotes that grossly exaggerate and misrepresent what the other has actually said about their position.

When this shit started, it was about players being able to choose equipment for their characters. And wishlists came up, and Fuchs said he supported wishlists in the context of the conversation about being able to choose equipment. That is not a resounding statement about how wishlists are objectively awesome, that is a statement about X being better than Y. And then people started attacking the statements about wishlists while ignoring the context of the statement that 'supported' them. And Fuchs has since restated his position several times with the original context made explicit.

Now Fuchs has also done this really stupid thing where he responded to attacks on him for "supporting wishlists" by half-assedly defending wishlists (reflexively, I guess) and then usually in the very same post restating his original position to remind everyone he actually isn't advocating wishlists as the solution. And that's made it really confusing to follow what Fuchs is actually trying to say and made it really easy to quote mine him for things out of context and all around been super unhelpful for resolving this confusion.

For fuck's sake, Frank, read the very paragraph you quoted. It is a perfect example of exactly the sort of problem that's happening here:

Also, there's a wee bit of a difference between "I want a +2 keen shadow rapier" and "I want a rapier upgrade". The first is a wishlist, the second is a basic expectation to be able to upgrade your gear, which just about every player has - whether that means actually upgrading the rapier you have, or getting a better rapier.

The post you chose to quote to show what a staunch, enthusiastic supporter of wishlists Fuchs is just shows him saying "players should expect to be able to upgrade their gear however that happens, and however includes wishlists and a bunch of other shit like current item upgrades." Does that sound like he's proposing wishlists to you?



Now, there's also the difference Fuchs tried to point out between an explicit wishlist and an implicit wishlist (which he chose not to call a wishlist, which I would also call stupid but an entirely semantical point): wanting a +2 keen shadow rapier is different than wanting a better rapier. The latter actually is less of an impact on verisimilitude and entitlement, and since the anti-wishlist crowd is bitching about wishlists from a verisimilitude and entitlement angle, pointing out that not all wishlist systems are equally offensive to those things is totally valid.

But Fuchs is actually stumbling across an even better point here, that PhoneLobster mentioned explicitly a few pages ago: if players require certain magic items to perform at level appropriate benchmarks, the DM needs to give them magic items that let them do that or else you have interparty imbalance that is just no fun for anyone, at least not if it's maintained for any period of time. That means every player does have expectations about getting role appropriate gear that allows them to perform at level. The entire wishlist argument isn't about whether players should have wishlists or are entitled to items, it's about how specific their wishlists can be, and consequently, how specific we should allow their roles to be!

If your game has sword guys, then every sword guy has the reasonable expectation that he should be receiving periodic sword upgrades. If your game has archers, then every archer has the reasonable expectation that he should be receiving periodic bow upgrades. What you've done is told us, "for verisimilitude reasons, we should replace sword user with melee guy, who has the reasonable expectation that he should be receiving periodic melee upgrades, and we should archer with ranged combatant guy, who has the reasonable expectation that he should be receiving periodic ranged upgrades." You haven't actually addressed the part that leads to wishlists; what you've done is you've made the wishlists more generic in exchange for greater verisimilitude. "I.e., you can't expect a sword, because swords won't drop frequently enough, so you can't play a sword user. But you can expect some kind of melee weapon, so it's okay for you to play a generic melee guy."

tl;dr the wishlist argument isn't about wishlists, it's about how specific a wishlist can be before it strains verisimilitude in a game where you depend on loot drops to be a part of character power. You aren't arguing against wishlists, you are arguing for more general wishlists. The player expectation/necessity for ever-improving gear has not gone anywhere, and refusing to give them that gear is still a dick move that is basically on par with not giving them experience for a couple sessions.

Edit: And P.S., no. I'm not a wishlist supporter, either. I want to set the magic item treadmill on fire and piss on its smoldering corpse. And that is pretty much the only way you genuinely can get rid of wishlists; requiring that the items players need be more general does not actually get rid of the implicit requirement for ever better items of a certain category.

[Username17]

As long as even one person in this conversation is in favor of wishlists, it is totally on topic to talk about how shitty wishlists are. -Username17

Then can I ask you to once again re-summarize your objections to and argument against wishlists in a concise post that would be convincing to casual gamers?

Sure.

• Wishlists damage the realness of the setting
  Requested items can either be found on bodies Everquest style irrespective of what the enemies actually used in combat (a conceit so absurd that even computer gamers make fun of it on a regular basis), or enemies can be restricted to those who happen to use requested items. While the latter is substantially less absurd, it still strains believability - especially in scenarios where the quest is decided upon before the wishlist is drawn up.
• Wishlists damage the joy of storytelling
  No one gives a fuck about the story of the time you got your paycheck on time. No one gives a fuck about the story of the time you ordered some food at Taco Bell and you got it handed to you in a bag. Making a request for something you have earned and than having someone hand it to you is not a story, it's an expectation of modern commercial society. The Wishlist dynamic is inherently mercantile and deterministic. And it is therefore not worth talking about. That makes its inclusion in cooperative storytelling suspect in the extreme.
• Wishlists destroy the value of item creation/upgrading abilities
  For the "ability" to "make a powerful magic katana" to have any meaning at all, there has to be at least a chance of characters who don't have that ability to not get a powerful magic katana - even if they want one. Even if they want one really bad. If not having that ability would allow you to get the same item through wishlists as having that ability would, then the ability is worthless. Similarly, if you're going to have an ability that makes people immune or resistant to death effects, then you would devalue that ability if you would fudge dice to prevent players who didn't have it from being killed. Also, the ability to come back from the dead is only useful if the DM isn't going to have NPCs intervene and raise dead characters for free. And indeed, every ability that the DM agrees to replicate for any player who simply asks for the effect out of character has been completely devalued.
• Wishlists damage the relationship between the player and the MC
  When items appear on wishlists, their presence or absence from actual treasure piles constitutes a specific concession or lack of concession on the part of the MC to a demand made by a specific PC. That means that wishlists being filled in any order at all constitutes favoritism on the part of the MC towards the players whose wishlists are filled out sooner and discrimination against those players whose wishlists are filled out later. It's not that it merely has the potential to cause bad blood, it's that it is almost guaranteed to do so because it literally requires the MC to give uneven gifts in a blatantly unfair fashion to the different players at the table.
• Wishlists damage the relationship between the player and their treasure
  When you find a dollar, that makes you feel good. When someone holds your dollar over your head and makes you jump for it a few times before they let you have it, that's humiliating and infuriating. While in a nebulous economic way, both the finding of a dollar on the street and getting someone to let you actually hold a dollar that is rightfully yours in the first place may increase your potential spending ability by the same amount, they are not equally fun. An item on your wishlist is one that is already "rightfully yours" before it shows up in a treasure pile. Meaning that when you actually get it, it's not like finding a dollar in the street, it's like having had someone else make you go through hoops before you could actually touch "your" stuff.

Against all of that, the only argument for wishlists is that players will take the game hostage by not taking character abilities that allow them to get specific stuff and then throwing a temper tantrum if their character doesn't miraculously find specific stuff anyway. That's seriously it. It's players saying straight up that if they don't get the ability to duplicate item creation abilities through out-of-character whining that they will whine so hard that the game will fall apart. That's not even hyperbole, that's the actual argument.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

That's not even hyperbole, that's the actual argument.

Is this some kind of meta-hyperbole where you hyperbolically exaggerate a claim that you're not being hyperbolic? If this really is a second layer of hyperbole about the first, how many pages before we reach the third or fourth layers of hyperbole? Most importantly, how many layers of hyperbole does it take for you to collapse under the weight of your own bullshit?

Seriously. Can we at least try to get this conversation back to what people are actually arguing, as opposed to the parts of what they've said that give you something to bitch about out of context, like pretending people are demanding +3 fire katanas when they say better katana, or pretending the difference between needing a better katana and needing a better melee weapon has anything to do with the existence of wishlists and not role specificity and how it interacts with the setting?

[Username17]

Frank, what's actually happened here is that Fuchs has been suckered into defending a (slightly accidental) strawman of his own position because this conversation has so many fucking topics neither you nor Fuchs have any fucking idea what the other's position actual is.

Uh... no. First of all, I am pretty fucking sure I understand Fuchs' position just fine because he stated it several dozen times, often two or three times in a row just to inflate his post count. Secondly, and this is important: Fuchs is not advocating a perplexing and abhorrent position because of some sort of mental judo. He is advocating a perplexing and abhorrent position because his actual position is both perplexing and abhorrent.

For fuck's sake, Frank, read the very paragraph you quoted. It is a perfect example of exactly the sort of problem that's happening here:

Also, there's a wee bit of a difference between "I want a +2 keen shadow rapier" and "I want a rapier upgrade". The first is a wishlist, the second is a basic expectation to be able to upgrade your gear, which just about every player has - whether that means actually upgrading the rapier you have, or getting a better rapier.

The post you chose to quote to show what a staunch, enthusiastic supporter of wishlists Fuchs is just shows him saying "players should expect to be able to upgrade their gear however that happens, and however includes wishlists and a bunch of other shit like current item upgrades." Does that sound like he's proposing wishlists to you?

Yes. He is in fact proposing wishlists. Note that he isn't satisfied simply with getting better equipment or level appropriate equipment, he feels entitled to specifically get a better rapier regardless of circumstances in the campaign world. That thing that happens in Chrono Trigger where Robo gets a stone robot arm because he is in the ancient past and everything is made out of stone? That's fucking retarded, but Fuchs' position is that it is what has to happen, because the player's character has a god damn robot arm. And players are apparently entitled to have an upgrade of whatever the fuck they happen to be using rather than merely being assured that when they find higher level treasure piles it will include higher level equipment.

-Username17

[hogarth]

Also, there's a wee bit of a difference between "I want a +2 keen shadow rapier" and "I want a rapier upgrade". The first is a wishlist, the second is a basic expectation to be able to upgrade your gear, which just about every player has - whether that means actually upgrading the rapier you have, or getting a better rapier.

Yes. He is in fact proposing wishlists.

And yet if you replace the word "rapier" with "shortbow", it miraculously ceases to be a wishlist.

MAGIC!!

[DSMatticus]

That thing that happens in Chrono Trigger where Robo gets a stone robot arm because he is in the ancient past and everything is made out of stone? That's fucking retarded, but Fuchs' position is that it is what has to happen, because the player's character has a god damn robot arm.

upgrading the rapier you have

So what happens if, instead of the bit in Chrono Trigger, his arm just gets better because of some self-improvement event (repairs?) and not stone arm loot? Because that's entirely consistent with what Fuchs just said right now.

You like to focus on the part that says wishlist, but there are other words there. They change things.

And players are apparently entitled to have an upgrade of whatever the fuck they happen to be using

If you okay a player role for your game (or your setting, or campaign), they are absolutely entitled to whatever equipment upgrades they need to continue to performing within that role. If you tell someone they can play a melee guy and not put any melee weapons in the party's path, that's a problem. Even if they're fighting a type of enemy who favors their natural claws and use zero melee weapons, the inability to find a melee weapon there makes the concept unplayable, since he is expected to have that weapon to perform at appropriate levels and he is not getting that. You lied to him when you okayed his character. If the party democratically votes away his weapon-gathering sidequests, he continues sucking. What do you do?

Robo has to get a stone robot arm in that area if Robo is expected to improve himself by looting his enemies. If you don't give him the new weapon, Robo stops being playable for that segment of the game because he is weaker than everyone else. He's not getting upgrades on the correct schedule. And again, this brings us back to the actual context of how wishlists were proposed; if you both require magic items to be competitive and have a role that requires certain items, the world has to drop those items for you in order for you remain competitive. If those items are specific (robot arms), it's harder to justify; if those items are generic (melee weapon), it's easier. But either way, the player is still entitled to whatever his role needs.

Is your solution to this problem to get rid of specific roles, like Robo? If not, how would you have done Robo differently to avoid needing that situation to happen?

[Winnah]

Every class should be equally good, yes. You shouldn't be disadvantaged just because you want to play a sword guy instead of a "uses whatever gives the most plusses" guy.

Every class should be equally good...regardless of circumstance. Why bother with classes at all?

Roleplay should not be used to balance or punish mechanics, and vice versa

Yet you expect a campaign to provide appropriate tools, regardless of a 'roleplaying' choice.

So are you saying if a player brings a female character to the game it is OK to mechanically modify and reduce that characters effectiveness as a melee brute?

Because there is a crowd that demands that for "Verisimilitude" they aren't even a small crowd.

They present the same argument though.

So are you saying when a Gnome wrestles an ogre, he should not be penalised, despite being smaller and weaker?

How is that for vermisilitude?

That's the same argument, right?...Right?

Also, Hitler used verisimilitude to justify the Holocaust.

You caught me. I'm Zombie Hitler. I haunt internet forums in order to impotently project my own unique brand of undead fascism. This entitles me to a level appropriate, ghost-touch minigun. I would not be Zombie Hitler without one.

[Fuchs]

Yeah, Frank is completey crazy now, he cannot be reasoned with anymore.

[DSMatticus]

Every class should be equally good, yes. You shouldn't be disadvantaged just because you want to play a sword guy instead of a "uses whatever gives the most plusses" guy.

Every class should be equally good...regardless of circumstance. Why bother with classes at all?

Winnah, you're saying really dumb things right now. Let's start here, this is the crux of it. Do you understand the difference between the two statements "all classes should be equally good," and "all classes should be equally good at all tasks?" It's the difference between balancing fighter and wizard (good design goal) and giving fighters wizarding and giving wizards fighting (bad design goal).

[Fuchs]

• Wishlists damage the realness of the setting
  Requested items can either be found on bodies Everquest style irrespective of what the enemies actually used in combat (a conceit so absurd that even computer gamers make fun of it on a regular basis), or enemies can be restricted to those who happen to use requested items. While the latter is substantially less absurd, it still strains believability - especially in scenarios where the quest is decided upon before the wishlist is drawn up.

Not really. You simply have the enemies use what is wanted. Which is usually also a nice "two rapier masters face off" opportunity. And usually also means the enemies will have some nice options in combat.

[*] Wishlists damage the joy of storytelling
No one gives a fuck about the story of the time you got your paycheck on time. No one gives a fuck about the story of the time you ordered some food at Taco Bell and you got it handed to you in a bag. Making a request for something you have earned and than having someone hand it to you is not a story, it's an expectation of modern commercial society. The Wishlist dynamic is inherently mercantile and deterministic. And it is therefore not worth talking about. That makes its inclusion in cooperative storytelling suspect in the extreme.

That's your view. I found that knowing what my players like and dislike is much better for having them enjoy a story than randomly trying to feed them stuff.

Also, after years of MMOGs, I personally don't give a fuck anymore about loot. I remember defeating the arch-lich, foiling the evil vizier's plot, but loot? I don't care much about loot anymore, it's simply numbers.

Finally, knowing how much GMs coddle players - since they could easily kill them all off - the idea of having to "earn" their loot is stupid to begin with. It's a game, not a chore. You are entitled to get what you need to have fun in a game.

[*] Wishlists destroy the value of item creation/upgrading abilities
For the "ability" to "make a powerful magic katana" to have any meaning at all, there has to be at least a chance of characters who don't have that ability to not get a powerful magic katana - even if they want one. Even if they want one really bad. If not having that ability would allow you to get the same item through wishlists as having that ability would, then the ability is worthless. Similarly, if you're going to have an ability that makes people immune or resistant to death effects, then you would devalue that ability if you would fudge dice to prevent players who didn't have it from being killed. Also, the ability to come back from the dead is only useful if the DM isn't going to have NPCs intervene and raise dead characters for free. And indeed, every ability that the DM agrees to replicate for any player who simply asks for the effect out of character has been completely devalued.

Again, false. The ability to make or get a weapon of choice should not cost anything to begin with, but should be a free option anyone can take or leave. It's an aesthetic choice, and should be treated as such.

[*] Wishlists damage the relationship between the player and the MC
When items appear on wishlists, their presence or absence from actual treasure piles constitutes a specific concession or lack of concession on the part of the MC to a demand made by a specific PC. That means that wishlists being filled in any order at all constitutes favoritism on the part of the MC towards the players whose wishlists are filled out sooner and discrimination against those players whose wishlists are filled out later. It's not that it merely has the potential to cause bad blood, it's that it is almost guaranteed to do so because it literally requires the MC to give uneven gifts in a blatantly unfair fashion to the different players at the table.

Friends don't act like you claim they do.

[*] Wishlists damage the relationship between the player and their treasure
When you find a dollar, that makes you feel good. When someone holds your dollar over your head and makes you jump for it a few times before they let you have it, that's humiliating and infuriating. While in a nebulous economic way, both the finding of a dollar on the street and getting someone to let you actually hold a dollar that is rightfully yours in the first place may increase your potential spending ability by the same amount, they are not equally fun. An item on your wishlist is one that is already "rightfully yours" before it shows up in a treasure pile. Meaning that when you actually get it, it's not like finding a dollar in the street, it's like having had someone else make you go through hoops before you could actually touch "your" stuff.[/list]

MMOGs killed the relation between player and treasure, not that it was a healthy one to begin with. You can drivel on about what is yours and not yours, but most sane players don't care, they simply want to get stuff they have fun with, not play the loot lottery they grew to hate in EQ.

Against all of that, the only argument for wishlists is that players will take the game hostage by not taking character abilities that allow them to get specific stuff and then throwing a temper tantrum if their character doesn't miraculously find specific stuff anyway. That's seriously it. It's players saying straight up that if they don't get the ability to duplicate item creation abilities through out-of-character whining that they will whine so hard that the game will fall apart. That's not even hyperbole, that's the actual argument.

-Username17

All you have to say is "I like random loot". The rest is out of bizarroland, far removed from how people play the game.

[Maj]

I want to set the magic item treadmill on fire and piss on its smoldering corpse. And that is pretty much the only way you genuinely can get rid of wishlists; requiring that the items players need be more general does not actually get rid of the implicit requirement for ever better items of a certain category.

See, here's where I get lost.

I play Everway (diceless, leveless) more often than I play any other game, and while there is absolutely no dependency on magical items whatsoever, that doesn't keep me from saying to the MC, "I wish my character had some power X so she could Y."

The idea that a wishlist for your character is a bad thing is incomprehensible to me. Every player should have an idea of some way they want their character to improve... They want to take a feat, they want this special ability, they want a level in X class. You can take items away, but players will still be asking their DMs to make things possible for them because they want their character to improve and change.

But I think I'm understanding that - for whatever bizarre reason - the posters in this thread have taken to using the term "wishlist" to mean "expectation list." And if you accept that arbitrarily extreme definition, eliminating them is a great idea. After all, who the hell wants to play a game with Veruca Salt [not the band]?

[Winnah]

Fuck circumstance, equal rewards for all choices! Fun for everyone!

Every class should be equally good, yes. You shouldn't be disadvantaged just because you want to play a sword guy instead of a "uses whatever gives the most plusses" guy.

Context is important. Fuch's says that choice ultimately does not matter, regardless of circumstance, yet apparently expects his choices to be respected and catered to.

That leads to "Why can't my barbarian cast spells?!" Sounds ridiculous, but if you are determined to validate player choices in the the name of characterisation, why stop with weapons?

[Seerow]

That leads to "Why can't my barbarian cast spells?!" Sounds ridiculous, but if you are determined to validate player choices in the the name of characterisation, why stop with weapons?

Well that would be because the Barbarian isn't a caster class. If he multiclasses to a caster class, then now he can cast spells. Heck he can even take a prestige class and be able to cast spells while he rages.

[RadiantPhoenix]

• Wishlists damage the realness of the setting
  Requested items can either be found on bodies Everquest style irrespective of what the enemies actually used in combat (a conceit so absurd that even computer gamers make fun of it on a regular basis), or enemies can be restricted to those who happen to use requested items. While the latter is substantially less absurd, it still strains believability - especially in scenarios where the quest is decided upon before the wishlist is drawn up.

Not really. You simply have the enemies use what is wanted. Which is usually also a nice "two rapier masters face off" opportunity. And usually also means the enemies will have some nice options in combat.

That's the second part of that bullet point.

[*] Wishlists destroy the value of item creation/upgrading abilities
For the "ability" to "make a powerful magic katana" to have any meaning at all, there has to be at least a chance of characters who don't have that ability to not get a powerful magic katana - even if they want one. Even if they want one really bad. If not having that ability would allow you to get the same item through wishlists as having that ability would, then the ability is worthless. Similarly, if you're going to have an ability that makes people immune or resistant to death effects, then you would devalue that ability if you would fudge dice to prevent players who didn't have it from being killed. Also, the ability to come back from the dead is only useful if the DM isn't going to have NPCs intervene and raise dead characters for free. And indeed, every ability that the DM agrees to replicate for any player who simply asks for the effect out of character has been completely devalued.

Again, false. The ability to make or get a weapon of choice should not cost anything to begin with, but should be a free option anyone can take or leave. It's an aesthetic choice, and should be treated as such.

So, in other words, you are aware of this, you just don't consider it a problem because you don't consider it to be an idiom worth supporting.

[*] Wishlists damage the relationship between the player and the MC
When items appear on wishlists, their presence or absence from actual treasure piles constitutes a specific concession or lack of concession on the part of the MC to a demand made by a specific PC. That means that wishlists being filled in any order at all constitutes favoritism on the part of the MC towards the players whose wishlists are filled out sooner and discrimination against those players whose wishlists are filled out later. It's not that it merely has the potential to cause bad blood, it's that it is almost guaranteed to do so because it literally requires the MC to give uneven gifts in a blatantly unfair fashion to the different players at the table.

Friends don't act like you claim they do.

What, getting annoyed when you play favorites?

Against all of that, the only argument for wishlists is that players will take the game hostage by not taking character abilities that allow them to get specific stuff and then throwing a temper tantrum if their character doesn't miraculously find specific stuff anyway. That's seriously it. It's players saying straight up that if they don't get the ability to duplicate item creation abilities through out-of-character whining that they will whine so hard that the game will fall apart. That's not even hyperbole, that's the actual argument.

-Username17

All you have to say is "I like random loot". The rest is out of bizarroland, far removed from how people play the game.

Umm... could you elaborate on this one?