TNE and Centaurs

[PhoneLobster]

A human can belly crawl into some crazy tight spaces. They can infiltrate a giant weasel lair. It'll suck, but they can do it.

And an Ogre can't.

And Hawkman can't.

And even a fat human or extra broad shouldered human or a hulked out body builder or Hercules or an otherwise on the large size human can't.

And none of them can infiltrate a mer-weasel lair and only hawkman can enter the flying weasel lair and then only if he shrinks.

So what? Who cares? Only you and only because you are desperately groping for the flimsiest of realism excuses which like all the best realism excuses is both incorrect and wouldn't even matter if it WAS correct.

[Username17]

Even your own picture of Hawkman rendered him with his wings folded up no broader than his own shoulders. It's a laughable example.

If you think that the mechanical inability of a character to navigate a hallway or stairwell is an ignorable point then I don't think we have anything to talk about. I'm willing to have people use super strength to lift cars and have those cars not fall apart, but I'm not willing to have that same superhero fit through a space that he is mechanically unable to fit through without breaking things.

That's just where I draw the line. And if you want to have a game that goes past that line, you're welcome to write it yourself. I won't hinder you doing so in any way.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Even your own picture of Hawkman rendered him with his wings folded up no broader than his own shoulders. It's a laughable example.

He is as long as a centaur

If you think that the mechanical inability of a character to navigate a hallway or stairwell is an ignorable point then I don't think we have anything to talk about.

Aparently not, since I really do think the inability to navigate A hallway or stairwell you specifically designed for him to not navigate (and specifically designed him to not navigate) is not a problem.

But then you are being totally fucking inconsistent because Hawkman and Ogre and Hercules STILL CAN'T NAVIGATE YOUR FUCKING WEASEL EXAMPLE.

I'd appreciate a little maturity from you here Frank. You are being a total Ass.

[Username17]

He is as long as a centaur

You know, that's not true. But even if it was, there is a difference between flexible length and fixed length. You know what's way longer than a centaur and has no problem getting around in corridors?

I'd appreciate a little maturity from you here Frank. You are being a total Ass.

Sorry, I just can't even respond to that seriously given your performance on this very thread. I mean, the very first post of yours that I responded to called me an idiot. You've been flipping the fuck out over this for some time.

I have a consistent world view as regards the mechanical limitations of creatures that I am willing to consider given the humano-centric adventuring space that I am catering to. You are welcome to write a game about giant robots or dinosaurs that has a different assumed adventuring space. That's fine. But literally nothing you can ever do or so is going to make me decide to abandon that humano-centric adventuring space. And you swearing at me is the exact opposite of something that you should do to get me to help with whatever your non-human adventuring space game is going to be.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

I call you an idiot and an Ass who is being inconsistent and failing to deliver a convincing argument because that is what you are.

I repeat.

But then you are being totally fucking inconsistent because Hawkman and Ogre and Hercules STILL CAN'T NAVIGATE YOUR FUCKING WEASEL EXAMPLE.

Answer that or shut the fuck up about your "I'm the lord of consistency just because I define what that term means whenever I feel like it".

[Username17]

Dude, the Ogre totally can navigate the giant weasel cave. So can Hawkman. An ogre can turn in any area that will accommodate his shoulders. Ogres are only 3m tall, how broad do you honestly think those shoulders are? A horse can only turn in an area that will accommodate their chest to rump length. It's ridiculously absurdly more required room than the ogre needs.

People talk about Giants as if they were all head-in-clouds titans or something. They aren't. Most giants in fantasy stories are slightly larger than Shaq. That's big enough to be at a disadvantage in a lot of adventuring situations, but it's not enough to actually keep them out the way it is for a 400 kilogram quadraped.

But the thing is, I genuinely have answered that question. Repeatedly. In small words, and long hyperbole. And you keep calling me names. Snakes and bipeds are just better in tight spaces than horses are. Always have been. Always will be. You can get something that weighs substantially more than a centaur through substantially smaller corridors if you shape them differently. It's just fucking impractical.

And it was ruled out as impractical by the people who came up with it in the first place. When cities got big, centaurs fell out of favor from Greek adventure stories. Actual source material abandoned them when things got civilized.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Ogres are only 3m tall, how broad do you honestly think those shoulders are?

Er, pretty fricking broad typically. page 1 bitch

How the FUCK large are your "giant weasel" shoulders (and burrows) because I know what a weasel looks like and I'm thinking I would be uncomfortable squeezing my shoulders into whatever it is.

Of course typically of every argument you present for this bullshit you found it on shifting ground. "Giant Weasel" how giant? Apparently some magical size wider than ogre shoulders but shorter than a mid sized pony.

BULL FUCKING SHIT Frank. BULL FUCKING SHIT.

[Username17]

A human's shoulder breadth is less than half a meter. Oh noes! An Ogre might be two or even three times that! So fucking what? It's still not the length of even a modest horse. So seriously, what's your point?

There is absolutely nothing inconsistent about me saying that there is a size range that I'll accept and that things which are measurably inside that are fine and things which are measurably not are not.

I mean let's not belabor the point: an average light horse weighs in at 450 kilograms and is nearly 2 meters long of fixed length. That's substantially larger in the relevant turning dimension than is even a 4m tall human. And the ogres being tossed around are generally not 4m.

You seem to be having a huge problem with the whole thing of bigger and smaller. You should watch more Sesame Street.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

The value of all abilities would be altered in such a scenario.

But the value of abilities would be altered in every campaign ever. Unless you think every campaign is going to have the mix of tunnels, houses, forests and pains assumed during design. Seriously, people are going to run games with all the action taking place underground or in some forest. What about the game that happens to not have fire resistant encounters?

We have to design abilities based on some assumption about what frequency they will be optimal and sub-optimal. Its just that those assumptions don't mean a lot when a DM comes up with an actual campaign.

I think that any ability list we come up with can be cut up in multiple balanced ways to suit multiple campaign worlds. In fact it probably will be given the variance in what people are asking for.

[Username17]

Abilities that are situational in use are a DM tool to allow players who have been shining to flag a bit and allow players who have been flagging to shine. Which is why situational characters are bad. Vampires are bad for the game unless the game already revolves around them, because if they can't adventure without getting all sparkly or some shit then they force the adventure to happen on their terms - taking an important game balance tool out of the game.

And that's why a character who has the turn radius of an eight meter tall human is not viable. Its very existence takes a dump on one of the most useful game balance tools in the game. In addition to taking a hammer to some of the cool parts of the adventuring landscape.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

A human's shoulder breadth is less than half a meter. Oh noes! An Ogre might be two or even three times that! So fucking what? It's still not the length of even a modest horse. So seriously, what's your point?...
...You seem to be having a huge problem with the whole thing of bigger and smaller. You should watch more Sesame Street.

You seem to have a problem differentiating length and breadth. a 1 or 1.5m broad ogre is going to have trouble getting into a tunnel fit snug to a weasel longer than I am. He is NOT going in there. And if he DOES...

substantially larger in the relevant turning dimension than is even a 4m tall human. And the ogres being tossed around are generally not 4m.

... he goes on all fours or as you describe "crawling on his belly" and is as long and fucking inflexible as the horse is so what the HELL point do you think you are making about turning dimensions?

And you are going to have this STUPID realism argument with players and GMS every damn time. EVERY time something like this comes up. Because you aren't arguing an intuitive, provable, or even correct position and people are going to question it and just like I'm pissed off with your right now they will be pissed off every damn time you let Ogre and Troll crawl in and declare Minotaur's horns too wide despite them being for all game rules purposes the same damn size category.

You are painting yourself into a corner of stupid, just like you did with the grand "look there's smurfs!" argument (which you are already resorting to with space cowboys and dinosaurs and shit here). You are desperate and transparent and grasping for any fleeting bullshit you think will prolong your ability to cling to some sort of weird anti centaur fetish you've accumulated.

[Username17]

... he goes on all fours or as you describe "crawling on his belly" and is as long and fucking inflexible as the horse is so what the HELL point do you think you are making about turning dimensions?

You've never had to take unconscious people out of buildings so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. You are wrong. See Bipeds have this awesome way of bending their bodies in the middle in such a manner as to allow them to get around corners even while crawling.



Horses cannot do that. Nothing shaped like a horse can do that.

Why you persist in conflating a jointed length with an unjointed length is beyond me, but it does not reflect well upon you.

-Username17

[NoDot]

To keep things remotely fair you'd need to reevaluate all the ability costs - essentially making an entirely new game. Now you'd be able to scavenge all kinds of bits and pieces, from generic action resolution systems to ability names and even some flavor text. But since the ultimate protein you'd be creating would be one that did something different, you would be using different amino acids in a different order and be making a new game.

So,. just so there's no confusion, a campaign of dragon hunters who spend there time in mountainous areas and in caves hunting dragons would, in your view, be considered a different game than a concurrently-running campaign which occurs less than 10 miles away (in the same setting) on flat plains?

The rest of the world would disagree with that classification. (Then again, the rest of the world could be sold an expansion booklet as big as the core rule book and still call the result the same game.)

[angelfromanotherpin]

So,. just so there's no confusion, a campaign of dragon hunters who spend there time in mountainous areas and in caves hunting dragons would, in your view, be considered a different game than a concurrently-running campaign which occurs less than 10 miles away (in the same setting) on flat plains?

Yes, just like a campaign of fire elementals who spend their time riding the currents of the upper mantle and wrangling lava-whales would be a different game than a concurrently-running campaign 'which occurs less than 10 miles away (in the same setting) on flat plains.' One campaign has no effect on the other, so why should we give a crap? Backoom Washington Politics the RPG and Professional Boxing the RPG, both take place on Earth, but the costs of any given ability is going to vary wildly between those two games, because they're about different subjects and value different things.

[Username17]

AFAP said it very nicely, but I think there is something that can and should be added to that. When we make a game to account for "adventuring" we make certain baseline assumptions of what the value of an ability is going to be. And those assumptions are going to be wrong.

We assign an ability a value based on its assumed probability of occurrence, and then the actual occurrence is highly likely to be different than that. The fact is that player skills and decisions add into this. The players will actively seek situations where their abilities will come into utility more often. And the Game Master is going to be actively seeking out ways to throw situations to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the team members in order to make for a more balanced and enjoyable game.

This means that narrativistically you can expect that your abilities will come into play a disproportionate amount of the time, especially if your character has been either sucking exhaust or hogging the spotlight. And that's fine. We accept that fact because we have to. A character who has the ability to talk to whales is going to encounter a fuck tonne more whales than other characters will.

But that fact doesn't excuse characters from making characters that force things into the game that have no business being there or which should have the option of not being there. You have to be playing a very particular game to allow a character who literally can't go on day adventures. And frankly that game is so particular that it demands an overhaul of the ability system altogether. And characters who can't go inside or can't go more than 20m from their tree are similarly demanding, and therefore are properly banned from a standard adventuring game.

And if something is properly banned from a standard adventuring game, you really have no business making rules for it in the first place. And even further: when you're designing the world you should certainly consider not even including such things in the first place.

If you're going to have Vampires they should be Bram Stoker vampires that suffer penalties in the sun rather than Anne Rice vampires that explode in the light. If you're going to have tauric creatures they should be flexible like Mariliths or Zerg and not inflexible creatures like centaurs. From a simple world building standpoint you shouldn't select source material that is going to ultimately be incompatible with the game you are going to run with it.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

or Zerg and not inflexible creatures like centaurs

Once again you demonstrate your utterly inconsistent and transparent bias. The only insect taur you've shown us on this thread appears to be taller and far WIDER than a centaur.

You declare it magically "flexible" but that's the lamest excuse ever. It's a god damn TRUCK.

[Username17]

Phone Lobster, do you get pony sex on the weekends? Why do you care so much?

But no, the Zerg are a transparent rip from Aliens. They have proven and demonstrable tunnel crawling abilities. They fold up. That you haven't been exposed to enough Western culture to know that already makes me wonder where you've been hiding for the last 10 years.



-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

So you switch from a giant crab the size of a truck to a worm the size of a couple of guys, slow clap for that one Frank, it proves nothing but the fact that you can't consistently prove a damn one of your specious claims.

[Username17]

So you switch from a giant crab the size of a truck to a worm the size of a couple of guys, slow clap for that one Frank, it proves nothing but the fact that you can't consistently prove a damn one of your specious claims.

They are both Zergs. What the fucking hell dude? Did your parents never let you play Starcraft as a child?

-Username17

[name_here]

So you switch from a giant crab the size of a truck to a worm the size of a couple of guys, slow clap for that one Frank, it proves nothing but the fact that you can't consistently prove a damn one of your specious claims.

The lurker is a mutant hydralisk. in fact, it looks like the lurker in the picture is a hydralisk with legs stapled onto it.

[Bigode]

And if something is properly banned from a standard adventuring game, you really have no business making rules for it in the first place. And even further: when you're designing the world you should certainly consider not even including such things in the first place.

If you're going to have Vampires they should be Bram Stoker vampires that suffer penalties in the sun rather than Anne Rice vampires that explode in the light. If you're going to have tauric creatures they should be flexible like Mariliths or Zerg and not inflexible creatures like centaurs. From a simple world building standpoint you shouldn't select source material that is going to ultimately be incompatible with the game you are going to run with it.

What the fvck? Did you just tell me I should consider not including anything unplayable in the entirety of a setting?

[Username17]

What the fvck? Did you just tell me I should consider not including anything unplayable in the entirety of a setting?

Absolutely. The key here is that you should consider it. And you should consider it super hard. It the players are going to want to use it, and it will break the expected campaign for them to do so, why is it there?

Things in the setting are like Chekhov's Gun. If they are in, it is because they are expected to - at some point - be used. Possibly not in your current campaign, possibly not in any campaign you play in, but at some point. Otherwise it's a setting design failure. So anything in the setting had better be usable because one can pretty much assume that it is going to be used.

Which gets us back to the definition of "unplayable." There are lots of things in the setting that are not playable by the players. Trees, for example, are inanimate and make poor characters. Hippos are actually quite capable in combat, but they aren't sapient and make for poor players. But trees make good scenery. And hippos make good moat monsters and even mounts in a fantasy setting. And the thing is that people expect them to be included in these ways rather than as player characters or civic leaders. Thus when a tree or a hippo is brought into the game in the expected fashion, the game continues on schedule and nothing is wrong.

But now let's consider something like Mr. Mxyzptlk. He's a low comedy character. He pretty much takes all the rules and tosses them and goes straight for the Magical Teaparty hardcore. The expected way for him to interact with the campaign is to cause the entire game to grind to a halt as people go for hardcore riddle contests and pie eating demonstrations. And if things were hitherfore promised to be serious and adventurous, that's totally unacceptable and game destroying.

So that's pretty much where things stand. If you have an idea for a thing to put into the setting that people will want to play that they can't play without upsetting the apple cart then you probably shouldn't put it in the world. If you have an idea for a piece of terrain that would undermine the game world you shouldn't have that either. And if you have an idea for a monster that would destroy the mood that's a bad inclusion.

You would not, and should not put a sphere of annihilation into Middle Earth because its very presence really fucks the whole artifact destruction quest deal. And similarly you shouldn't put humanoid types into the setting who can't interact with a sizable portion of the adventure.

Mermaids should Ariel it whenever they go on land because if they don't it's damaging to the game. And you should consider the ramifications of everything else you're considering putting into the game as well. And be prepared to not put things in, because truly a lot of things that are by themselves cool are not compatible with a wide variety of adventures that are also very cool. For something to go into the assumed world it has to not only be awesome, it has to play nice with others. Specifically the other awesome things that are supposed to go into the adventure soup.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

They are both Zergs. What the fucking hell dude? Did your parents never let you play Starcraft as a child?

Oh I SEE so as long as one is even (remotely) justifiable by your shifting and entirely baseless argument then all its cousins are justified as well no matter their size or shape!

So to allow centaurs then all we need to do is declare them to be closely related to satyrs or some shit and suddenly their size and shape doesn't matter to you anymore!

[name_here]

PL, did you read my post?

The only zerg even close to truck size that walks wouldn't fit anywhere without making holes.

[Calibron]

They are both Zergs. What the fucking hell dude? Did your parents never let you play Starcraft as a child?

Oh I SEE so as long as one is even (remotely) justifiable by your shifting and entirely baseless argument then all its cousins are justified as well no matter their size or shape!

So to allow centaurs then all we need to do is declare them to be closely related to satyrs or some shit and suddenly their size and shape doesn't matter to you anymore!

Holy shit dude, that has to be one of the straight up stupidest things you've ever said here. That's not even in the same family as the point he was making. When Frank said "If you're going to have tauric creatures they should be flexible like Mariliths or Zerg and not inflexible creatures like centaurs." he was, from the very beginning, referring to the he later posted a photo of, not one of the truck-like species you pictured for some reason; why you would immediately assume he was refer to a creature that made no sense in the context of his statement at all is baffling. Normally I'd just chalk it up to a brain-fart, but then you continued to harangue him even after he explained himself further. If you honestly cannot understand this latest argument you need to calm down and ignore this conversation for a while; your nerd-rage must be hindering the flow of blood to your brain.