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

[Zak S]

Why do you think that adding more rolls necessarily adds tension?.

I think adding a roll in the place the rule adds it adds tension because I've observed it many times. So have my players. If you doubt me: ask them. They're quite accessible and reachable.

Let's be clear: you won't ask them. Nobody here ever responds when I call their bluff or ask them for evidence.

Except, y'know, everytime I've done it. Which you then ignore or try to misconstrue. 'cause you're inherently dishonest.

Quote me doing that, liar.

[Voss]

Of course the rules aren't going to be perfect. But that still doesn't excuse passively accepting shitty design.

We all passively accept shitty design. Just by buying games like Shadowrun or D&D, we've all actively supported shitty design. If you own or have played any RPG at all, yeah you've supported and accepted shitty design. As RPG players we have to, because there is no non-shitty alternative. If there was the perfect game, we'd all be playing it already.

Oh fuck you and your nonexistent perfect world argument. Saying that some internet shithead's terrible music instrument bullshit is normal and acceptable game design is not related to unachievable perfect ideals.

As for designing rules to account for failure, that's a good thing. There's a reason real life things like parachutes and elevators have backup systems in place, in case the primary system fails. It's not admitting you're a terrible engineer to install a backup system. Installing fail-safes is smart design.

Uh... great for anyone who gives a shit about diving out a plane, I guess. What the fuck 'backup system' are you gibbering about in terms of game design? That people would quite intelligently not use the shitty music instrument diplomacy rule?

So absolutely tell your DM that if he sees a problem forming, he should try to fix it, instead of sitting there like a broken machine while it takes the entire game down with it.

Ah. Here's the problem. You're arguing against a position no one is advocating, which makes it rather sad that you're still losing the argument.

[OgreBattle]

Why not be honest you lying shit bag Justin Bieber.

You don't actually play those earlier editions either now do you?

Of course I do.
What insane universe are you people from?

This is a character sheet from your game, it seems. Most abilities and skills' names look like like 3.X to me (a few others look like you do some extensive house-ruling too, which in itself is not bad).

This is you playing RPG (possibly not the above campaign):

The book with the guy in first plane is from 3.Xe.

[Parthenon]

Of course the rules aren't going to be perfect. But that still doesn't excuse passively accepting shitty design.

We all passively accept shitty design. Just by buying games like Shadowrun or D&D, we've all actively supported shitty design. If you own or have played any RPG at all, yeah you've supported and accepted shitty design. As RPG players we have to, because there is no non-shitty alternative. If there was the perfect game, we'd all be playing it already.

As for designing rules to account for failure, that's a good thing. There's a reason real life things like parachutes and elevators have backup systems in place, in case the primary system fails. It's not admitting you're a terrible engineer to install a backup system. Installing fail-safes is smart design.

So absolutely tell your DM that if he sees a problem forming, he should try to fix it, instead of sitting there like a broken machine while it takes the entire game down with it.

Shut up about this. Resorting to 'the DM can fix it' with all shitty rules or gaps does not solve any problems in a satisfactory way.

Different groups will fix over gaps in different ways- some DMs will get pissy about it and throw out the players that don't agree with them. Like shitmuffin does. Some will create even more shitty rules and insist on using them instead. Like shitmuffin does. Others will pretend to go along with it and secretly fuck over the player and mock them. Like shitmuffin does. All of which are really shitty things to do.

And any which way, a player in the group does not know how it will be in any situation since it can vary so much, which means that they cannot plan ahead and can suddenly be kicked out for doing something within the rules that worked in another game because this DM doesn't think in the same way.

You know what is useful though? Pointing out that a rule is shitty and discussing it. Even if you can't come up with a decent rule that works for all groups, if you can come up with a couple of possible solutions and explain what the consequences will be then DMs seeing the reasoning can decide which solution is better for their group and they have a guide for when they don't have time to discuss a shitty rule.

And the best part of this? If you have a well-reasoned and fully discussed rule then you can even write it down and let newcomers to the group know about the changes to shitty rules rather than let them find out over time that the DM has made hundreds of shitty rules off the top of their head that they refuse to admit aren't perfect. Like shitmuffin does.

[Kaelik]

See if you can follow this:

That's why your rules are for your game and your GMing style and your group.

And my separate rules are for my game and my GMing style and my groups.

And you are all racist dead child taunting assholes who are bad people for not preferring my rules to yours.

Since when is it a vote? I'm allowed to make left-handed scissors for left handed people. The fact that right-handed people outnumber them is irrelevant.

It would probably help if you stopped calling all right handed people racist dead child taunting assholes who are bad people.

[Ancient History]

I think adding a roll in the place the rule adds it adds tension because I've observed it many times. So have my players. If you doubt me: ask them. They're quite accessible and reachable.

Let's be clear: you won't ask them. Nobody here ever responds when I call their bluff or ask them for evidence.

Except, y'know, everytime I've done it. Which you then ignore or try to misconstrue. 'cause you're inherently dishonest.

Quote me doing that, liar.

What, you being dishonest? (Here, we have a fine example of Zak Smith in his native habitat, accusing the entire thread to be built on some point that wasn't introduced until 10+ pages instead of, y'know, any of the number of valid points that the thread had been about! Including, say, the very first post. Critical reading failure or brutal dishonesty? You be the judge, folks!)

Or your ignoring me when I answer your questions? (The latter is a bit hard to quote, so I'll just go to pick one post at random where I responded in detail and you chose to ignore everything except some irrelevant bit at the end where you accuse everyone of being a liar.)

You get your facts wrong, Zak. You misrepresent yourself, your rules, and other people all the time. You make wild accusations and never back them up. Any time someone does choose to try and engage you on your own points, you inevitably start cherry-picking, wandering off topic, and ignoring what they say. You're a terribly dishonest person, Zak Smith.

[Stubbazubba]

Wow, serious? OK, go ask my players, who don't think that's the case.

See if you can follow this:

That's why your rules are for your game and your GMing style and your group.

And my separate rules are for my game and my GMing style and my groups.

..but I'm an asshole for playing with my rules, and you're not because you play with your rules, right? And you don't care what other people think about your rules, right? Except to write a whiny blog post about it and call them assholes, right?

Man you suck at this. Again: if you want to prove you're smarter & more conscientious about rules than me, prove you can do some basic research.

I asked you a question. That was my research. Don't worry, I'll start harassing your players right away because you felt the need to put them out on a limb, but then pull this childish side-step when I want you to put your money where your mouth is. They deserve better.

Was there a basis before I wrote it? In Pendragon, FASERIP and Call of Cthulhu I noticed that when the dice decide whether players are good or bad at things they do incidentally (like cook a thing or bake a thing or sing a thing) everyone gets excited and pays attention and there's a feeling I'd describe as "tension" surrounding the roll. And there's even more when there's some stake associated with the roll (even if it's small). So I ported it to my hack of D&D, which had no other mechanism for doing this before I wrote the rule.

Whoa, dude, you just answered a question head on, and didn't passive-aggressively side-step it with middle school taunts. That is a huge milestone for you. Pat yourself on the back.

Unfortunately all you've given me is more "I watched people get excited when X happened, then I put X in my game." Maybe that sounds reasonable on its face, but in reality it says "I have no idea how games or rolling or tension works, I'm just copying what I see real designers do because I'm a poser."

Think about basketball: People get excited and there's a lot of tension when a player shoots a basket, trying to make it. So if we just put a single player on the court and have him repeatedly make shots, would that be really exciting?

(I'll answer for you because you'll dodge the question if I don't)

No, obviously it wouldn't. Shooting baskets is just one element in the whole context of basketball. It happens to be the element where lots of other things come together and which the stakes depend on, but without those other elements, the shots lose their tension.

[Now I know you don't like reading very many sentences at a time, but if you're still with me I want to tell you you're doing good, just keep it up and you'll get through it.]

Similarly, people getting excited or feeling tense when they roll is about a lot more than just the fact that they're rolling and some piddly bonus or some piddly penalty might come of it. That's just the single basketball player shooting without context.

You want to talk about rules, about game design? Now you do some research. Give me a theory about what kinds of context, what combinations of elements, combine to make rolls in those other games tense or not. That's game design, not just ripping off surface elements from other games you observe but don't understand and gluing them into inappropriate places in your game.

[PhoneLobster]

Of course I do.
What insane universe are you people from?

The one where you are on the record here saying the actual game you play is an insane Rube Golberg machine Frankenstiened together from random rotting corpse fragments of just short of every edition of actual D&D ever, any other game that strikes your fancy, and every random piece of bullshit you "perfectly" make up on the spot kept forever and only ever added to with "clarifications".

Only you never write any of it down because you never reference it later in text form, and indeed you never refer to anything from any rule books because you claim merely cracking one open is innately bad for your game, so basically all the bits of other games like D&D and so on actually might be anything that you imagined you remembered you saw some guy once tell a tall tale about.

You are so far beyond "marginally house ruled D&D" or even "Heavily house ruled D&D" that you don't get to pull a "fuck you for your ignorance of the official rules of the specific well known totally real D&D I play" claim, you don't even get to say you play D&D, you play fantasy Justin Bieber wank athon time.

Edit: Also worth noting, pointing out this prior claim, throwing in the pictured character sheet runs some pretty good evidence that you are (again) lying, this time both on your claim that you play some sort of D&D game anyone would recognize AND on your claim that you don't use 3E D&D rules. Which is in all honesty a REALLY impressive combination, it is actually really HARD to lie about BOTH those things simultaneously! But hey. Justin Bieber breaking new ground in dishonest stupidity since SHUT UP ITS NO EDITION YOU HAVE EVER HEARD OF BUT IT IS REAL D&D!

[Whipstitch]

sweet yeezus, this thread needs cliff's notes.

[DSMatticus]

I think adding a roll in the place the rule adds it adds tension because I've observed it many times. So have my players. If you doubt me: ask them. They're quite accessible and reachable.

Let's be clear: you won't ask them. Nobody here ever responds when I call their bluff or ask them for evidence.

Except, y'know, everytime I've done it. Which you then ignore or try to misconstrue. 'cause you're inherently dishonest.

Quote me doing that, liar.

So, this argument is only spread out over four pages, which means that unlike the 30 page crapfests the other threads became I can actually still walk through the entire exchange and show all the relevant bits to the people sitting in the peanut gallery shouting "WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL ARGUING WITH HIM?!" And then all those people can see Zak for the scumsucking shitbag who tells naught but lies that he actually is, and then they will be like "WE KNOW, THAT'S WHY YOU'RE A DUMBASS FOR DOING THIS TO YOURSELF." And then I will sob and beg people to save me from myself.

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.

But if the first baseman does this (despite the fact that the rules allow it and incentivize it) then it reveals that the first baseman is an asshole

Zak is arguing that despite the fact that outrageous assholery is rules permissible, the behavior itself still makes you an asshole. Issues of prior restraint have nothing to do with this argument so far. A rule hasn't even been mentioned yet.

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.

I am arguing that if the rules permit outrageous assholery, why would you defend the rules and advocate not changing them? (Aside: it's not like rules concerning sportsmanlike conduct are new.) This, also, has nothing to do with issues of prior restraint. A rule that calls for kicking players out of the game after they engage in outrageous assholery would, in fact, be a rule change that addresses outrageous assholery without prior restraint.

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.

Zak is arguing that the rules should not be rewritten [to address matters of outrageous assholery], but that you should still just kick those people out no matter what the rules say. Still, no sign of prior restraint being relevant: arguing that the rules should not be changed at all is very much not the same as arguing that the rules should not be changed to accomodate prior restraint. See above - that is, again, a rule change (what Zak is actually arguing against) without prior restraint (what Zak is claiming he has been arguing against).

You're arguing that writing a rule to punish people for excessively offensive speech is impractical because it's difficult to identify excessively offensive speech. Therefore, instead, you should just correctly identify excessively offensive speech as you hear it and then punish people.

This is in direct response to the above quote, and as such is pretty unambiguous: I'm pointing out that in order to kick people out of the game for excessively offensive speech, even without a rule, you still have to be able to identify excessively offensive speech! You aren't actually making the task any easier by refusing to make it a rule. Does prior restraint have anything to do with this? Of course not. We're still talking about whether or not rules which permit outrageous assholery should be changed at all, which is not a matter of prior restraint.

To quote a man we all know:"The supreme court has roundly rejected prior restraint"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_restraint

If you disagree with the Supreme Court's reasoning here, then you are saying the rules of baseball should be changed. Is that what you are saying?

And this is the first mention of prior restraint. As you can tell, it...

came out of left field.

Do you remember when you brought up prior restraint in an argument that was very clearly not about prior restraint, and then when everyone told you that you were an idiot and did not know what prior restraint was, you tried to pretend that the argument had been prior restraint the entire time? And then you kept lying about that right up until I actually traced the argument from its start to your first mention of prior restraint, demonstrating that at each step that prior restraint was clearly not an aspect of the discussion? Do you remember then shutting the fuck up and changing the topic?

Now, I was fine letting you do that. I'm not going to hound you down until you admit you were wrong on the internet (though, frankly, it's something you could afford to learn to do, because for someone who spends so much time being wrong you have a substantial, and substantially undeserved, ego). But if you're going to pretend that you've never been caught with your hand in the cookie jar of intellectual dishonesty I'm happy to remind you that I just fucking caught you!

When AH accuses you of ignoring and misconstruing your opponents' arguments, the only thing he's getting wrong is the order: you misconstrue them until someone sorts their way through your bullshit, then you ignore them and change the topic. And that is basically how all arguments with you go - you are fucking pathologically dishonest. You seem to have zero hesitation when you think saying something that is absolutely not true will help you. It's seriously fucking creepy. That's not generic insulting internet hyperbole. You are genuinely goddamn disturbing.

Aside to everyone still seriously trying to argue with Zak: you can't argue with Zak the way you're trying to. He's running a gish gallop of moved goalposts, strawmen, lies, and fallacies. And when you rebut him, he will just change the topic through cherrypicking or barely connected tangents (or straight up ignore it) and then come back to the exact same point later as though it hadn't been rebutted and demand you start the process of rebutting him all over again.

You are (collectively) trying to argue with him by addressing each individual piece of bullshit. Given that at each step of this iterative process there is more bullshit than the previous step AND that Zak S is in fact a bullshit necromancer who will reanimate his defeated arguments, the task you have set for yourself is impossible. You're doing nothing but letting Zak run around the battlefield until his "animate bulllshit" cooldown wears off and he can take you back to square one.

The best way to handle a gish gallop is to demonstrate that the person making it is not arguing in good faith. Instead of letting them make a bajillion arguments, pick an argument they've made and force them to defend it (and nothing else) until they destroy their own credibility with an insane/incoherent/deceitful defense or admit that they were wrong. Repeat for second, third, and nth arguments until it's obvious that the person in question has no credibility. I.e. stop taking his fucking bait and make him defend his shitty points until he can't anymore.

[darkmaster]

Okay, let me sum it up for everyone.

[Voss]

sweet yeezus, this thread needs cliff's notes.

Some idiot wrote a shitty rule, and arrived to defend his worthless waste of space from evil people who are assholes. [And they're identifiable as such because they have the brainpower to look at it and immediately identify it as shit]. And failing to defend his work against strangers on the internet is his only method of validating his existence, which is why this has gone on for several days.

Monte Cook doesn't want to actually do game design work, because critical thinking exists, and anyone who exercises it in a game context is an unbelievable asshole.

Shadzar got banned

Cyberzombie thinks that only bad game design is possible, and everyone should just shut up and take it, because the DM can fix it in play.

[Kaelik]

The best way to handle a gish gallop is to demonstrate that the person making it is not arguing in good faith. Instead of letting them make a bajillion arguments, pick an argument they've made and force them to defend it (and nothing else) until they destroy their own credibility with an insane/incoherent/deceitful defense or admit that they were wrong. Repeat for second, third, and nth arguments until it's obvious that the person in question has no credibility. I.e. stop taking his fucking bait and make him defend his shitty points until he can't anymore.

To be fair, even if you just do that, he just ignores you and gish gallops while quoting other people.

I mean, I've literally just been popping in and using his own left handed scissors analogy to rebut his claim that everyone who doesn't like his rules is a racist dead child taunting asshole who is a bad person, and then using his racist dead child taunting asshole bad person accusations whenever he starts left handed scissoring.

But instead of addressing the contradiction he just ignores everything I say (and will defend that ignoring by claiming that anyone who has ever used satire to make a point literally literally no literally he actually said this, deserves to die).

And yet, still, every two pages or so he manages to repeat both that left handed scissors means his objectively bad rule is totally good because his players are idiots who either are too stupid to do math or deliberately act irrationally, or he repeats his accusation that anyone who doesn't like his rules is a racist dead child taunting asshole bad person.

[Chamomile]

The best way to handle a gish gallop is to demonstrate that the person making it is not arguing in good faith. Instead of letting them make a bajillion arguments, pick an argument they've made and force them to defend it (and nothing else) until they destroy their own credibility with an insane/incoherent/deceitful defense or admit that they were wrong. Repeat for second, third, and nth arguments until it's obvious that the person in question has no credibility. I.e. stop taking his fucking bait and make him defend his shitty points until he can't anymore.

This is absolutely correct. But it only works if other people don't give Zak more fodder to work with in between posts, because then Zak can outright ignore the people hammering him with his own dishonesty to focus on other posts, without appearing to have abandoned the argument altogether. After all, people have limited time and it is not automatically unreasonable to ignore certain posts, so it is not immediately clear when Zak ignores a specific post that he's doing it because he can't argue against it.

And the only point of arguing with Zak at this stage is either the satisfaction of seeing him hung by his own indefensible arguments or else warning other people off of taking mechanical advice from him (and also if they happen to know him in person it might be worth pointing out how incredibly deceitful he is online - it may or may not spill over into realspace but it's something I'd want to be aware of). The only way to accomplish either of these is to stop feeding him and start cornering him.

This also has the incidental benefit of being more entertaining for me.

[Cyberzombie]

You know what is useful though? Pointing out that a rule is shitty and discussing it.

Yeah, that is useful. No doubt about that. In this particular case, I don't really see much point to it though, because the rule is attached to the social system, and social systems have been discussed to death on this forum without ever reaching anything close a satisfying conclusions. In the end most people here say "I hate using MTP, but there isn't anything that works better at producing anything close to real conversations."

And given the musical instrument rule gives a bonus to social checks, it's not really worth discussing from a design standpoint. Likely if we could get a social system that works within context, then your musical instrument rules can just use whatever contextual rules that has, but since that has yet to be done... there's nothing to really discuss. Show me a working social system and then I'll worry about how to plug in the effects of music, until then music is MTP because the social system is MTP. I have no problem discussing rules, but there's no point in designing a new steering wheel for a car with a non-functional engine.

Besides, the thread is more about Monte's point of view regarding rules exploits more so than that specific rule anyway.

[zugschef]

Worst thread ever.

A guy who must not be named on coke is trolling a bunch of geeks who seriously don't have anything better to do than set a guy who must not be named on coke, who is trolling them, straight again and again and again.

[Ancient History]

Honestly, it happened this way last time. Which is what I warned him about, in private, before he started calling people names. I'm sort of amazed it's happening again, but if nothing else Zak is stubborn.

[zugschef]

Honestly, it happened this way last time. Which is what I warned him about, in private, before he started calling people names. I'm sort of amazed it's happening again, but if nothing else Zak is stubborn.

This thread is worse because it is happening again.

[Prak]

Why do you think that adding more rolls necessarily adds tension?.

I think adding a roll in the place the rule adds it adds tension because I've observed it many times. So have my players. If you doubt me: ask them. They're quite accessible and reachable.

Let's be clear: you won't ask them. Nobody here ever responds when I call their bluff or ask them for evidence.

Zak, if I were to talk to your players about D&D, it would not be to confirm your anecdotes about them, but rather to try and gather them as players for my own game if I were to move to the area, since I need more than just my southern California friend who wants to learn D&D.

I'm willing to believe that your group does enjoy your game. That or they at least enjoy something about it and are willing to do something they don't enjoy to get something they do--which has been pointed out previously to be something real people actually do. In fact, I would bet... anything I have, which sadly isn't actually much, that your players have actually done things at some point in their lives which they don't enjoy, like copious takes of uncomfortable scenes, to get something they do enjoy, such as money or the things it can buy.

People are different. I don't often read your blog, but when I do, and you talk about your players, I have always gotten the distinct impression that they were not rpg players prior to playing in your games, so they've kind of been formed by that experience, possibly with no other games to give them a taste of other play styles.

However, I will bet that if you approached Gypsillia's player and asked her "hey, do you want Gypsillia to be even better at killing fools from the shadows?" she would say "yes" and that if you offered her a magical pouch that allowed her to use produce flame at will, and advised her to take two weapon fighting and quick draw, that she would do it. If you asked her if she wanted Gypsillia to be better at hiding, and told her that there was a ritual to a demon lord of silence she could perform by stripping down and wandering out into the desert for a week, that she would have Gypsillia do that too, even though Gypsillia as a character probably has little desire to wander around a desert in the buff for a week.

But I digress from my point. I know people who play D&D and prefer rules light systems. I know three people who would quite possibly have a ball in your games, and one them actually considers himself to be a minmaxer (he just thinks story is more important, and happens to suck at optimization), the other two seem like they would rather hit themselves with a sledge hammer than learn rules. I know people like this, so I don't, for an instant, deny that your players probably do enjoy your DM'ing style and that your rules probably do function more or less as you intend them to in game (mostly because your actual weakness seems to be in writing rules down, you seem to be a very "it's all up here" kind of DM)

For what it's worth Zak, and you can think whatever you want of me for it, I really couldn't care less, given what you've said the rules you use are like-

We don't use much in the way of baseline. Spells, saves and to-hit and bonuses for sunday come out of 3.5 mostly (heavily modified) and spells, saves and to hit for monday come out of AD&D mostly (heavily modified), but everything is house-ruled as it comes up or is requested and comes from all over the place.

But the smart thing to do when confused about a rule is ask and the dumb thing to do is to pretend that (despite the fact I run D&D all the time) I am creating an imaginary game to fuck with you.

I wouldn't know how to even attempt to play in your group, unless I sat down with you for like five hours and asked how your game handles every possible action I could imagine wanting to perform and writing it down to refer to. I mean, just on this bit above, I don't know if by "Spells, saves and to-hit and bonuses for sunday come out of 3.5 mostly" and "spells, saves and to hit for monday come out of AD&D mostly" you mean the rules actually change based on the day of the week (and whether that's in game or out of game day of the week, and whether that's two different games if out of game day of the week), or if Monday and Sunday are stand in text for something else. I could not play a game where I had to ask the DM how he wanted me to resolve every attempted action, because at that point I kind of might as well just be doing literally anything else if I don't know how to go about doing the things I want to do to have the best chance of success at doing those things. Without at least a basic system set down somewhere (like "this book and this list of house rules which overrule it") I wouldn't even know what to do.

Was there a basis before I wrote it? In Pendragon, FASERIP and Call of Cthulhu I noticed that when the dice decide whether players are good or bad at things they do incidentally (like cook a thing or bake a thing or sing a thing) everyone gets excited and pays attention and there's a feeling I'd describe as "tension" surrounding the roll. And there's even more when there's some stake associated with the roll (even if it's small). So I ported it to my hack of D&D, which had no other mechanism for doing this before I wrote the rule.

This is actually kind of interesting, and I could probably hypothesize as to why... but in general, what most people here have observed, I think, is that people want more control over whether their character is good or bad at something rather than having their cooking or singing or writing ability determined entirely by what the dice say.

Wow, serious? OK, go ask my players, who don't think that's the case.

See if you can follow this:

That's why your rules are for your game and your GMing style and your group.

And my separate rules are for my game and my GMing style and my groups.

..but I'm an asshole for playing with my rules, and you're not because you play with your rules, right? And you don't care what other people think about your rules, right? Except to write a whiny blog post about it and call them assholes, right?

Yeah, this is really our sticking point with you, Zak, I mean, there are a lot, but if you hadn't called us horrible assholes and likened us to people who taunt others about their dead children, but instead said "hey, it works for the way my group and I run, I'm not advocating it for any other playstyle" we'd have basically ended this by the start of the second page of this thread.

Cyberzombie thinks that only bad game design is possible, and everyone should just shut up and take it, because the DM can fix it in play.

...I swear there's a religion founded on a philosophy similar to that...

[Ancient History]

Honestly, it happened this way last time. Which is what I warned him about, in private, before he started calling people names. I'm sort of amazed it's happening again, but if nothing else Zak is stubborn.

This thread is worse because it is happening again.

You're not wrong.

[ishy]

sweet yeezus, this thread needs cliff's notes.

Some idiot wrote a shitty rule, and arrived to defend his worthless waste of space from evil people who are assholes. [And they're identifiable as such because they have the brainpower to look at it and immediately identify it as shit]. And failing to defend his work against strangers on the internet is his only method of validating his existence, which is why this has gone on for several days.

Cyberzombie thinks that only bad game design is possible, and everyone should just shut up and take it, because the DM can fix it in play.

Not exactly.

Cyberzombie thinks gamedesigners should not care if their rules are bad or not, because a GM can fix it.

Zak's blog post was not about the rule itself. The rule was an example. His core point is that people who do things, for the sole purpose that those actions benefit them in some manner (and assume non-player characters act that way too) are assholes.

---

And because this is important

Frank made a statement of fact. You did incentivize certain behavior. You did obviously intend this, because you gave a mechanical bonus for succeeding, and a better than average chance of succeeding. If you did not want to incentivize this, there would be no bonus. You may or may not have also intended to introduce an element of tension, since there's a penalty and a dice roll involved, but you quite obviously did include an incentive.

Whether or not it was his intent is just a waste of time. But you're wrong here Ancient.
Even if there is no bonus, just offering the option as a valid choice already incentivises it.
For example, if I run a campaign and tell people they can pick profession lawyer in that campaign. People will assume that being a lawyer is somehow useful, while other professions may not be useful at all. A clear incentive.

[Voss]

Worst thread ever.

A guy who must not be named on coke is trolling a bunch of geeks who seriously don't have anything better to do than set a guy who must not be named on coke, who is trolling them, straight again and again and again.

Really? It strikes me more as someone desperate to validate himself to a group he claims to despise. So, less trolling and more providing himself as a masochistic piñata to be beaten unto death.

[zugschef]

Worst thread ever.

A guy who must not be named on coke is trolling a bunch of geeks who seriously don't have anything better to do than set a guy who must not be named on coke, who is trolling them, straight again and again and again.

Really? It strikes me more as someone desperate to validate himself to a group he claims to despise. So, less trolling and more providing himself as a masochistic piñata to be beaten unto death.

The key is coke.

[Zak S]

..but I'm an asshole for playing with my rules, and you're not because you play with your rules, right?

No: strawman.

You can play with your rules and not be an asshole. Any edition of D&D and infinite hacks can be played by non-assholes.

I have sketched out 2 ways to be an asshole about games here and in that post and neither is playing your rules.

WAY 1: If you say (as you all so often do) that my rules are bad because they do not prevent a problem that never occurs at my table because of the make-up of the table then you're an asshole.

If you say "this rule won't work my group" GREAT you've said something sane for grown ups. If you say "this rule won't work most groups" GREAT you've said something sane for grown ups (though hard to prove). If you say "this rule is bad" you are an asshole who thinks the world revolves around you or you believe only majorities have the right to games they enjoy. Me and at least 1000-2000-odd readers repeatedly find my rules stable and functional for the groups we have. Even if nobody else has a group like that, that's enough to justify the existence of those rules--considering (as you so often forget) there is a cost to using more complex rules instead of the ones we do use.

Note this assessment is practical--we don't just like the rules, we actually use them and observe them producing the kinds of sessions we enjoy and want to play week after week. This is important--it's not "our word against yours"--its us flying around in a plane against your word that the plane won't fly.

The only possible defense for you (besides deciding we have no right to entertainment) is you predicting the plane will one day explode. Yet all possible remedies you propose, when tried, cause the plane to explode immediately or at least lose altitude immediately. So if you would like to be believed: come up with a better solution than you have heretofore.

And show some experimental respect toward the number of years and sessions the plane's been flying successfully for hundreds if not thousands of people (online DIY D&D play via G+ hangout is approaching its 3rd anniversary of weekly games now).

WAY 2: This one has nothing to do with rules, really: Another way to be an asshole is to play a non-tournament game with no prize at stake (by any rules) and prioritize your imaginary person's advancement and imaginary "success" over the group as a whole's fun. It's selfish and evil.

Now perhaps your rules are meant to head off asshole behavior by assholes. It does mean using the rules makes you an asshole--it means that part of the rules is only necessary because you fear there may be assholes.

So, no: nothing about your rules. Try again.

[Mistborn]

This thread is worse because it is happening again.

I know it keeps happening.