Minor game stuff from around the web for commentary...

[Ancient History]

I edited and you were busy posting (because I posted while you were busy posting), but maybe you want to read what I wrote post-edit.

[Kaelik]

Everyone does this all their life with every rule or freedom they have. If you suddenly and earnestly spout racist propaganda at the table your fellow players may revise their opinion of you.

Just remember guys, if you play the game differently from Zak S, you are an asshole who taunts people about their dead children and is a racist.

But Zak S doesn't think other ways of playing the game are worse, just different because otherwise that 30 page thread where he whined over and over that right and wrong ways to play RPGs don't exist would be just him lying over and over again.

[DSMatticus]

Cyberzombie's fundamental argument is that we shouldn't criticize rules for being bad because no rule system is perfect. He's presenting "the perfect is the enemy of the good" as an actual argument for why you shouldn't care if things are better or worse than other things. If someone cared enough to, you could probably make him twist himself into an incoherent pretzel of doublethink by challenging him to choose between two hypothetical rulesets which are identical except the second has a single additional and incredibly shitty rule. That would either end with him shitting all over his own position and admitting that you can and should care about bad rules but somehow claiming he's still totally right because reasons, or trying to justify picking one system over the other while not declaring that it's actually better. Said weaseling would probably boil down to "better is subjective" (especially with Zak here), which would be (and has already been) countered by pointing out that a TTRPG is a product that promises (and is intended by its developers) to deliver a particular experience (frequently of a particular genre and a particular theme), and rules can objectively interfere with the ability of the product to deliver on that promise.

And now that I've summarized the argument, I've saved us many painful pages of actually having it. ... Right?

But even more hilariously, the battleground Cyberzombie has chosen for his fight on the futility of writing rules systems that aren't ass is over a rule that is obviously ass and ass for obvious reasons.

The result bothering him is that because of this rule, everyone and their mother becomes a musician. But that's not because the equipment is so OP everyone must have it - it's because using the equipment requires only a successful dexterity check (something everyone can do some of the time, and something most people can do half the time), and as a result the only real requirement for becoming a violinist is to have a violin in your hands. Ability checks are a shitty way to handle whether or not your character has a particular skill. A rudimentary skill system goes a long way.

Is that difficult to understand? 2e style ability checks are a shitty way to represent matters of skill. There are only six ability scores, and that means if you use the ability score system as a substitute for a skill system you actually only have six skills: being strong, being dextrous, being tough, being smart, being wise, and being fancy. You're forced to assign every matter of skill your game covers into one of six things, and that leads to absurdity such that every pickpocket is also a virtuoso and every marine biologist is also a nuclear physicist and so on. The math on 2e ability checks is also pretty fucked - the range of numbers isn't large enough relative to the RNG, meaning there basically isn't room for tasks that masters can reliably do that completely incompetent nobodies can't also do some of the time. Chance is too large a factor relative to ability.

If this is the rule you've chosen to throw up your hands on and declare that all is lost, maybe you're just an idiot.

This means that if the runner on first has a child that dies in a car accident, the first baseman is allowed to taunt the runner with this fact during the game. In many cases, the first basemen has every incentive to do this.

Problem #1: this cuts both ways. If the first baseman starts taunting people about their recently deceased relatives in order to win the game and you think "that is and should be acceptable under the rules," you're also an asshole.

Problem #2: you are equating:
A) Someone who wants to play a diplomat in a TTRPG (an inoffensive goal), discovers that under the game's rules the best way to be a diplomat is to also be a musician (a peculiarity of the game), and has his diplomat be a musician (an inoffensive act).
B) Someone who wants to win a game of baseball (an inoffensive goal), discovers that under the game's rules he is allowed to taunt other players over deeply personal and painful matters (a peculiarity of the game), and decides to taunt players on the other team about their recently deceased relatives (an incredibly offensive act).

Essentially, you're trying to piggyback the despicableness of tormenting someone about their dead child onto choosing to play a character who is a musician because "both are examples of advantage-seeking." Well, here's another example of advantage-seeking: kicking a field goal on an unfavorable 4th down. Does that also make you an asshole? It doesn't? Then maybe the reason that tormenting people about their dead child is despicable has nothing to do with the fact that it's advantage-seeking, and everything to do with the fact that tormenting people about their dead child is fucking despicable no matter why you're doing it! And honestly, it's kind of fucking creepy that you don't understand that.

[Zak S]

If you're trying to argue that all rules fall under this general category of "if you abuse it, you're an asshole" then we go back to you being a subjective asshole for holding other people to hidden standards.

How is that hidden? (In any way that, when you meet someone you don't immediately go:
1) Don't be racist, 2) Don't be sexist 3) Don't kill giraffes, 4)…)

It's not hidden. At all, ever. If you create scenes or characters which you don't want to play just to get a little mechanical bonus, you suck. That's not hidden. That's open. And it's being a dick whether or not I'm there to judge them. If I told them they wouldn't be judged on it and they did it, they're still being a dick.

You don't have to articulate every single thing a person could possibly do to show they're a dick in order to fairly judge them as a dick. That's incredibly silly.

Dice do not come packaged with a warning saying you'll be judged a dick if you shove them in the person next-to-you's nose while they're having an asthma attack. But it's still totally legit to judge them a dick if they do that.

And this is exactly what Monte means about not writing rules for assholes.

[Stubbazubba]

The music rule is the same. There is a good use of it and a bad use. The bad use reveals an assholery that was always there.

What, pray tell, would the good use actually look like? Because so far every use has been unappealing to you.

A player who likes playing a musician and has cool ideas about how to roleplay that gets to do it and the rule gives the performance situation a little dramatic tension because something (a potential bonus v npcs) is at at stake. See the discussion in the OP on my blog for more detail.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, you just made up the whole tension thing in the comments. You never said that was a justification for anything in the post. But let's keep going: A player who likes playing a musician and has cool ideas about how to roleplay can already do that, and the rule add zero tension because it's a next-to-zero risk for a small reward (as you keep assuring us). There's not really tension there. Rolling dice =/= tension. What kind of DM are you that thinks anytime you roll dice there's automagically "tension?"

Also: pretty much anyone who didn't grasp that already (or pretended not to) is not thinking this through very hard before typing or not arguing in good faith.

Look you imbecile, you haven't thought out anything you've said, nor can you give us a single coherent reason that your rule helps anyone, except your assertion that it outs people that you don't like for playing the game like a rational human being, which you can't stand because it means they don't worship at your altar of DM fiat.

And you, moron, are not arguing in good faith when you cry strawman every time someone phrases your rule in a way you don't like, especially when you follow it up with nothing but strawmen and shifting goalposts on your own side, and then threaten to ban someone four times in the same comment if they don't cow to your ridiculously-inflated ego that has you thinking you can even talk about game rules coherently.

[Zak S]

you are equating:
A) Someone who wants to play a diplomat in a TTRPG (an inoffensive goal), discovers that under the game's rules the best way to be a diplomat is to also be a musician (a peculiarity of the game), and has his diplomat be a musician (an inoffensive act).

No. Strawman, it's "…and has his diplomat be a musician" despite not wanting to play a musician character or the scenes this requires (an incredibly offensive act).

Problem #1: this cuts both ways. If the first baseman starts taunting people about their recently deceased relatives in order to win the game and you think "that is and should be acceptable under the rules," you're also an asshole.

Incorrect. Taunting people about their deceased relatives is actually in real life acceptable under the rules of sandlot baseball (because pretty much all speech is acceptable under the rules). So you need to take it up with Abner Doubleday. Dig him up and call him an asshole.

Rewriting the rules to find not-unduly-restrictive ways bar obviously evilly offensive speech is less efficient and just than barring individuals willing to resort to such speech.

[Mistborn]

Zak stop backtracking, moving goal posts, and generally being an asshole. You made a rule, then said you would give people a hard time if the used it, which you consider equivalent to taunting someone about the death their lover and/or family member. You are the one who is the asshole in this example.

[Cyberzombie]

If the rule is stupid it's not fault of the person who wrote the rule, not the people who assumed the game designers actually gave a fuck. Yes most if not all games require signifacant mind caulk to be even remotely playable, that's a big fucking problem that's why this forum exists. So stop trying to derive ought from is, asshole.

When there's an imbalance between the numbers of fighter and wizard, that's a big problem, because that's a problem where the game designers did a poor job of making the actual important parts of the game work.

If there's a big problem from people playing musical instruments in every social situation because the DM can't figure out whipping out a lute while your character is testifying in court should be an exception to the text and needs a game designer to write it out in flawless computer code, then the problem is with the DM being a dumb rules robot.

Expecting absolute perfection with rules written with perfect wording on par with the best contract lawyers is unrealistic. You'll never find RPG rules like that. Put your time into finding a DM that has more free will than a C++ compiler. None of the DMs I play with would even be remotely troubled by the musical instrument rule. But I guess you've played under some really godawful DMs if the response to a situational +2 bonus is that the sky is falling and the entire game world's social structure is rewritten. lol. That's just sad man. Like in your life I think you've got more shit to worry about than some minor conditional bonus.

If people listened to your group, RPG players would never be able to have nice things and everyone would be playing a featureless board game because every designer would be paranoid of writing some minor miscellaneous equipment item that totally sends the game world to hell.

[Zak S]

You never said that was a justification for anything in the post. But let's keep going: A player who likes playing a musician and has cool ideas about how to roleplay can already do that, and the rule add zero tension because it's a next-to-zero risk for a small reward (as you keep assuring us). There's not really tension there. Rolling dice =/= tension. What kind of DM are you that thinks anytime you roll dice there's automagically "tension?"

I guess you never played D&D or play it different than me, because every time Fiddlin Joe (Patrick Stuart of False Machine) takes out his fiddle and proposes to play a king or villager a tune, it's fun and there's tension about whether he'll do it or fuck up the whole deal.

Im sorry to hear your game is much worse than mine.

[Ancient History]

If you're trying to argue that all rules fall under this general category of "if you abuse it, you're an asshole" then we go back to you being a subjective asshole for holding other people to hidden standards.

How is that hidden? (In any way that, when you meet someone you don't immediately go:
1) Don't be racist, 2) Don't be sexist 3) Don't kill giraffes, 4)…)

"Don't be a racist." is not a rule you're going to find in a corebook. It's an unwritten rule of society, and it depends on the people you're with. Some groups might be cool with off-color jokes or comments at the table (we won't get into RaHoWa here), but those are unwritten rules.

Your standard is also an unwritten rule, but in this case it has nothing to do with the group dynamics at your table, it's all on you. As you've stated here, you should kick people out of your game for doing shit you disagree with when using rules you wrote, because you don't care for their play style. I quote:

And anyone who is going to do all that--someone who is going to play through a scene they don't want to play through just to get a mechanical advantage--is a boring person with no sense of style who you should kick out of your game.

It's not hidden. At all, ever. If you create scenes or characters which you don't want to play just to get a little mechanical bonus, you suck.

If you write a rule that's prone to abuse that bitch when people point it out, you suck. No one's complaining about someone wanting to fiddle, they're complaining that the rules you've written for it are open to exploitation. You haven't refuted that. All you've done is said that yes, the rules can be abused but anyone that does that is bad and shouldn't be playing your game. It's a bullshit hidden standard.

You don't have to articulate every single thing a person could possibly do to show they're a dick in order to fairly judge them as a dick. That's incredibly silly.

You shouldn't pretend that everyone that disagrees with your style of play is automatically an asshole; that's incredibly silly.

And this is exactly what Monte means about not writing rules for assholes.

Fuck Monte Cook. This is on you, man. You wrote a bad rule again and are bitching that people don't get it again, and moving goalposts and calling people names and generally being a dick about it again because you can't actually admit that "Yeah, you can abuse the rule, maybe I should rewrite it." You're so afraid of being wrong you never bother to ever improve.

[PhoneLobster]

What kind of DM are you that thinks anytime you roll dice there's automagically "tension?"

He is a DM who thinks dice rolls are automatically more "tension" or "fun".

He is a DM who complains about time "wasted" on social encounters when players could be/should be spending ALL time obsessing over swinging bloody swords in murder death fights.

He is, apparently, THE definition of the near mythical "Roll Player Not Role Player".

[Zak S]

You haven't addressed these things, just ranted after quoting them. Do you think these behaviors are morally OK for a person to decide to do? Yes or no?

-play through a scene they don't want to play through just to get a mechanical advantage

-create scenes or characters which you don't want to play just to get a little mechanical bonus

Say yes or no.

[Mistborn]

Expecting absolute perfection with rules written with perfect wording on par with the best contract lawyers is unrealistic.

Nirvana fallacy, go fuck yourself

But I guess you've played under some really godawful DMs if the response to a situational +2 bonus is that the sky is falling and the entire game world's social structure is rewritten. lol. That's just sad man.

Benoist Fallacy, go fuck yourself

Like in your life I think you've got more shit to worry about than some minor conditional bonus.

Ad hominem, go fuck yourself

If people listened to your group, RPG players would never be able to have nice things and everyone would be playing a featureless board game because every designer would be paranoid of writing some minor miscellaneous equipment item that totally sends the game world to hell.

Slippery slope, go fuck yourself

Why don't you try some real arguments, otherwise go fuck yourself

[darkmaster]

Yes, those are things that are okay to do, it's a shame your stupid shitty rules encourage that and if the rules you wrote were better it wouldn't be but as they do and you refuse to fix it so fair wampum sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. Of course, I'm never going to play with you, so I never have to suffer through your shitty, shitty, game conceits and can, in fact, just play fun games with my friends using rules we generally agree more or less work with some patch work here and there.

But if you want to run shit games for twats then you go on and do that you little shit stain.

[PhoneLobster]

Yes or no?

-play through a scene they don't want to play through just to get a mechanical advantage

YOU, Justin Bieber, cannot even decide if YOU want people to rant on about playing the kazoo. YOU alternate between calling it good role play and calling it so bad they are dead child taunting assholes you will kick from your saintly perfect game table.

Perhaps YOU need to decide "yes or no" on the Kazoo scene "dilemma" before you imagine in your feverish stupidity that you have somehow crafted a winning false choice argument.

-create scenes or characters which you don't want to play just to get a little mechanical bonus

Say yes or no.

Again, YOU, Justin Bieber, are the one who wrote the rule that does that.

YOU wrote the rule that creates scenes and characters YOU don't want just in order to grant a small mechanical bonus. You even added in the additional (secret) rule that you would extend the unwanted scenes, and make them MORE punitively unwanted!

YOU DID THAT.

I think that maybe you should be asking Justin Bieber these questions before asking anyone else.

[K]

If you create scenes or characters which you don't want to play just to get a little mechanical bonus, you suck.

I find it really demented that you judge people for wanting to play characters who are good at their character concept.

When they say "I want to play a character who is good at diplomacy" and they pick character options that allow that to happen, that is them cooperatively designing their character with the setting and game. They didn't set their heart on an incredibly narrow character concept that required them to pick a bunch of character abilities that doomed them to suck at the things they wanted to be good at. In fact, they are really happy to have the game narrow the infinite list of character concepts for them by having a short list of options that are good for their character concept and thus offloading some of the design work on the game and setting. A lot of people get excited when not every part of their character has been designed by them, and this is why they buy expansion material like splatbooks instead of writing up their own material.

It's a very weird world-view that condemns people for wanting to be warriors who are good at fighting and diplomats who are good at convincing people. I think it could only be the world-view of a poseur condemning non-poseurs for not being poseurs.

[Kaelik]

I guess you never played D&D or play it different than me, because every time Fiddlin Joe (Patrick Stuart of False Machine) takes out his fiddle and proposes to play a king or villager a tune, it's fun and there's tension about whether he'll do it or fuck up the whole deal.

Im sorry to hear your game is much worse than mine.

Remember guys, playing the game differently from Zak S is not playing the game worse, because Left Handed Scissors, and fun is subjective. But playing the game differently than Zak S is worse because [Zak contradicting himself from months ago while refusing to admit that he is contradicting himself].

[Prak]

Well if anything has come of this thread, it's that I've seriously reconsidered my opinion of Zak. While there is certainly a "wrong" way to play rpgs, it is not "anyway which is different from some magical one true way" that one specific person (Zak, myself, anyone else here) holds the secret knowledge of. The only real "wrong" may to play an rpg is to me an insulting, fun-ruining bag of dicks to the other people at the table, purely for your own amusement "because fuck the rest of the people here, it's really all about me."

This kind of includes kicking people out of your game (a mature adult would talk the person about their disruptive behaviour first, but I know that's beyond certain porn performerpersons here).

Protip- playing in a way you disapprove of, but does not, in itself, prevent other people from enjoying the game in their own ways, is not disruptive. Bogging down play with bullshit demands and pointless npc-mockery because you disapprove of someone else's way to play is however, disruptive.

So, Zak, much like here, where you call people stupid and wads and refuse to engage in honest, intelligent debate, and then blame everyone else, it would seem that you are the problem in hypothetical games away from your groupthink-washed friends.

[codeGlaze]

Holy.
Fuck.

Just add a fucking disclaimer to the rule:

Code: Select all

"When the instrument is used in a thematically appropriate manner (ie. Impressing a ladyfolk, soothing a beast/angry child/sick scientist, sing a man back from a ledge) AND the instrument isn't offensive to their sensibilities (ie. Playing bagpipes ), you might get a +1 bonus!".

It's really not that fucking hard to make a rule conditional. It's a pretty basic fucking concept you overly sensitive egotistical fuckstick.

[PhoneLobster]

Just add a fucking disclaimer to the rule:

But it already HAS that disclaimer.

Only it's secret and you have to read his mind to find it.

And if you don't and you defy the disclaimer instead of just not getting the bonus he wastes everyone's time with deliberately bogging down the game, humiliating taunting, and then kicks you out and tells everyone how you are the sort of person who taunts people about their recently dead children.

See. Perfectly reasonable behaviour on Justin Bieber's part there.

[Ancient History]

You haven't addressed these things, just ranted after quoting them. Do you think these behaviors are morally OK for a person to decide to do? Yes or no?

Okay, we'll play this game again. You lost last time.

-play through a scene they don't want to play through just to get a mechanical advantage

Yes. People do a lot of things they don't want to in order to get things that they do want. There are plenty of people that want to just go slay the dragon, but maybe they need to grind rabbits or do a sidequest to level up and get the widget first. A dude not interested in playing the lyre that nevertheless plays the lyre when necessary to convince the Queen not to cut off their heads is completely justifiable.

-create scenes or characters which you don't want to play just to get a little mechanical bonus

Yes. Lots of people get stuck being the cleric because the party needs a healer. Obviously you might like to play a tank or artillery support, but sometimes you have to take one for the team. And if you're going to play a character you don't particularly like, they might as well be damn good at what they do.

[momothefiddler]

If it's morally objectionable to play a scene you don't want to in order to get a mechanical bonus, I and all the rest of the people who dislike our jobs are just going to have to starve, aren't we? How evil it is of me to spend hours on a shitty, mind-numbing task, just to get more gp dollars!

EDIT: AH said it better and first.

[Prak]

Momo, what do you do, and how much do you make? I might be willing to be the evil asshole who does something they don't want, and split the pay with you while you sit on your ass and do what you do want to do.

[momothefiddler]

That's certainly appreciated, but I do what's basically factory work (i.e. repeatedly manipulating small things) (so your (presumed) distance is a problem) for which I get paid per-unit (so 'how much' is hard to answer) and the hours are fantastically inconsistent (whatever 'how much' is, it's not enough for you to be ok with splitting "maybe there'll be some work this week"). If you actually care about the details, PM me or something, but I'm assuming you don't.

Besides, that'd still be evil of you, and we can't have that, can we? *spends hours making jokes about how lame your/my job is to punish you for doing it*

[souran]

I know Souran and Cyberzombie have some weird grognardy/4E hybrid insanity stuff going on where they want to rail against certain very sane and basic ideas about good GMing and good rules design. But I think they are really picking the wrong rule, the wrong methodology and the wrong guy to attempt to defend here.

You have it wrong. I am merely trying to point out why this forum has a reputation as a place filled with the people Cook was railing against.

A rule that gives you a benefit to social rolls for playing an instrument is a bad rule that will get used by players all the time. There is, quite literally, no reason for a player NOT to do it.

However, when a person jumps from that to "This turns the game into a musical" or "Every NPC learns the Kazoo!" as was suggested by one of the more well known posters of this site, that is what makes people think of how they don't want to play with assholes. Its the sort of thing that gets pilloried on something awful.

As cracked has pointed out several dozen times, it takes 7000 HOURS of practice at something to get to the point where you are proficient at it. For a musical instrument that is not the time to become good, that is just acceptable enough that people don't ask you to stop if you play around them. If the NPCs were at all organic, and assuming that your NPCs experience there world in real time and not the compressed time that PCs always do, the idea that everybody would acquire a musical talent to function in society then is clearly illogical. That time could simply be better spent getting better at what you actually fucking care about, including diplomacy itself!

On the other hand a player never has to practice or do anything to get that bonus. They don't have to start learning an instrument when they are 4 or 5 years old and practice daily to play a character who has done those things. They have this advantage because while they control the character they don't have to experience the characters life.

The NPCs shouldn't act like they exist in a gameworld, they should act like their world operates by the physics (and often metaphysics) that the fluff of their world described, even if its entirely unsupported by crunch. Unless the peoples of your fantasy world actually believe that everything is decided by the roll of cosmic dice they shouldn't act like they can hunt down bonuses to particular actions.