The Gaming Den

nockermensch wrote:Dude, since we're friends now, at least read my entire posts instead getting all butt-rangered by the very premises.

Kids playing cops and robbers have to adjudicate everything. This is a lot of work. In a RPG with more people playing, having to do that would simply cut down the fun. Therefore, I want the legacy material of D&D that me and my group tend to consider cool and iconic (races, classes, spells, wacky polearms, you name it) AND I want to discard whatever parts of the same material that I feel that detract from the fun. This kind of having the cake and eating it too is a completely possible position in this situation. Case in point, I want games where somebody casts Bigby's Crushing Hand and people gasp at the badassness just implied, but then if the story demands there's some appropriate asspull that destroys the hand. You can only break expectations if you build them first.

Yet another character I played was an extra life of another character. Yet again, that started as a "let the dice fall" kind of game, where the DM ran a hard meatgrinder adventure that kind of obviously ground our party down to one surviving PC. Since we were in a hardcore/oldschool mood back then (in fact, since that was way back to 2e days, I think it was not an "oldschool mood", but plain "authentic oldschool"), we laughed at the gruesome deaths, thought that that was awesome, made more characters and came back for more. The result was that the same character survived again, for pure luck (and/or the help of his Bladesinger kit, but since we were like level 2, in 2e and with the enemies casting evocations, mostly luck).

That was when we decided that the situation was precious enough to merit a story: That character was obviously Marked by Fate for some Great Goal. The next chracters rolled were adapted to play that story. My own character was sent by the goddess of fate to watch over "the chosen one" and had the special ability to die irrevocably to grant the hero another chance in life. We had some serious fun with that, and that extra life character is still my favorite character after all those years. She was a surly evoker that absolutely hated the guy she had to protect, but still jumped to guard him at every chance. With that being 2e, a Dex 19 darts throwing evoker could raise some serious hell and yet, about 6 adventures later, she sacrificed herself so that the chosen one could revive. Then I rolled a fighter that got the girl in the end.

When we compare and contrast games like that one (I'm not the only one with experiences like that, right? Right?!) with the Den's favorite target, the self-entitled basketweaver, I think the actual culprit is the lack of communication in a group. If say, a player tried to pull that "chosen one" story on a table without people who were already his friends, that would sound weird and merit accusations of touching the DM's penis. But the inverse is also true, as my new friend knows too well. If you arrive with a character made to play "by the book" to a game where people are busy weaving baskets, there will be conflict, RL drama and hurt butts.

Finally, the SGT50(tm) is an useful tool at the game's designing stage. It's a very cool test that should be used before the actual game ships, so that people can be sure that every class/build is about the same level. It can even be used as an "you have to be this tall to play here" ruler, on games where everybody is alright with that. But it's certainly not a gateway to the Correct Way to Play D&D, mostly because D&D "as is" is unbalanced as hell, and people still had their fun with it.

Kaelik wrote:What the fuck do you think, "And you grind them into dust" is if not a fucking call to drive people away from the hobby.

nockermensch wrote:

Kids playing cops and robbers have to adjudicate everything. This is a lot of work. In a RPG with more people playing, having to do that would simply cut down the fun. Therefore, I want the legacy material of D&D that me and my group tend to consider cool and iconic (races, classes, spells, wacky polearms, you name it) AND I want to discard whatever parts of the same material that I feel that detract from the fun. This kind of having the cake and eating it too is a completely possible position in this situation. Case in point, I want games where somebody casts Bigby's Crushing Hand and people gasp at the badassness just implied, but then if the story demands there's some appropriate asspull that destroys the hand. You can only break expectations if you build them first.

Yet another character I played was an extra life of another character. Yet again, that started as a "let the dice fall" kind of game, where the DM ran a hard meatgrinder adventure that kind of obviously ground our party down to one surviving PC. Since we were in a hardcore/oldschool mood back then (in fact, since that was way back to 2e days, I think it was not an "oldschool mood", but plain "authentic oldschool"), we laughed at the gruesome deaths, thought that that was awesome, made more characters and came back for more. The result was that the same character survived again, for pure luck (and/or the help of his Bladesinger kit, but since we were like level 2, in 2e and with the enemies casting evocations, mostly luck).

That was when we decided that the situation was precious enough to merit a story: That character was obviously Marked by Fate for some Great Goal. The next chracters rolled were adapted to play that story. My own character was sent by the goddess of fate to watch over "the chosen one" and had the special ability to die irrevocably to grant the hero another chance in life. We had some serious fun with that, and that extra life character is still my favorite character after all those years. She was a surly evoker that absolutely hated the guy she had to protect, but still jumped to guard him at every chance. With that being 2e, a Dex 19 darts throwing evoker could raise some serious hell and yet, about 6 adventures later, she sacrificed herself so that the chosen one could revive. Then I rolled a fighter that got the girl in the end.

When we compare and contrast games like that one (I'm not the only one with experiences like that, right? Right?!) with the Den's favorite target, the self-entitled basketweaver, I think the actual culprit is the lack of communication in a group. If say, a player tried to pull that "chosen one" story on a table without people who were already his friends, that would sound weird and merit accusations of touching the DM's penis. But the inverse is also true, as my new friend knows too well. If you arrive with a character made to play "by the book" to a game where people are busy weaving baskets, there will be conflict, RL drama and hurt butts.

nockermensch wrote:Finally, the SGT50(tm) is an useful tool at the game's designing stage. It's a very cool test that should be used before the actual game ships, so that people can be sure that every class/build is about the same level. It can even be used as an "you have to be this tall to play here" ruler, on games where everybody is alright with that. But it's certainly not a gateway to the Correct Way to Play D&D, mostly because D&D "as is" is unbalanced as hell, and people still had their fun with it.

Lord Mistborn wrote:

Kaelik wrote:What the fuck do you think, "And you grind them into dust" is if not a fucking call to drive people away from the hobby.

I'm sorry but people not getting into D&D is a hundred times better than them thinking that they should be playing pretend instead of D&D.

Lord Mistborn wrote:Don't confuse me with GC. What I've been saying is that people who want to play magical fairy princess rather than D&D should not be coddled. I didn't spring into existence with all my optimization skills I learned and so can other people.

I was able to turn my first character into something functional even if I made a lot of bad choices at character generation, my third character was fairly good, and by character seven I had mastered basic optimization. That was at age 14-15 without getting advice from the internet. I find it impossible to believe that other people can't pick up just as quickly. There are even sites to give people the 411 on stuff.

The thing is that players of TTRPGs have been conditioned to rely on GM pity and hate optimization. I'm guessing those attitudes drive more people away from RPG than anything I've ever done.

nockermensch wrote:(I'm not the only one with experiences like that, right? Right?!)

erik wrote:Thrice now you have come to the conclusion that playing pretend is not a classification applicable to D&D.

Do you think... D&D is real?

-snip-

erik wrote:Thrice now you have come to the conclusion that playing pretend is not a classification applicable to D&D.

Do you think... D&D is real?

name_here wrote:There was a time when I got an entire town sucked into the plane of shadow because I dispelled the magic jar cast by a Shadow Demon (who completely kicked our asses, because we were clerics and all our spells were divinations for finding out where the hell the town's buildings were going, and not, say, buffs or daylight, and had no way of healing vile damage) and ended up resolving the situation by smacking a new demigod's shield with a mace of random disaster, and the DM decided that was sufficiently ballsy he was going to crack open his old books and track down the cataclysm table instead of using Wand Of Wonder, reroll nondestructive. It came up Meteors.

Since my character worshiped the god of cataclysm, I officially won that round.

Avoraciopoctules wrote:

nockermensch wrote:(I'm not the only one with experiences like that, right? Right?!)

In the endgame of one campaign, my dwarven necromancer had founded a utopian undead kingdom in the middle of the desert. The dimension-hopping hafling mafia sent a hit squad after him, and then I had the MC stop when he described them appearing in my inner sanctum, explaining that he hadn't really appreciated the scope of the air fortress my PC used as his base of operations.

We had a momentary reversal, where I MCed the dungeon crawl of the campaign MC's hit squad trying to find and kill my PC. There was a huge maze filled with traps, and the only way onward involved going through illusionary ceiling. That was a fun game.

Shorter Nockermensch wrote:Guys! I've played in MTP-heavy campaigns! Like where we mostly used MTP to cover portions of the story that aren't described well or at all by the rules - like estate management, romance, and bloodline perpetuation. And we were allowed to play nominally unusual character types based on events in the setting!

FrankTrollman wrote:

Lord Mistborn's "stop having fun doing things I don't like!" stance is pretty cringeworthy, but why are you all letting nockermensch's incoherent tirades pass without eyerolling? Is it the TL;DR effect brought about by his monstrously long walls of text?

I mean, let's look at the first post. Actually, let's not because it's way too fucking long and doesn't go anywhere. Let's look at a much shorter version of the first post:

Shorter Nockermensch wrote:Guys! I've played in MTP-heavy campaigns! Like where we mostly used MTP to cover portions of the story that aren't described well or at all by the rules - like estate management, romance, and bloodline perpetuation. And we were allowed to play nominally unusual character types based on events in the setting!

The correct answer to that is to raise eyebrows and ask "So fucking what? That's how D&D works. To the extent it works at all, it has always been by shunting to MTP when the rules are incomplete. Character options are always supposed to be limited by the setting, so any character option that is made available by the setting is not rule-breaking to have". I have no fucking idea how he thinks any of that is a condemnation of "Den Style" or an endorsement of anything at all really. It's not an argument, it's like someone ranting for a page and a half about the time they found a whole quarter on the sidewalk.

The part it goes off the rails is the part where he talks about deciding that one of the characters is important and then turning on the invincibility codes for that character. That is the part that is fucking insane. I cannot imagine a more juvenile and unfair way to pretend to play D&D than that.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:why are you all letting nockermensch's incoherent tirades pass without eyerolling? Is it the TL;DR effect brought about by his monstrously long walls of text?

Frank Trollman wrote:The part it goes off the rails is the part where he talks about deciding that one of the characters is important and then turning on the invincibility codes for that character. That is the part that is fucking insane. I cannot imagine a more juvenile and unfair way to pretend to play D&D than that.

FrankTrollman wrote:The part it goes off the rails is the part where he talks about deciding that one of the characters is important and then turning on the invincibility codes for that character. That is the part that is fucking insane. I cannot imagine a more juvenile and unfair way to pretend to play D&D than that.

Red_Rob wrote:I think you're missing his point.

Mistborn is saying that playing anything other than the One True Way is gaming heresy and ruins D&D FOREVAR!!!!11!!! Nocker is pointing out that if everyone at the table is onboard, then you play however you want.

Red_Rob wrote:The only problem I can see is if people then think the rules-fudged version is the correct rules, or if people think because they fudged it then rules problems don't exist. But neither of those arguments nullify Nocker's main point.

nockermensch wrote:1) First I didn't know how to make optimized characters.

2) Then I learned how to make optimized characters.

3) Then I learned that making optimized characters is not important.

My current state is superficially similar to the initial state, the only difference is that I'm conscious about it.

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Making one guy "the chosen one" doesn't generally make for good group dynamics.

Emerald wrote: To play a fighter is to play the game.
To play a wizard is to understand the rules.
To understand the rules, and play a fighter, is to understand the game.

Lord Mistborn wrote: Listen D&D is a game it has rules. If you ignore those rules and just have the DM bullshit the way nocker advocates than you not really playing D&D are you, you're playing fairy tea party. I'm not going to break into you house and piss in your Cheerios if you play in a way I personally dislike. How ever when you pretend your fairy tea party cooperative story session as D&D then there are going to be problems.

It's more than that. People who play fairy tea party cause problems because either they demand accommodation in actual game of D&D. They spout nonsense about "playing the game not the rules". Or get butthurt when someone comes to their game of "D&D" and expects to play D&D.

Fuchs wrote: No, people who think their own way of playing D&D is the correct one and are unable to accept other ways - and compromise if they want to play together - are what cause problems.

It's not as if there are many if any groups who play by the book D&D anyway, almost every group uses house rules, if only to avoid candle of evocation wish loops.

Lord Mistborn wrote:

Fuchs wrote: No, people who think their own way of playing D&D is the correct one and are unable to accept other ways - and compromise if they want to play together - are what cause problems.

It's not as if there are many if any groups who play by the book D&D anyway, almost every group uses house rules, if only to avoid candle of evocation wish loops.

House rules and MTP are different things. House rules are consistent alterations of the rules. MTP is ignoring the rules entirely

Fuchs wrote: So, consistently using lower CR encoutners than the party level is not a house rule, but ignoring rules entirely? Picking encounters that the party can handle is ignoring the rules? Care to explain?