Wizards vs fighters, bombers, and attack aircraft.

[Soyweiser]

After Sundown

I found that pretty hard to read actually. First time I saw it I was thinking it was a joke. But then it went on waayyy to long. (Then I found the SA comments about it, you got to admit, those where funny).

It also has a certain writing style I'm not really a fan of. It keeps self referencing itself in a sort of meta way. (Count the amount of times the phrase "after sundown" is said in the document).

And yes, this is cherry picking.

4, I live under a bridge.

You do realise that an admission of trolling is one of the things that can actually get you booted, right? And that "cryptic clues" isn't actually a defence because everyone knows what you mean.

It wasn't meant as cryptic. Yeah, I do sometimes troll places. I can also be serious. This applies to a lot of people on a forum. (Double these forums I assume). I don't see a reason to be a hypocrite about it. Like I said, I have multiple reasons.

I would assume that just calling people a barrel of cocks is also trolling.

*Of course I fucking know about Narnia

I don't get this reference. In the words of the daleks. "EXPLAIN". Did the lampposts really start as crowbars? (I read the books so long ago I cannot really recall them. During the first movie I actually sat there and though. Wtf, I know this story. That was pretty sad ).

If I ever feel the need to talk about growing plants in a game I'll make the thread. It would probably be about crpgs/roguelikes. Not really about pnp rpgs. So I doubt that this would be the place to post it. (It is actually something I have been thinking about, randomly generated plants that grow under random conditions, but most of the ideas are simply not fun).

And that is seriously a big part of many debates here, saying "Hey, I need X in my game" or "X needs more focus, let's do something" and then trying to satisfy all three of the above.

Like the 3 page, I need troll monster equipment document. While the pathfinder is still bad, or the TTRPGs DMF thread grow to enormous monstrous proportions.

[Mr. GC]

Telling people to suck a barrel of cocks is just the Den's way of saying hi.

[Soyweiser]

Telling people to suck a barrel of cocks is just the Den's way of saying hi.

No it isn't. It is a complicated way of telling people that you do not agree with them and would like them to either leave or drop the conversation. Not really that creative. But the idea gets through. It is a bit like 4chan.

[Prak]

3, I post the most entertaining parts on IRC. People laugh. I get personal validation from having entertained people.

And here you have your answer for many of the posts here. We post up entertainingly stupid things about Pathfinder, 4e, 3e, etc, people laugh, exclaim, etc. and we all feel validated for that. This one is just an entertaining thought exercise, because "Magic meets Modern" is always kind of awesome. At least.

4, I live under a bridge.

Sorry, ours are full up.

Alternatively, you could go create your own thread to have a conversation you feel more comfortable with, about which farming methods are best for apricots or whatever it is you like.

I don't think that that would work. This forum seems to be filled with people that mostly act on the negative, growing apricots seems to be positive and active. I don't think that would be a good fit. Now, proposing game mechanics for growing plants would probably work. But all the post after that would probably just call my mechanics retarded.

Well, if your mechanics were retarded, yes. Ok, actually, some here would probably call any apricot growing mechanics retarded, because of the pointless minutiae. But there's a lot of positive stuff here, if you pull your head out of your ass and look.
And as Koumei pointed out, that fuels some of the creations. I refer you to the Lantern class and "emotional spectrum" spheres, the Hell Rider class, the Net of the Pirate King, Swarm Shifter PrC, loads of magic items, warlock invocations based on demons, devils, and celestials, and shit tons of other things.

No it isn't. It is a complicated way of telling people that you do not agree with them and would like them to either leave or drop the conversation. Not really that creative. But the idea gets through. It is a bit like 4chan.

Actually it has more to do with "you are stupid, and your ideas are stupid." and similarly to that, can be used seriously or jocularly.

[Winnah]

Hi Welcome

I would assume that just calling people a barrel of cocks is also trolling.

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

Telling someone to suck a barrel of cocks on this forum is not especially inflammatory. The expression is not so much intended as a challenge to machismo or 'fighting words', as it is a dismissive statement of disregard for the recipient.

Like the 3 page, I need troll monster equipment document. While the pathfinder is still bad, or the TTRPGs DMF thread grow to enormous monstrous proportions.

The 'I need monster equipment' thread was about a DM looking for advice on how to handle one encounter in one game.

Pathfinder is still Bad is all about the release of pathfinder products, the wacky antics of it's developers, the failure to meet design goals and other random shit tangentially related to the game.

the 'TTRPGs DMF' thread is about one of the core principles of many fantasy TTRPGS, namely that muggles or the fighting everyman are severely handicapped in a game that includes sorcery and magical beasts. As 'Fighters Suck' is the default option in these games, the level of responsibility that falls upon the referee to correct this imbalance is worthy of discussion.

If you feel that one of these topics is not receiving due attention, please contribute. I am sure you have plenty to offer to a discussion and I look forward to reading your insights.

[Soyweiser]

3, I post the most entertaining parts on IRC. People laugh. I get personal validation from having entertained people.

And here you have your answer for many of the posts here. We post up entertainingly stupid things about Pathfinder, 4e, 3e, etc, people laugh, exclaim, etc. and we all feel validated for that. This one is just an entertaining thought exercise, because "Magic meets Modern" is always kind of awesome. At least.

Indeed. Well played .

I won that discussion of course. My bearded nonmagical cleric beats your bombers

[Prak]

Oh hell. If a D&D wizard showed up and gave two tugs of a dead dog's cock about Osama, that fucker would be dead before he even knew he had a new enemy. If nothing else, bind a bebilith and tell it Osama is full of tiny imps.

[Koumei]

Not really that creative. But the idea gets through.

That's kind of the point. In some places where they panic about people using rude words or vulgar phrases, people get so tied up about using clever or original insults that they detract from the point of the argument. If one person very eloquently states how 5-3 = 7, complete with calling you sir, and then a drunk walks in, calls you a cumslut and shouts that 5-3 = 2, guess what? The drunk is right, and the gentleman is wrong.

Rather than trying to shroud the real content in extra-clever unique insults and phrases that have never before been used, we just throw out the good old generic "go suck a barrel of cocks" and are done with it, moving onto the meat of the debate: how many people fucked your mum*

And trolling is not the same as just insulting or saying mean things. It's specifically designed with disruption in mind. If I went to a Flat Earth forum, then my only options would be "Humour them and feel stupid" and "Troll them". Because rocking up with an opinion directly opposite that of everyone there (and directly opposite the assumption that led to the forum being established) is trolling, even if I'm nice about it and trying to show them the error of their ways. The fact is that would still be trolling.

And regarding Narnia, remember the lamp post in Lion+Witch+Wardrobe? The marker they use for remembering how to get back? Yeah, in the first book, which was neither made into a recent-ish movie nor an early-90s short televised series, when JesusAslan is breathing life into the new world, it's full of life. Planting stuff grows stuff. So planting sweets makes a candy tree, and when someone dropped a crowbar, it grew into the lamp post.

*Another one that is used a lot here. Your mum, that is, not "references to your mum". Although that too.

[ModelCitizen]

And trolling is not the same as just insulting or saying mean things. It's specifically designed with disruption in mind. If I went to a Flat Earth forum, then my only options would be "Humour them and feel stupid" and "Troll them". Because rocking up with an opinion directly opposite that of everyone there (and directly opposite the assumption that led to the forum being established) is trolling, even if I'm nice about it and trying to show them the error of their ways. The fact is that would still be trolling.

I have good news: the Flat Earth Society forums are already full of trolls, but it's hard to tell who's trolling who.

[Mistborn]

I have good news: the Flat Earth Society forums are already full of trolls, but it's hard to tell who's trolling who.

Holy fuck I didn't think actual flat earthers existed.

Please tell me that these people are giant Poes otherwise I going to lose it.

[Username17]

After Sundown

I found that pretty hard to read actually. First time I saw it I was thinking it was a joke. But then it went on waayyy to long. (Then I found the SA comments about it, you got to admit, those where funny).

It also has a certain writing style I'm not really a fan of. It keeps self referencing itself in a sort of meta way. (Count the amount of times the phrase "after sundown" is said in the document).

And yes, this is cherry picking.

No. That is not "Cherry Picking", that is you being a fucking retard. After Sundown uses the words "After Sundown" 60 times if you include titles and headers. The 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide uses the phrase "AD&D" 90 times and actually writes out "Dungeons & Dragons" another 12 times. Your complaint that After Sundown uses self referential language too much is laughable in the face of the objective fact that its rate of doing so is only slightly more than half that of the industry standard.

This is the problem with all Something Awful goon complaints. There are plenty of things to complain about in After Sundown. I don't have an editor or a playtesting staff. Some of the stuff in there is legitimately garbled, and I'm sorry for that. But you assholes have to constantly rant and rave about shit that is objectively not true. My assumption is that you fucktwats do this because you want to be cool and edgy by dissing things but you lack even the most rudimentary skills in analysis and thus have to constantly fall back on ridicule at a 2nd grade level. It's what you know.

Really, it reminds me of my own halcyon days in elementary school, where talentless and mean spirited children would taunt me by calling me "Frankenstein". Because you know, my name is Frank. But of course, even at the time the sheer paucity of this tactic of insult was apparent. I mean for fuck's sake: my name is Trollman. It's actually pronounced "Troll Man". I don't think it is physically possible to have a more target-rich name for the purposes of schoolyard name calling unless your name literally rhymes with that of a sex act. The best they could come up with was "Frankenstein"? It was so face-palm worthy that even as a portly youth with a mullet, I could feel only pity for them.

Just as I feel only pity for you.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

Can I ask a question, as an outsider. Why are you guys discussing this so seriously?

Its very useful, actually. Rebalancing things so that neither side curbstomps is quite difficult, and this discussion has pretty well pinpointed the big problem.

Teleportation has to go, obviously. Teleportation, Greater Teleportation, Plane Shift, and Gate are just broken in this setting (they're just broken in a lot of settings, actually) so they have be removed.

Getting rid of Wish and Miracle is also probably a good idea.

[sabs]

are you sure that's actually the solution? Because, I'm not sure Teleportation, Greater Teleportation, Plane Shift and Gate have to go. Now, there might need some new spells/rituals. The ability to create non-teleportation zones, or places you can't open gates into. Really, Divination spells are more of a problem. If The Wicked Step Mother had murdered Snow White herself, instead of letting the damn Huntsman do it, things would have worked out much better.

[Username17]

Rebalancing things so that neither side curbstomps is quite difficult, and this discussion has pretty well pinpointed the big problem.

Teleportation has to go, obviously. Teleportation, Greater Teleportation, Plane Shift, and Gate are just broken in this setting (they're just broken in a lot of settings, actually) so they have be removed.

Getting rid of Wish and Miracle is also probably a good idea.

Wish and miracle are stupid and their inclusion is not good for anything. However, if you want to make the two sides even nearly equal, I think the fantasy side needs their teleport ambushes. It lets them smack down any military command structure and therefore achieve a detente of sorts, but without that they are simply ultra-fucked.

In D&D World, a "huge army of Orcs" is seriously four hundred guys with axes and spears. That won't do anything to Modern World. A single squad of North Korean riflemen would chew through that entire "army" and wouldn't even take losses doing it. They would simply rain death from long outside of javelin range until they ran out of ammunition or the sputtering survivors got to close, and then if the Orcs hadn't had the good sense to surrender, then the North Koreans would then get into a jeep and drive away to get more ammunition. And we aren't talking the cream of the crop of Modern World here.

And most of D&D World's "scariest" military units are actually way more vulnerable to "a squad of KPAGF soldiers" than that. D&D World trembles in fear because some Fire Giant King can muster... a couple dozen Hill Giants (not all in one place, just all declaring him liege). D&D Worlders would be shocked and horrified at how little that would accomplish against even local police departments in Modern World. A Cloud Giant Warband is up to 10 Cloud Giants, 4 Griffons, and 5 Dire Lions. That's enough to kick over almost any kingdom in D&D World, but in Modern World it's enough to cause some property damage before being brought down by the police response. It probably wouldn't be the biggest mass killing that year.

Without Teleport Ambushes, a full-scale D&D World invasion is so small time that it would be considered normal crime. The D&D Worlders need archmages to be able to hold Modern Worlders in check with the threat of ultrakilling all their leaders. Otherwise the whole place is just going to get colonized.

The greatest cities of the Forgotten Realms are Menzoberranzan and Waterdeep. And you know what? Menzoberranzan has a Drow population equal to that of Bixby, Oklahoma. When you include all their slaves and territory, it gets up to the population of North Las Vegas, Nevada (not to be confused with Las Vegas proper, which is more than twice the size of the whole Menzoberranzanian empire by itself). Waterdeep proper is about the size of McAllen, Texas; and the entire Waterdeep empire is about the size of the metropolitan area of Rochester, New York. The sad fact is that without exception the mighty kingdoms and proud city states of D&D World correspond in population and military might to minor suburbs of Modern World. If a gate opened between Menzoberranzan and kansas City, Menzoberranzan would just become a neighborhood of Kansas City - and the Kansas City Metropolitan Area would have increased in size by about 10%. Driders would be put down by animal control, and scare stories about "Elf Crime" would get onto page 3 of the Kansas City Star.

Yes, an archmage could get up in the morning, prepare spells and cast divinations for a couple of hours, and then teleport in and ultra-kill the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of Defense in a few moments. And D&D World absolutely needs that capability to keep from being reduced to a demographically insignificant bunch of aboriginals in "The Colonies".

What you actually need to nerf on the fantasy side is incorporeality. Shadows are just broken even in D&D World - trivially able to raise armies in the thousands and completely immune to the weapons of almost all denizens of that world. The thing where incorporeality becomes immunity to literally all weapons of the Modern World is ten flavors of bullshit and needs to go. There is simply nothing that Modern World can do to keep a single Shadow from murdering everyone in North Korea, and then they have twenty million Shadows that each individually can't be killed.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

(Then I found the SA comments about it, you got to admit, those where funny).

Nope. There's some really funny goons out there but either they're not to be found within the confines of grognard.txt or nobody really bothered to put some real effort into tearing AS down.

Really, the most apt criticism of After Sundown I've heard was from outside of SA and came down to writing style. Frank and Denners in general are big on fluff/crunch separation and sometimes go perhaps a bit too far in acknowledging that people may use their rule sets for anything from Supernatural Friends, Pan's Labyrinth, Poltergeist, a Scooby adventure or Dark Shadows camp. That kind of fluff agnosticism helps makes the rules fairly easy to understand in one go despite its lack of editing, but it also lets people get a good long look at the man behind the curtain rather than focusing on mood White Wolf style. After all, White Wolf was so devoted to fluff that they often couldn't be arsed to include a table of contents that made any damn sense on the first read lest they puncture the air of mystery whereas AS will call a time out to talk about Joss Whedon. So while AS is a nice tool for vets who know what kind of game they want to run and need some rules I do understand how the document itself could fail to inspire someone's inner mallgoth to rise up and start telling stories.

[echoVanguard]

Some seriously funny stuff

This brightened my day. I'm going to be chuckling about "Elf Crime" for at least the rest of this afternoon.

echo

[Prak]

Man, I really want to run a modern game which starts with FantasyLand invading, and halfway through changes to a defeated FantasyLand assimilating into ModernLand.

[echoVanguard]

GURPS has you covered, Prak.

echo

[RadiantPhoenix]

when someone dropped a crowbar, it grew into the lamp post.

Actually, IIRC, it was actually a piece of a lamppost that someone had broken off to use as a weapon or something.

[Whipstitch]

My memory is crawling into the waaaaaaay back machine for this tidbit, but if I remember correctly the White Witch tore up the lamppost in the Magician's Nephew, which is a bit of a prequel of sorts.

[Koumei]

Oh, it was a piece from a lamp post, an iron bar rather than a crowbar. That makes perfect sense then. If it works like that in your gardening rules, people need to know this shit ahead of time, and there should be a good explanation.

Anyway, if you want to criticise After Sundown, here are some complaints that could at least be valid:
[*]The d6 only has six faces, that's far too simplistic and the d6 is practically the perfect die for Practised Rolling (or even developing your Natural Rolling) which could be considered cheating. Note: for dice pool things, you kind of want small die sizes, but when people play D&D they are used to basic actions using a die with 20 possible numbers. You also wouldn't like: most games from Japan, basically any Wargame ever, Shadowrun.
[*]You add/remove dice, rather than slapping bonuses or penalties to the dice themselves. See: only six sides. Again, it's something that people wouldn't be used to if they're familiar with D&D, and feeds into the next issue:
[*]Dice pools are bullshit. When you roll 1dX and need to roll a Z or better, there is a certain size of Y you can add to literally make it a foregone conclusion. You can literally defeat randomness with good planning (and even when you can't, figuring out the probability is really easy). When you roll XdY and need Z+ dice to come up as Q+, then you can roll eight trillion dice and there's still the chance (however minute) of them all coming up as Q-1. Actual probabilities are harder to calculate as well, which many would consider a more valid complaint.
[*]Advancement is not entirely under your control, unless you're good at cheating with card shuffling. SA forums love bullshit mechanics though, like trying to roll poker hands or whatever. So they'd be all over this. Whereas I'd just say "cards are bullshit".
[*]It's sort of a sequel or remake of World of Darkness. Therefore you could still have hangups about things that were bad in WoD, or your favourite Clan or whatever is not in this one and that makes you sad (if it was Malkavian, then fuck you for liking that. Go carve the rules into lead slabs and slam your genitals between them), or there was something that actually worked in WoD (citation definitely needed) and you miss that.
[*]You like doom, gloom, "PCs are useless" and "PCs spend the whole time plotting against each other and trying (badly, from what I've seen) to set up Xanatos Gambits rather than making any headway in any kind of plot or achieving anything", in which case the idea of "has things from World of Darkness" plus "The PCs go out there and kick some ass" (ie "It's Scooby Doo or Buffy, not... whatever that shitty Russian "Light Side vs Dark Side" vampires+mages+lawyers movie was") offends you.

[JigokuBosatsu]

[quote="FrankTrollman]Really, it reminds me of my own halcyon days in elementary school, where talentless and mean spirited children would taunt me by calling me "Frankenstein". Because you know, my name is Frank. But of course, even at the time the sheer paucity of this tactic of insult was apparent. I mean for fuck's sake: my name is Trollman. It's actually pronounced "Troll Man". I don't think it is physically possible to have a more target-rich name for the purposes of schoolyard name calling unless your name literally rhymes with that of a sex act. The best they could come up with was "Frankenstein"? It was so face-palm worthy that even as a portly youth with a mullet, I could feel only pity for them.
-Username17[/quote]

Yeah, they used to call me "Uncle Jesse" (my first name is Jess) in elementary school. Which seemed so lazy. "You mean sits-at-home-with-a-jug-of-booze-and-Daisy-Duke-on-his-lap Uncle Jesse? Thanks!"

Back on topic, I can see two very strong arguments for either side winning.

1. Narratively speaking, DnDLand will win. If there is some big stupid totally unbreachable barrier, then eventually it will be breached. The plucky young apprentice will research "Planar Audit" and that milkshake will bring all the wizards to our yard.

2. Behaviorally speaking, Earth will win. Remember, by what we can glean from our limited research on D&D realms, most wizards veer between "highly unimaginative" and "dumb as a bag of hammers." All those crazy chain bindings and XP loops and stuff? We did that. And while I do think that it would be hilarious to see a forum-full of Denizen neckbeards thwarting a wizard invasion, I think the principle stands.

So I guess what it comes down to, is the multiverse Gamist or Narrativist?

[Koumei]

All those crazy chain bindings and XP loops and stuff? We did that.

So the Den figure out how to get the magic going, we all become chain-binding balor-farming phoenix-duplicators and then take over both worlds, until the schism over (small unimportant thing) results in a war that obliterates both worlds.

Who am I kidding? Upon getting just enough wizard power, we'd each fuck off to a separate "Energy Drain doesn't work here" plane of succubi. For ever. Occasionally scrying on other people's mothers, asking the succubi to shapechange for a moment, taking a photo and sending it to the offspring of said mother.

[JigokuBosatsu]

"What you say intrigues me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter."

[hyzmarca]

Wish and miracle are stupid and their inclusion is not good for anything. However, if you want to make the two sides even nearly equal, I think the fantasy side needs their teleport ambushes. It lets them smack down any military command structure and therefore achieve a detente of sorts, but without that they are simply ultra-fucked.

That's not really a problem in the long term. The assumption is always going to be that the PCs win. In the short term, the endeavor is hampered by logistics, political will, and the language barrier, which gives the PCs something to do.

In D&D World, a "huge army of Orcs" is seriously four hundred guys with axes and spears. That won't do anything to Modern World. A single squad of North Korean riflemen would chew through that entire "army" and wouldn't even take losses doing it. They would simply rain death from long outside of javelin range until they ran out of ammunition or the sputtering survivors got to close, and then if the Orcs hadn't had the good sense to surrender, then the North Koreans would then get into a jeep and drive away to get more ammunition. And we aren't talking the cream of the crop of Modern World here.

While this is true if you use an unmodified existing setting, there is nothing preventing a DM from creating a Persian Empire equivalent that can seriously field a million me.

What you actually need to nerf on the fantasy side is incorporeality. Shadows are just broken even in D&D World - trivially able to raise armies in the thousands and completely immune to the weapons of almost all denizens of that world. The thing where incorporeality becomes immunity to literally all weapons of the Modern World is ten flavors of bullshit and needs to go. There is simply nothing that Modern World can do to keep a single Shadow from murdering everyone in North Korea, and then they have twenty million Shadows that each individually can't be killed.

-Username17

Yes, that's important.

2. Behaviorally speaking, Earth will win. Remember, by what we can glean from our limited research on D&D realms, most wizards veer between "highly unimaginative" and "dumb as a bag of hammers." All those crazy chain bindings and XP loops and stuff? We did that. And while I do think that it would be hilarious to see a forum-full of Denizen neckbeards thwarting a wizard invasion, I think the principle stands.

And this is another reason why magic has to be nerfed. Because it won't just be all of the magic world vs all of the modern world. D&D land isn't united. If you go to war with the Drow, for example, you're going to have a fuckton of potential allies, which does include archmages. Teleport ambushing quickly becomes another trick in the Modern World's arsenal, and any detent it provides is destroyed when the modern wolds meets a cleric capable of casting Resurrection. Also, the Beetles have a reunion tour.