Still more Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I find that pounding on the keyboard to produce something like :OSIHDF)(SDYPUHGPG usually works fairly well.

I just had to order a replacement keyboard from Hong fucking Kong. For months, I was posting on here without the benefit of a functioning W key. I am not pounding on this thing.

Otherwise, I'd be taking your advice.

So somebody actually does use eMachines products.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=234467

Fifth post down.

Actually, the whole thread was quite informative. I learned two valuable things:

1. Taking someone's weapon away for a round is so much more overpowered than leaving them stunned for a round +.

2. Disarming is mechanically overpowered for 4e because it almost always ends the combat in the movies.

The only halfway valid point against disarming was that it's tough to figure out how it affects the opponent in the new NPC/monster generation rules.

[Maxus]

I find that pounding on the keyboard to produce something like :OSIHDF)(SDYPUHGPG usually works fairly well.

I just had to order a replacement keyboard from Hong fucking Kong. For months, I was posting on here without the benefit of a functioning W key. I am not pounding on this thing.

Otherwise, I'd be taking your advice.

So somebody actually does use eMachines products.

Actually, I've forgotten if my laptop is an eMachine or not.

It's an Acer, though.

[PhoneLobster]

The only halfway valid point against disarming was that it's tough to figure out how it affects the opponent in the new NPC/monster generation rules.

Except then they said that was a GOOD thing and not a flaw.

How dim do they have to be to believe that? How dim do they have to be to believe others will believe them when they say that?

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Yeah. The general idea of having simpler, more abstract NPC/monster rules is a good idea, but when you can't tell what happens if the monster loses its weapon, that's a huge problem.

[Psychic Robot]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread ... ost4363359

CHRIST ALMIGHTY.

Although you're obviously being sarcastic, you're actually more or less correct. The only real error is that you're expressing the relationship in reverse.

For the most part it's true that:

If it's got more positives than negatives, then it's in 4E.
If it's got more negatives than positives, then it's not in 4E.

One thing to remember when evaluating any new edition of any RPG, D&D included, is that the rules we, the players, finally see are the result of years of work by people who design these games professionally and understand them much better than we ever will.

A disarm mechanic is an obvious addition to any combat-oriented RPG. In fact, 3rd Edition already had one right in the Player's Handbook. Therefore, the very fact that 4th Edition doesn't include such a mechanic is extremely powerful evidence that one would detract from the game more than it would enhance it. It practically goes without saying that during the development of 4th Edition the designers had, at some point, included a disarm mechanic. Hell, they probably tried several different versions. But when the rules were finally published, no such mechanic was present. Why? Because they, the experts on the intricacies of this system, had decided that the game was better off without one.

Moreover, a disarm mechanic is in no way special in this regard. There are doubtlessly dozens upon dozens of other ideas that were also tried and rejected because what they brought to the game was outweighed by what they took away from it.

Long story short: If an idea doesn't appear in the game as printed, that's extremely good evidence that the game is better off without it. So unless you've got a better reason for supporting a disarm mechanic than "it's realistic", you should probably trust that the professionals made the right call.

[Maxus]

I'm blinded by the faith.

Edit: actually, there's so many jokes I could make about blind faith.

Sigh.

And there's few things that really depress me more.

[Psychic Robot]

Once upon a time, I wished that divine flames would roar down from the heavens and consume anyone on 4Chan. I now wish to redirect those flames to ENWorld.

It just makes me want to cry. These people...they aren't really people, I don't think. I think they must be WotC robots disguised as humans.

[Koumei]

...I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit.

[virgil]

The pedestal these people put the designers on, sheesh. Stockholm Syndrome really is a good analogy for those people, from the hobby's point of view that is (not trying to offend).

[Maxus]

...I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit.

I just had to take a big drink of sweet tea, right from the pitcher, to get the taste of bile out of mine.

[Psychic Robot]

It's just a stew of idiocy, groupthink, circle-jerking, and ignorance in there, isn't it? That's all ENWorld has to offer. That is all it brings to the Internet. And I'm participating it. I'm bringing out the worst of it. I'm letting the whole world see me with it, like I'm some child playing with feces.

I think I should go take a shower.

[virgil]

Now I remember who that poster is channeling, Gottfried Leibniz! It was on the tip of my tongue until I finally gave in and wiki'd it.

[shau]

I think Psychic robot just destroyed this thread. Nothing can possibly top that one. Nothing.

[Psychic Robot]

Give it time.

[baduin]

"All is well in this best of all the possible worlds"?

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/

I must say that Voltaire was generally an self-important ass, but his parody of Leibniz in Candid was perfect.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Candide/Chapter_8
"I was in bed, and fast asleep, when it pleased Heaven to send the Bulgarians to our delightful castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh, where they murdered my father and brother, and cut my mother in pieces. A tall Bulgarian soldier, six feet high, perceiving that I had fainted away at this sight, attempted to ravish me; the operation brought me to my senses. I cried, I struggled, I bit, I scratched, I would have torn the tall Bulgarian's eyes out, not knowing that what had happened at my father's castle was a customary thing. The brutal soldier, enraged at my resistance, gave me a wound in my left leg with his hanger, the mark of which I still carry."

[virgil]

Thanks for the quote, as it's been ages since I read Voltaire, but his mockery of Leibniz is such that I think of Voltaire whenever I hear of the "best of all the possible worlds".

I think that sums up the philosophy of Psychic_Robot's discovery quite well. Both in how that person thinks of 4E, and the mockery one can have in regards to him.

[Cynic]

So That's what Herr Leibniz meant with the Monads. 4-effing-E.

I just thought he was another fricking mad scientist who fought with Newton about who invented calculus first.


He was a regular modern day Nostradamus albeit in the damnably narrow field of shitty d20 roleplaying products.

[Username17]

Leibniz was a Sorbian. Like me. An ethnicity so obscure that spell checkers don't recognize it. Czech Republic is the first place I've ever been where people even know that those people exist.

---

Until I saw that thread, I didn't think anything in the entire world could make me as sad as the fact that 2 Girls, 1 Cup is actually a preview for a 90 minute long extravaganza from Brazil called "Hungry Bitches."

-Username17

[Calibron]

Until I saw that thread, I didn't think anything in the entire world could make me as sad as the fact that 2 Girls, 1 Cup is actually a preview for a 90 minute long extravaganza from Brazil called "Hungry Bitches."

-Username17

I'm morbidly curious, how exactly did you come across this information?

[Maxus]

Erk.

That touches on so much crap...The theory of what a tabletop game should be, the idea that the designers know what they're doing, the idea that the designers are more interested in turning out the Best Game Evar than they are in turning a profit...

(Actually, I'd say they know what they're doing this time, at least more so than when they released 3.0 and 3.5. I sympathize with them for making a simple, easy-to-understand, hard-to-break, system, if making something complicated leads to arguing points of the rules against someone with Frank-like knowledge and insight. Heck, I wouldn't even want to get into an argument about 3.x rules with Keith, either, and he's the nicer one (online, at least) )

...And, well, the things they're saying are kinda proving that 4e has taken. It has been completely accepted. It's successful. We should probably keep our heads down at other message boards and not make an issue over 3.x's better points.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Psychic Robot,

That hurt. A lot. I have never before seen such blind faith attached to such an insubstantial and transitory thing as a newly reorganized for-profit rpg company.

__________________________

...And, well, the things they're saying are kinda proving that 4e has taken. It has been completely accepted. It's successful. We should probably keep our heads down at other message boards and not make an issue over 3.x's better points.

I'm not sure. Check out the following link: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=232732 For now, lets ignore the percentage of people not playing 3.x or 4e. ~35% of people are switching to 4e, while ~40% of people are staying with a version of 3.x.

Obviously this isn't scientific, and 4e sales have been strong, but there almost certainly is a large silent minority of 3.x fans still.

[Psychic Robot]

Sigh. Apparently they're following me around on the Internet, watching my posts here and bringing them up from the WotC forums.

[Maxus]

Sigh. Apparently they're following me around on the Internet, watching my posts here and bringing them up from the WotC forums.

Welcome to Limbo.

How low can they go?

Edit: After some thought, you *did* make yourself easy to find by using the same board name across multiple boards.

[Psychic Robot]

Yes, I did. However, if someone were bad-mouthing me on another board, I wouldn't cry about how he was clearly trolling on this board because of it.