Why do people fetishize Magic Tea Party

[Zak S]

It isn't. You never asked about the increments considered bonus-worthy so your entire comment is textbook

"Rather than ask a clarifying question, I assumed bullshit and yelled about it"

Zak this you

I am going to do you the favor, insane person, of assuming you meant to say "Zak, this is you" and then ask you to quote me assuming rather than asking a question, insane person.

However, the baseline of these bonuses would only include the differences between bonuses of competing factions and interests. So, for example if you gave an apple (+1) and a competing interest gave 2 apples (+2) then that would be a +0 for you and a +1 for the competitor.

literally describing apples stacking under your system.

Yes. You haven't described how this is bad.

The bigger bribe gets the bigger bonus.

The example assumes a target for whom an apple is a relevant gift. A horse or a beggar would be obvious candidates.

Of course you could prove me wrong, post your entire system then we'll see if it's workable or not.

I did. If any part of it is unclear to you rather than Assuming Crazy Bullshit, To Fill In The Gaps ask clarifying questions.

These can be in the form of "If...then what?".

The challenge was to come up with the rule and its details, not to write all of them out in the clear form I'd use to explain it in a commercial product--there wasn't time for that. I would probably take a page to do it in that case and that would've run over the time limit.

[Zak S]

Ask them now and they will be answered.

No you fuckface, I already said them in the post before last, and you ignored them.

I see 2 question marks, both of which contain inaccurate premises in the form of insults. Because they refer to nonexistent phenonmena, they are unanswerable. You may restate them.

But hey, while you are not addressing things, remember when you quoted a post that had numbers 1-3, and you abruptly cut off after two?

No, I don't. What's your beef this time?

[gamerGoyf]

Yes. You haven't described how this is bad.

The bigger bribe gets the bigger bonus.

The example assumes a target for whom an apple is a relevant gift. A horse or a beggar would be obvious candidates.

Alright then the verdict is in, your system is indistinguishable from MTP only you've added a bunch of complexity that doesn't solve anything, so it's worse than MTP. That's what happens when you write rules on the fly you write bad rules.

That's why you are wrong. When you resolve a situation by ruling you essentially using MTP, now according to rulings advocates this is supposed to be better than straight MTP because once a ruling is made then it will be applicable later, essentially you made a new rule. Only that rule was tailored to an extremely specific situation and made under time pressure. So what happens next is a situation relevant to that new comes up where that rule ends up being terrible. Then your argument is right fucked because either you change your ruling and admit that your "rulings not rules" system is really thinly veiled MTP or you keep your ruling and end up saddled with shitty rules.

[Kaelik]

both of which contain inaccurate premises in the form of insults.

Insults are not inaccurate premises because they are not premises. Please file logic next to science and game design under the headings, "Things to which Zak S has no knowledge of."

But hey, while you are not addressing things, remember when you quoted a post that had numbers 1-3, and you abruptly cut off after two?

No, I don't. What's your beef this time?

You have now contradicted observable reality.

Search the thread for (for example) "Kaelik" "number of times"

There are three numbers, each with words after them.

The idea being, that each of the numbers classifies the words into separate categories that require response.

Then search for "Zak S" "Why are you a fuckface"

You quote numbers one and two, and then end your post without addressing three.

This (again) demonstrates you're an insane person and what you have to say doesn't matter.

Since you are provably insane:

You should not speak in public and should instead seek professional help for your reality-denial issues.

This is your claim: That people must address every issue in order to continue having the right to speak on a subject.

If you believe this, and your belief is rational, then you must be able to address all the issues in my post.

So address those issues and do not dodge them, Zak S, or else apologize for believing an irrational thing.

[Mistborn]

[angelfromanotherpin]

Playtested it last night, actually. Competing interests cancel in the case of most requests, works so far.

That's a nice source you have there, very unbiased, much credibility.

No matter how biased we'd know if we were literally unable to play,which is the claim on the table

Yes. You would know. But you haven't provided any reason for anyone to believe that this game session was actually successful, or even happened at all. It's just you claiming to have an enormous penis on the internet. And then telling us that people we don't know have confirmed that your penis is in fact huge.

[Zak S]

Yes. You haven't described how this is bad.

The bigger bribe gets the bigger bonus.

The example assumes a target for whom an apple is a relevant gift. A horse or a beggar would be obvious candidates.

Alright then the verdict is in, your system is indistinguishable from MTP only you've added a bunch of complexity that doesn't solve anything, so it's worse than MTP. That's what happens when you write rules on the fly you write bad rules.

That's why you are wrong. When you resolve a situation by ruling you essentially using MTP, now according to rulings advocates this is supposed to be better than straight MTP because once a ruling is made then it will be applicable later, essentially you made a new rule. Only that rule was tailored to an extremely specific situation and made under time pressure. So what happens next is a situation relevant to that new comes up where that rule ends up being terrible. Then your argument is right fucked because either you change your ruling and admit that your "rulings not rules" system is really thinly veiled MTP or you keep your ruling and end up saddled with shitty rules.

Circular argument.

You're using "MTP" and "shitty rules" and "rulings" as synonyms.

[gamerGoyf]

You're using "MTP" and "shitty rules" and "rulings" as synonyms.

No I'm not you moron. You're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective and like always that perspective is that of a retarded 10 year old.

Edit Zak unfuck your tags

[Zak S]

both of which contain inaccurate premises in the form of insults.

Insults are not inaccurate premises because they are not premises. Please file logic next to science and game design under the headings, "Things to which Zak S has no knowledge of.

whatevs.

But hey, while you are not addressing things, remember when you quoted a post that had numbers 1-3, and you abruptly cut off after two?

No, I don't. What's your beef this time?

You have now contradicted observable reality.

No i didn't--saying " i don't remember" can't be falsified by any craft you have here employed.

So, knowing that, re-write your post.

fixed tags --Z

[Zak S]

edit--sorry

[gamerGoyf]

mother fucker fix your fucking tags, how many times is this now

[virgil]

I may have to repeat myself, since I was apparently ignored. That your game didn't self-destruct with that 'ruling' only proves that it won't self-destruct your game. That is a stupidly low bar to set something, and setting the bar that low in a debate actively poisons any constructive worth of the debate.

Anecdotal evidence, which you seem to hang incredible importance on, absolutely does not validate your ruling. It doesn't take much rational thought to realize that your successful games are not proof of rulings>rules.

• The fun in the game outweighs the bad of your ruling(s), be it the social interaction or the game itself
• You & your players are insufficiently introspective to realize they're having less fun than they could
• You & your players too lazy/ignorant (of the rules) to understand why the ruling(s) is bad, or even that it is
• Your players are socially pressured (even subconsciously) to not rock the boat and argue
• The badness of the ruling(s) is less than the badness of fighting/arguing for a change

I can personally point out a freakin' tonne of terrible house rules & rulings made by DMs, including at least a couple made by Zak on the webshow or blog. None of them have been tyrants or jerks worthy of quitting the game over; because people aren't caricatures. The fact nobody's quit your game or complained just means that you've got more good than bad, not that your games are without flaw.

That I know of DMs (including myself) that have run rules-lite and rules-heavy campaigns without self-destructing tells me that social inertia does a better job at keeping a game together than the rules most the time. When discussing rules with other people, I should hope you have higher expectations than "not losing friends" with any proposed system. If the group is good, then the game will go on, good or bad. If the group is borderline, then the quality of the game can actually be a tipping point; and can actually deflect blame (good or bad) onto the players without them realizing it was the rules' fault. If the group is bad, then chances are the game will find a way to self-destruct no matter what.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Gee if only I had a blog with actual play reports and photos and links to all the twitters of the people involved where we talk about playing D&D in real time.

Yeah, I notice that none of that stuff relevant to this social currency mechanic is on that blog. Well played. Next time you want to present your blog as evidence, maybe have some evidence on your blog?

[Bobikus]

Haha, I forgot how much of a fucking mess this board is. You're a real trooper for hanging around for 17 pages Zak.

[Fuchs]

Yeah. Half the usual gang is so stuck in "You can't have fun unless you're doing it my way" they are unable to accept anything, the rest only goes as far as "you may have fun, you liar, but it's less fun than my way!".

I agree with PL that rules lite games need good rules. That was never the question. But they don't need as many rules as the hardcore crunchers claim. They really only need good rules to cover the core parts of the game, and those parts depend on the individual group and campaign, and can vary with each campaign. Any rules that cover only exotic cases that do not get used regularily are potential burdens on Player and GM (having to learn them, and remember them), and often better replaced with on the fly rulings. Consistency is not much of a problem if the rule only comes up once a year or so.

Edit: I can't even remember when in my current campaign we actually had the last case of "doused with flammable liquid and set on fire". It's just not something the current characters do (or not anymore at their level). I can totally imagine knowing that rule right away in another campaign if we had a character there that kept doing that to others, or were lower level.

[Dean]

This seems like it's winding down so I'll mention now that the most enjoyment I've gotten out of this has been watching this Zak dude mixing piss poor argumentation with his clearly strained attempts to use as many terms from informal logic as possible as fast as possible. That has been great. It shows that he places incredible importance on informal logic but also is only passingly aware of it. That has been strange and funny.

Oh and @Deaddmwalking. You were a fucking champ in this thread. I've given you shit for talking to Shadzar all the time but maybe you were training yourself in dealing with obstructive idiots because pages 13-14 here was some of the most total debate control I've seen in a while. You were deconstructing vague statements, calling contradictions, preparatorily countering future counterarguments. That was a good show and I think you should be given credit even if it did take about ten thousand words to get across.

[tussock]

I missed most of this, but was someone trying to get people to argue rationally on tgdmb? By the rules of logic? In a thread about MTP? Which is about forming a consensus in the absence of rules?

Because MTP says no. You skip the rules and just agree to something everyone can have peace with. And I'm pretty sure people don't argue rationally here anyway. I, for one, am hella lazy about it. Anecdotally speaking I talk a lot of shit. Just say'n.

quote tag missing. Somewhere.

[DSMatticus]

But they don't need as many rules as the hardcore crunchers claim.

What quantity of rules are appropriate has not actually been discussed here in any significant fashion. You are attempting to give ground (so you can look more reasonable) without actually appearing to give ground (because being wrong is embarrassing).

The core of the argument is that:

• Rules are better than rulings lightness- or heaviness-independent even if you sometimes have to resort to rulings, because bowling rules in D&D would be unnecessary and if bowling come up at your table you'd still have to resolve it somehow.
• All the rules in a product should be better than not having those rules. This is just a simple mandate not to put shitty rules in a game. If your diplomacy rules are so bad "making shit up on the fly" is objectively superior, then don't put those diplomacy rules in your product.
• Extending #2, all the rules in a product should be better than possible alternatives. Obviously your design budget is limited, your knowledge mortal, and your expertise imperfect, so you're never going to have all your rules be the best. But if you have idea X and idea Y and X is clearly shittier than Y, go with Y. Not a difficult notion.

Most of Zak's complaints (as far as I can tell, this thread... this fucking thread) boil down to the use of the word 'better':

• "Better can be relative!" It certainly can be, but it isn't always. Even if you go full blown relativism and claim all possibilities are genuinely equally fun and differences in fun experienced subjective, those very same possibilities aren't equally likely to be found fun by the typical person. There might exist people who like being punched in the nuts, but if you are designing a chair you wouldn't even contemplate adding a nut-punching feature because the vast majority of that chair's users will not appreciate it. Even playing the relativism card doesn't protect you from arguments of utility, because relativism is just the rejection of the objective nature of statements - not statistics.
• "Better can be context dependent! Different genres need different rules!" They certainly do, but that's not really a refutation of anything. It's just acknowledgement that D&D and Shadowrun have different rules and they should have different rules, which is something everyone here agrees with. I don't think anyone here buys into the feasibility of a universal system. Pointing out that different games result in different experiences/story types just means we should give people a game with good rules for a given experience/story type.
• "Rules can have costs like learning curve and look-up time! If a rule has costs, is it really better?" I don't know about you, but when I'm shopping at the store I include price tags in my comparison. Rules that are easier to remember and use at the table (have less costs) are better than rules that accomplish the same things but are harder to remember and use. Simplicity and accessibility are two of many factors that go into evaluating whether something is better than something else, and if increasing the complexity of your ruleset doesn't lead to better outcomes we would not suggest doing so.

Beyond that, there's nothing in this conversation but anecdotes, weird internet challenges, and vitriol. It really shouldn't surprise anyone that you can hang out with friends and have fun murdering crazy magical creatures in a loosely-structured shared narrative. The question is how fun can we make it? Do there exist rules we could add to Zak's game that meet requirements of learnability and usability while increasing the experience for him and/or his players?

The answer is almost certainly yes, for two reasons:

• Time spent thinking and comparing rulings subtracts from table time. Time spent thinking and comparing rules doesn't subtract from table time. It is genuinely hubris to think a ruling will be better than a rule in terms of outputs - people don't reliably get things right on the first try. And indeed, some of Zak's rulings are genuinely bad (i.e. worse than alternatives he didn't come up). Some of my rulings are genuinely bad. Hindsight is 20/20. You've got to make a ruling and you've got to resolve the situation and the timeframe is limited so you do the best you can with the window you've got. Rule design does not have that limitation.
• Handling every single use case as a separate and distinct ruling is genuinely bad design. If you did software like that, you would create an unusable, incomprehensible mess, and it would take you longer to do so. How many rulings have you made? How on earth do you keep the list manageable? The rulings, after all, are supposed to be consistent once made, which means if they come up again you have to remember/reference them. Honestly, you can genuinely simplifiy and streamline a system through the power of unification. Shoving people, throwing people, carrying people, and lassoing people are all variants of the same thing - forced movement. If you wrote robust and simple rules for handling forced movement, you could extend them to all four of those use cases and cover four rulings with one rule. But if you're doing that at the table, you might not notice the similarities because you're on a timer.

I typed all of this up, and then realized I didn't want to post it because it might respark the conversation and that would be awful, but... but... I already wrote it.

EAT MY SUNK COST FALLACY, BITCHES

[zugschef]

It's amazing how much better this thread is looking if you set Zak to ignore.

[gamerGoyf]

I leave, I come back, and tags are still fucked, what the fuck. Anyway I'm out, I'm not responding to Zak anymore he is both retarded and arguing in bad faith. Also isn't leaving broken tags grounds for a ban.

[Zak S]

I can personally point out a freakin' tonne of terrible house rules & rulings made by DMs, including at least a couple made by Zak on the webshow or blog..

1. Do that.

Likewise: DSMatticus: if you can find a bad ruling I made name it, don't just allege you did.

And you said

and if increasing the complexity of your ruleset doesn't lead to better outcomes we would not suggest doing so.

When you meant to say "if increasing the complexity of your ruleset doesn't lead to better outcomes in our games and were weren't so ignorant as to assume everyone is like us we would not suggest doing so."

This goes back to the whole "egocentric logic" thing.

2.

Both of your entire arguments boil down to this:
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/20 ... 80s-d.html

"You could be having MORE FUN playing the game you already tried and didn't like as much, TRUST ME! I KNOW YOU BETTER THAN YOU!!"

You don't even admit that maybe you might want to test this idea about the behavior of all possible other gamers before declaring total faith in it.

It's irrational. You test things--that's science. If all x are y, then it's easy to test that theory as any old x will prove it.

As for the "just because it applies to your group doesn't mean it applies to anyone else" argument.--Yeah, sure fine.

See Page 11 second comment, item #2 for the answer to that, and search this thread also for "zak s""superior" to the counterargument you keep ignoring there.

As for Deanruel87, for all deadDMwalking's alleged "debate control" he didn't address any of the objections to his arguments on the next page, so until he does, he hasn't got a logical leg to stand on.

And most of what he said is based on ignoring....
(everybody now)

...page 11, second comment, item #2.

[Bobikus]

It's amazing how much better this thread is looking if you set Zak to ignore.

Outside of his annoying writing style he's been maybe the most sensible person in the thread outside of Fuchs.

[Mistborn]

I've just realized something, Zak has been fuching us all along. Think about it the argument he's constantly falling back on is "but I do this in my own games and it was awesome". That doesn't prove anything and it totally doesn't prove that a better experience couldn't be had via a different method. Heck "I DM this way and I had fun" doesn't even prove that other people enjoyed Zak's DMing because Zak only has the experience of DMing the game and not the experience of playing the game.

The construction of the debate as rules-heavy vs. rules-light is pretty wack too. While requiring more GM judgement calls is often a result of rules-lite systems, that's not how rules-light systems achieve their shortness, they do that be increasing abstraction. Even among rules light games there's game that are bad like Bear World and games that are not bad like FATE.

[shadzar]

since this page is unreadable, can we just move on to the next one and hope for better legibility? this shit reads like the 1E DMG and you can't tell what the fuck is being aid by who and about what!

ok, maybe this page is a lot better than the 1e DMG, but still this is stupid!

[Mistborn]

Wow a shadzar post that doesn't make me imediately regret clicking show post. Nice job dude who knew you had it in you.