The Gaming Den

The Little Guys
By James Wyatt

. http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... d/20131016 .

Well, I suspected last week's column would be controversial. I'm glad

you know what, fuck this fucking fucker and his fucking shit!

playing games in order to get feedback by making your views skewed and misrepresented just to see what people say in an article, as a designer; well its just fucking stupid sophomoric bullshit.

this fucker has kids and probably does this kind of thing to them too?

i havent even read any more of the article, it is time Wyatt was fired from RPGs and publishing at all. Maybe FOX news can hire him, since he would likely fit in there very well with Bill Rielly, and Sarah Palin. Especially since he likes the insane so much....

They've been trolling in those articles since day 1 of the 5th edition design. All those articles about skill systems were basically trolling, they always used some bullshit controversy.

Suddenly I realise just how long they've been at it. But then, Monte got onboard, jumped ship, and published a whole game on his own all while Mike was still tinkering around trying to find "the feel of D&D".


This article is one where they point out that they're copying Pathfinder for monster flavour, because, I guess when you're #2 that's just what you do.

I'm sure someone's going to say how we all wished this was actually just Shadzar admitting to us his years long "Punk'd" stunt (or purposely messing with everyone for years).

Weird. Apart from wolves and traps, this doesn't fit my conception of goblins or kobolds at all, and the 'official' concepts are fairly ridiculous and stupid. The 'kobolds stuggling with buckets' bit really drives home how fucking pathetic 3' enemies are.

Suddenly I realize I've always thought of goblins as closer to 4.5 to 5 feet tall, and kobolds around 4'. And never as 3 stooges midgets.

That's always annoyed me. As levels increase, fighting stuff smaller than a horse becomes uncommon. Threats aren't taken seriously if they're under 3' in height; yet nobody bats an eye when their dwarf or human fights something an order of magnitude larger than them.

Because that 3' is totally awesome and can cleave an elephant a twain, while the halfling's foot-long skewer would be lucky to chafe a horse?

virgil wrote:That's always annoyed me. As levels increase, fighting stuff smaller than a horse becomes uncommon. Threats aren't taken seriously if they're under 3' in height; yet nobody bats an eye when their dwarf or human fights something an order of magnitude larger than them.

Because that 3' is totally awesome and can cleave an elephant a twain, while the halfling's foot-long skewer would be lucky to chafe a horse?

Partly its the heroic mindset: killing big stuff is a monument to awesome, killing evil 6 year olds is a bit sad and twisted.



Speaking of trolling, though, the 'final' playtest document has been updated with changes to the druid and paladin. The latter got a second path option, and suddenly proficiency bonus to spell DCs. The latter is amusing, since the paladin is now on the same level when it comes to forcing saves as everyone else... except the ranger, who didn't get the late change.

The druid... Basically they swapped in an entirely different wild shape mechanic, the main feature of which is stat replacement rather than stat buffs. WotC design team: already tossing the playtested subsystems out and replacing them in full. The new mechanic is also so much worse- separate hp pool (unless dropped below zero), no passive item benefits and all around shitty stats (except it is really is to game your stats to be an uber-spellcaster and and deal with the shitty animal form combat abilities.

Think it is natural to see bigger things as a bigger threat.
Just ask yourself if your first impression of a giant that is as big as a skyscraper as a low level threat.

And while people generally have no problem with a human cleaving one in twain, people do get their panties in a twist, if for example in pathfinder you grapple a colossal creature

Voss wrote:

virgil wrote:That's always annoyed me. As levels increase, fighting stuff smaller than a horse becomes uncommon. Threats aren't taken seriously if they're under 3' in height; yet nobody bats an eye when their dwarf or human fights something an order of magnitude larger than them.

Because that 3' is totally awesome and can cleave an elephant a twain, while the halfling's foot-long skewer would be lucky to chafe a horse?

Partly its the heroic mindset: killing big stuff is a monument to awesome, killing evil 6 year olds is a bit sad and twisted.

It's an issue in the opposite direction. They don't mind the 5' dwarf or 6' human killing big stuff, but scoff at the idea of a 3' halfing doing the same. All of them wield weapons that are lucky to be longer than a dragon's hide is thick.

Ah, well, that is a different issue entirely: children and midgets are useless. Comic relief or pathos, perhaps, but heroes stretches belief more than a little.

At least in adult entertainment. Children's entertainment obviously wants a protagonist that can be identified with, but if you think too hard about Naruto and the like, it is really fucking creepy.

Yoda.

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Yoda.

There is a reason why most people found the Yoda lightsaber fights to be entirely cringe-worthy.

I always saw the cringing at the Yoda fight as a conflict of character concept and the spinning pogo stick style rather than at his physical size.

virgil wrote:I always saw the cringing at the Yoda fight as a conflict of character concept and the spinning pogo stick style rather than at his physical size.

This.

Yoda wrote: Wars not make one great.

I mean, the fights were terrible examples of how shitty CGI can ruin the movie experience, but revealing him to be a badass warrior wasn't a problem because of his size (see Serenity as an example of waif-fu that people can buy). If the small character had been anyone else, I could buy it. I can buy a Killer Rabbit, too. But if you're going to have something small and dangerous, give it a personality to match.

virgil wrote:I always saw the cringing at the Yoda fight as a conflict of character concept and the spinning pogo stick style rather than at his physical size.

That didn't help either.

Yoga as the ancient master archetype means that he's never supposed to fight physically. The ancient master doesn't win fights with muscle-strength, but with enormous skills and conservation of motion.

For a Jedi version of an ancient master, all Yoda fight-scenes should have been like his initial Tai Chi pushing-hands move where he absorbed and redirected the Force-lightning.

Since size equates to physical power in people's minds on a primal level, Yoda plays into the ancient master type by being small. This emphasizes his enormous skills because we already know that he should be weak physically.

virgil wrote:I always saw the cringing at the Yoda fight as a conflict of character concept and the spinning pogo stick style rather than at his physical size.

That doesn't necessarily get away from the point at hand. Had he gone full-on wizard (or psych-ops), there wouldn't have been much objection. But trying to split an adult human in twain was, in fact, utterly laughable. Even with a sword that melts bulkheads.

deaddmwalking wrote: I mean, the fights were terrible examples of how shitty CGI can ruin the movie experience, but revealing him to be a badass warrior wasn't a problem because of his size (see Serenity as an example of waif-fu that people can buy). If the small character had been anyone else, I could buy it. I can buy a Killer Rabbit, too. But if you're going to have something small and dangerous, give it a personality to match.

Well, the killer rabbit is an intentional joke. You really aren't supposed to 'buy it.'

But Whedon-verse ass-kicking hot waif was pretty well established as an idea by the time Serenity rolled around, and the character had already be established as wacko nuts and physically violent. There is also a magnitude difference- a fit (and not even enhanced) human woman trained to kill is dangerous, and provably so. A tiny muppet... not so much.

The "waif-fu" of Serenity plays into the prodigy archetype. Again, she needs to look physically weak in order to heighten her skill, but she also needs to be fatally flawed to offset her skills. In this case, she is not sane.

There are a lot of archetypes to work with, but there is none that is purely "weak and kicks ass in physical combats."

Spoiler for size...

Most people would see that fight scene and consider it cool. We can't tell how tall the armored fighter is, but he could be 3' tall; and suddenly it being a 3' vs 15' is laughable while 6' vs 30' is fine?

Well, I think you can convince people to accept tiny folk to cut down creatures twenty time their size; you just need to make them sufficiently shiny and flashy while doing so. See: Super Mario, Naruto, Kingdom Hearts...

What made the Yoda fight scene cringe-worthy wasn't just the fact that it was out-of-character for him but the lack of glitz to make the confrontation convincing. If he made his lightsaber pulse with a supernatural glow and Dooku was doing something other than shuffle around meekly it would've been better. But Star Wars had that problem in general. Note how ridiculous the General Grievous fight was in SW3 versus how fuckawesome it was in the Gennady Tartakovsky's cartoon.

Star Wars has always had sucky fights though. Watching an old dude spin in place in epiode IV was retarded. Vader fought with all the grace of a man in a neck brace. Luke swings his saber like a baseball bat, screaming, and wins.

Then you have the classic Force Kick moment:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Force_kick

Star Wars is a series for flashy effects that mask the lack of decent choreography, or the actor's ability to follow good choreography. It came out for an audience who had always been deprived of good fights in movies.

Was anyone else weirded out that he managed to make an entire blog rant about Goblins and Kobolds and never once mentioned Dire Weasels?



I was also weirded out that even the Goblins and Wolves section didn't mention Worgs or Barghests. I understand that he's basically trollin, but how can you not mention the upgraded beasts of the races when talking about the differences between them?

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Well, I think you can convince people to accept tiny folk to cut down creatures twenty time their size; you just need to make them sufficiently shiny and flashy while doing so. See: Super Mario, Naruto, Kingdom Hearts...

The problem is in the way that people think on a primal level. I mean, we'll accept a grown man killing a giant twice his size and not a child killing a grown man because we think of grown men as being the powerful ones and not about the size differential.

Our entire lives are built around things smaller than men being weaker than men and we have experience with only men killing bigger things. We'd accept a grown man killing an elephant and not a child killing an elephant because of of ideas we already have about those things.

For example, the original Terminator was supposed to feature Arnold as Jon Conner and the other actor as the Terminator, but production people balked so much that Arnie ended up the Terminator. Even the audience knowing about cyborg strength made them want the muscle-guy as the strong guy.

I have no problem being scared of sand pygmies.

FrankTrollman wrote:I was also weirded out that even the Goblins and Wolves section didn't mention Worgs or Barghests. I understand that he's basically trollin, but how can you not mention the upgraded beasts of the races when talking about the differences between them?

-Username17

The poll did mention worgs.

They(read:goblins) should ride dire wolves or worgs that are much scarier than they are.

True, but the context of the article is goblins should be subjected to mangy half-dog things that are not really wolves. That poll response is the effective 'fuck you, James, shut up,' but what he is trying to contextualize in the article is goblins (and kobolds) are joke races and so goblins should only have a joke mount.

What it should really be about is whether you should be slaughtering joke races at level 1, or if they should be made more interesting (and larger). But that is unfortunately too large and nuanced an issue for them to handle.

As a side note, since no one is mentioning it, Yoda could use a more reserved fighting style, but he chooses not to because he has an incredibly short reach and the acrobatics of Form V helps make up for that and compliment his tendency to use the force to enhance his waning physical abilities. I mean, even at the time of the movies he was in the last portion of his life.