We should be able to win D&D... by destroying D&D.

[CatharzGodfoot]

And because Moses parted the sea and God created life on earth, every fiction should involve some protagonists doing so?

It's fucking Dungeons and Dragons. If some flesh colossus is uglying up your land or you're pissed off that the tarrasque is making a mess of things, instead of cowering in the corner and acting out a story where you FYGHT 2 SURVYVE THE HOPELESS DARKNYSS, you should be able to take a couple of months off, gain some kickass abilities, then fucking punch those bitches in the face so hard they turn into canned goods.

Cuz' it's fucking Dungeons and Dragons. Other characters in the game get to destroy monsters (and cool landmarks), why shouldn't you?

Were you talking about "fiction" or Dungeons and Dragons? I ask because Dungeons and Dragons really isn't the same thing as "fiction out there", so it's not clear which you're talking about.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

Then you get back to LotR. Or even the real world. In the real world, there are tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, famine, war, disease, etc. Or are you saying that all struggle in a real world game setting is meaningless?

The crazy thing is that to some extent you can win or at least mitigate the damage of these things. Do they happen often? Do they even happen occasionally? No.

So at that point, why bother stating shit out? The only way you win is if the DM lets you, so who gives a fuck what the stats on it were?

Even if by some miracle that didn't happen, Greater gods are always going to beat you in initiative, and you're going to get buttraped by their massive stats. Unless you're playing pun pun and just being a complete munchkin with the rules, you will not win against a greater god unless the DM is just rolling over and playing dead.

Blah blah fucking blah, the DM has control over the penis monsters and they're always better than you and they could kill you if you feel like it so why should you even try?

Keep this shit out of D&D. It's stupid, cowardly, and fanwankish. If the authors want to have your gods interact in a game like this, put up or shut up. Don't give me this shit about 'oh, it hurts my brain too fucking hard to imagine Demeter getting shanked by a CHARACTER THAT WAS JUST INTRODUCED TO THE TABLE!!!' That's getting into cops and robbers and giant mecha bullshit. Need I remind you that gods being killable/beatable is the default state of fiction and this stupid Mary Sue bullshit is unique to D&D?

Even if you are the most powerful thing in the setting, there is no reason why you should "win". I mean, even in real life there is no point where you can stop fighting. Terrorists get nuclear weapons, so we need to fight that. Hackers fvck people's finances, so we need to fight that.

Civil liberties have been gong downhill since the 70s, so we need to fight that.

As an aside, obviously you're not a racial minority, political subversive, female, or a gender minority otherwise there's no way you'd make this ridiculous statement.

Even at the end of Scorpion King, when the Rock asks the super hot sorceress about the future of his kingdom, she tells him that his rule will be peaceful and prosperous, but says that nothing lasts forever.

Happy Endings like that only work when you kill off the ultimate Big Bad and have some army to stop things like the next band of fascists. You can't do that in D&D, because even if you by some miracle become 10 times as strong as the Lady of Pain, there is still going to be shit like mindflayer hordes and devastation beetles ripping civilization a new one.

Imagine if the hot sorceress told him instead to enjoy what he can, because a dragon is going to lay waste to his village in two months and he's not going to get powerful enough to stop it. That's D&D.

At the end of the day, magic is just individual power that follows some sort of scale. Considering that tech like nuclear or viral weapons don't follow a scale and the technology of WW2 cost an estimated 72 million lives, I'd stick with magic any day. At least magic requires years of dedication to learn; nuclear weapons only require the will to kill.

So instead of Real Ultimate Power being in the hands of a government (which may or may not be accountable to the world at large), it's better to put it in the hands of psychotic jackasses with an axe to grind? Going back to your terrorist example, the reason why cities haven't been nuked yet is because the material and weapons are behind lock and key and are damned hard to build. With the breakdown of nuclear proliferation the risk has gone way, way up lately and we need to address that.

... but even considering that, I'd rather live in a world like this than live in a world where assbandits like Magneto and Dr. Doom are afoot! Seriously, you have guys in that fiction can build or arrange to build weapons that lay waste to counties and you can't do a damn thing to stop them. In the real world, we could do something about this but we don't. Fucking George W. Bush.

There's a reason that, despite how craptacular Shadowrun is, it's nowhere near as shitty a place to live as Jump City or Metropolis.

[K]

Civil liberties have been gong downhill since the 70s, so we need to fight that.

As an aside, obviously you're not a racial minority, political subversive, female, or a gender minority otherwise there's no way you'd make this ridiculous statement.

Yeh, I'm a law student who actually knows about the current state of civil liberties.

It's a fact that we have fewer civil liberties than we had in the 70s and every year they have been steadily decreasing. I consider that a bad thing, in case you were wondering, especially considering the current sitting judges on the Supreme Court and the rise of neo-cons in the Senate.

Even at the end of Scorpion King, when the Rock asks the super hot sorceress about the future of his kingdom, she tells him that his rule will be peaceful and prosperous, but says that nothing lasts forever.

Happy Endings like that only work when you kill off the ultimate Big Bad and have some army to stop things like the next band of fascists. You can't do that in D&D, because even if you by some miracle become 10 times as strong as the Lady of Pain, there is still going to be shit like mindflayer hordes and devastation beetles ripping civilization a new one.

Imagine if the hot sorceress told him instead to enjoy what he can, because a dragon is going to lay waste to his village in two months and he's not going to get powerful enough to stop it. That's D&D.

Actually, it's not.

The DM sets up his setting and he actually can say "if you want an adventure this week of game-time, you'll have to go to another plane. Otherwise, the next adventure will take place after twenty years of character time go by because you killed every dangerous thing in a 3000 mile radius."

He can even say "a dragon attacked your village and a minor hero fought it off."

At the end of the say, you are just a hero, and not the hero. The setting is as stable as the DM, and he really can just have the ancient evils awaken after you've beaten the last one and have had time to spend your gold and paint your kitchen.

Heck, evil things can just exist and just not be a threat this week. The mind flayers might prefer to hunt for brains on some prime where there aren't a lot of heroes and you won't even hear about it. Dragons might sleep through the Final Battle vs Sauron and not awaken until after your grandson has kids.

At the end of the day, magic is just individual power that follows some sort of scale. Considering that tech like nuclear or viral weapons don't follow a scale and the technology of WW2 cost an estimated 72 million lives, I'd stick with magic any day. At least magic requires years of dedication to learn; nuclear weapons only require the will to kill.

So instead of Real Ultimate Power being in the hands of a government (which may or may not be accountable to the world at large), it's better to put it in the hands of psychotic jackasses with an axe to grind? Going back to your terrorist example, the reason why cities haven't been nuked yet is because the material and weapons are behind lock and key and are damned hard to build. With the breakdown of nuclear proliferation the risk has gone way, way up lately and we need to address that.

... but even considering that, I'd rather live in a world like this than live in a world where assbandits like Magneto and Dr. Doom are afoot! Seriously, you have guys in that fiction can build or arrange to build weapons that lay waste to counties and you can't do a damn thing to stop them.

I hate to break it to you, but we really do have those villains. In places like Africa there are warlords with names like Butt Naked who run around naked with machine guns killing villagers because the villages can't afford guns of their own (true story).

At the end of the day, magical power is also supposed to be hard to get and behind lock and key (ever hear of a dungeon?). Criminals may have magic powers, but they have powers on par with modern day criminals who carry pipe bombs and carry guns.

Considering how easy it is to die or just be permanently taken out of action in DnD, I'm surprised that anyone makes it to high level by pissing people off (also known as being a villain). I mean, a mid-level wizard really can just summon barghests to eat his foes or turn them into lawn furniture with flesh to stone.

Heroes make a little more sense because villains might easily say "well, I have to kill him so I can do my plan, but I won't permanently kill him because I do like how he keeps my favorite city from being burned by dragons and the like, and his fanclub will be around to raise him eventually."

[RandomCasualty2]

Blah blah fucking blah, the DM has control over the penis monsters and they're always better than you and they could kill you if you feel like it so why should you even try?

Keep this shit out of D&D. It's stupid, cowardly, and fanwankish. If the authors want to have your gods interact in a game like this, put up or shut up. Don't give me this shit about 'oh, it hurts my brain too fucking hard to imagine Demeter getting shanked by a CHARACTER THAT WAS JUST INTRODUCED TO THE TABLE!!!' That's getting into cops and robbers and giant mecha bullshit. Need I remind you that gods being killable/beatable is the default state of fiction and this stupid Mary Sue bullshit is unique to D&D?

WTF kind of argument is that?

First, a lot of mythology features gods that don't commonly get killed. Gods getting killed is actually a fairly rare thing. So the statement that it's unique to D&D was just plain wrong.

Second, even if that statement was correct, and it was unique to D&D, we're talking about fucking D&D here.

So seriously what the hell are you even saying? That arguments that relate to D&D are irrelevant when you're talking about D&D?

You been sniffing too much white out lately or what?

[ubernoob]

Off Topic ahead.

Yeh, I'm a law student who actually knows about the current state of civil liberties.

It's a fact that we have fewer civil liberties than we had in the 70s and every year they have been steadily decreasing. I consider that a bad thing, in case you were wondering, especially considering the current sitting judges on the Supreme Court and the rise of neo-cons in the Senate.

I'm really considering law school in my future (freshmore in college right now). Could I catch you on AIM or something some time? I'd like to ask someone who's been there about the path while I still have time to decide what to do with my life.

[Koumei]

Plenty of unkillable gods make perfect sense in their settings and don't actually have to be penis extensions or Mary Sues*. It's when they are brought into D&D that you have a real problem: either they're a regular challenge, and you use the source material as toilet paper, or they remain faithful to their origins and you're no longer playing D&D.

Seriously. If you want to introduce the Cthulhu mythos to D&D, there has to be a sad realisation: if you're still playing D&D, the PCs have seen worse and won't go insane (they've accepted that the universe isn't what it appears to be, and the appearance of a Great Old One is merely a case of another bizarre monster). They'll also say "Well, it's a giant winged mind flayer that came out of an underwater temple with towers that lack perspective and triangular doors that each have three right angles. Dibs on the magic sword!"

And they'll fight it and probably win, because within D&D Cthulhu really isn't that bad - sure, it's impressive, and a high CR, but its very existence doesn't make a mockery out of reality and the PCs have fought worse (or will do so later on).

Or alternatively, you're no longer playing D&D. You're killing the PCs off and making players feel unimportant. That's why I gave up on running CoC - I feel it's important that the PCs are actively doing something and not feeling like pawns of the dark gods.

*I'm so sick of that term. It doesn't even mean anything any more, just like weeaboo/Wapanese.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Then you get back to LotR. Or even the real world. In the real world, there are tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, famine, war, disease, etc. Or are you saying that all struggle in a real world game setting is meaningless?

The crazy thing is that to some extent you can win or at least mitigate the damage of these things. Do they happen often? Do they even happen occasionally? No.

Perfectly wrong. So you claim that the struggle is meaningless in Dnd, but not meaningless in the real world, because wars and famine don't occur often enough? When was the last time in the real world when there wasn't famine or war at some place on the globe? There is constant unending strife and risk in the world. The fundamental premise of your argument is wrong.

Also, as you can mitigate some of the effects of real world catastrophe, so too can you mitigate baddies in Dnd.

[K]

Off Topic ahead.

Yeh, I'm a law student who actually knows about the current state of civil liberties.

It's a fact that we have fewer civil liberties than we had in the 70s and every year they have been steadily decreasing. I consider that a bad thing, in case you were wondering, especially considering the current sitting judges on the Supreme Court and the rise of neo-cons in the Senate.

I'm really considering law school in my future (freshmore in college right now). Could I catch you on AIM or something some time? I'd like to ask someone who's been there about the path while I still have time to decide what to do with my life.

Anytime. Send me an email. I don't really AIM or instant message unless I'm talking smack in class.

[Draco_Argentum]

... but even considering that, I'd rather live in a world like this than live in a world where assbandits like Magneto and Dr. Doom are afoot! Seriously, you have guys in that fiction can build or arrange to build weapons that lay waste to counties and you can't do a damn thing to stop them. In the real world, we could do something about this but we don't. Fucking George W. Bush.

You're aware that the modern real world equivalent of Magneto exists, right? All it takes is some script kiddie and a little social engineering and you can drop commercial websites. A real player can do so much more. Most of the world's spam is created by a very small list of people, 200 gangs are 80% of it by common estimates. If you had control of one of these botnets there are far worse things than penis enlargement emails that you could do.

[Crissa]

I totally know people who know enough about computers totally fuck up the system.

But they don't, because it's their system, their playground. They get to be smart and white hats.

Delivering wealth to an address literally has an address connected to it, so that's why we don't usually have shadowrunners. But we totally have super criminals - from those able to command men to cross the world and blow up thousands of people to others able to shift bits and paper and steal billions of dollars and others who break in and out of the most protected spaces of the world.

In the first year of this millennium, give or take, there was a breakout of the highest security prison in the US with helicopters, a billion dollars was stolen by a single person, a US election was stolen, and the two tallest buildings on the east cost of the US were destroyed. To take this further... the commercial internet was shut down for a day, half of the major nodes offline, by a single man they may or may not have captured. This has happened twice since. Billion dollar thefts are now so common as to not register on the news - how many real Dollar bills went missing from the Bagdad airport?

All of this involving a handful of people each instance - the building destruction probably involved the most: two dozen men.

-Crissa

[Crissa]

(Also, as a sub note, Frank says he's afraid of my spouse... Not just because she was once a midwestern knife and tomahawk champion, but because she rides a motorcycle, DDRs in the nude, wrote the first shopping basket code on the internet, wrote one of the first automated phone switching/answering service (ou know, where they know who's calling), worked for NASA, was employed as a phreaker for a wireless telco testing equipment company - often having access to full nodes - and has this weird luck where she wins free movies at the rental place for life without entering any promo...)

And she thinks she's not smart. She just went to the Black Rock Desert and built a personal evaporative privy, a portable body cooling system, a heat-resistant tent made of mylar, and powered her camp lights off of solar panels.

One person can really do things. It's what they make of what they have that does it. Rich people have people connections and can make wider impacts - but probably can't make a toilet work where there's no water and no drainage.

-Crissa

[Prak]

(Also, as a sub note, Frank says he's afraid of my spouse... Not just because she was once a midwestern knife and tomahawk champion, but because she rides a motorcycle, DDRs in the nude, wrote the first shopping basket code on the internet, wrote one of the first automated phone switching/answering service (ou know, where they know who's calling), worked for NASA, was employed as a phreaker for a wireless telco testing equipment company - often having access to full nodes - and has this weird luck where she wins free movies at the rental place for life without entering any promo...)

And she thinks she's not smart. She just went to the Black Rock Desert and built a personal evaporative privy, a portable body cooling system, a heat-resistant tent made of mylar, and powered her camp lights off of solar panels.

One person can really do things. It's what they make of what they have that does it. Rich people have people connections and can make wider impacts - but probably can't make a toilet work where there's no water and no drainage.

-Crissa

Damn it... people can do things... and I can't. All I can do is hack through gaming systems and figure out what the fuck I'm doing like some really boring Will Smith movie...

Maybe it's some kind of protection for the world thing, because I'd totally be stealing a billion dollars if I could... Hell, as it is I'm tempted to start planning shit, money's short and the economy sucks...

[ubernoob]

Sent, and thanks.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Yeah, if I could, I'd be Robin Hood. Except that I would steal from the rich and burn it.

No one deserves to be so wealthy they don't have to work anymore. If you can afford lunch tomorrow if you don't work today, then you have too much wealth. One of the worst things humanity has done to itself is allowing there to be anybody that gets resources because other people are working for it.

That being said, I'm not worried about economic collapse. With the exception of a few years when I was working at the shit plant, I've been dirt fucking poor my entire life. I know how to survive with no money, and I can just leave for the wilds and live there for a few years if I have to, I'm a pretty fair woodsman.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Wait, are you actually advocating a return to a hand-to-mouth subsistence-level society? That's cracked, man.

[Crissa]

Why does management get paid more than the workers? Unless they have more time at the company, I don't see any reason why.

-Crissa

[Manxome]

If you can afford lunch tomorrow if you don't work today, then you have too much wealth.

I was under the impression that even if you're doing subsistence farming, you generally harvest more food at certain times of the year than others, and therefore save up food for the times you can't simply pull it out of the ground and eat it. Is it your position that subsistence farmers are too wealthy?

This philosophy would also seem to imply that the appropriate amount of wealth each person should have is independent of the total resources actually available; that is, that if we somehow made everyone rich, you'd consider that a bad thing, not a good thing?

Gotta admit, this does not sound rational to me.

Why does management get paid more than the workers? Unless they have more time at the company, I don't see any reason why.

Depending on the circumstances, this is potentially justifiable as:

• Longer hours
• Higher skill requirement
• Higher trust/reliability requirement
• Higher risk to the employee (i.e. they stand to lose more if something goes wrong, because they're responsible for it)

I'm sure one can also find cases in which managers are overpaid, though.

[angelfromanotherpin]

People are justifiably paid more for jobs for 3 reasons:
1) Unpleasantness (includes danger).
2) Requirements.
3) Responsibility.

So sewer workers are paid quite a bit because their jobs are very unpleasant. Doctors are paid a whole lot, because their jobs involve dealing with random sick people, require years of specialized training, and have people's lives on the line.

Of course, just because these reasons justify higher pay doesn't mean that the higher pay is there. e.g. Firemen score well in all three categories, but still don't make particularly good monies.

On the other hand, people are unjustifiably paid more for jobs for all kinds of reasons. My favorite is that company board members vote more monies to CEOs, because they're all CEOs at other companies and it both raises the industry standard and butters up the CEO/Board members who'll be voting them more monies. That's a cycle with no good end.

[Crissa]

And CEOs or management rarely get fired or lose money for their decisions.

All that Peter Principle and Golden Parachutes.

-Crissa

[JonSetanta]

People are justifiably paid more for jobs for 3 reasons:
1) Unpleasantness (includes danger).
2) Requirements.
3) Responsibility.

So sewer workers are paid quite a bit because their jobs are very unpleasant. Doctors are paid a whole lot, because their jobs involve dealing with random sick people, require years of specialized training, and have people's lives on the line.

Of course, just because these reasons justify higher pay doesn't mean that the higher pay is there. e.g. Firemen score well in all three categories, but still don't make particularly good monies.

On the other hand, people are unjustifiably paid more for jobs for all kinds of reasons. My favorite is that company board members vote more monies to CEOs, because they're all CEOs at other companies and it both raises the industry standard and butters up the CEO/Board members who'll be voting them more monies. That's a cycle with no good end.

From your later statements one could also include:

4) Because No One Said You Can't

[Heath Robinson]

Why does management get paid more than the workers? Unless they have more time at the company, I don't see any reason why.

Are you looking for moral justification or for pragmatic justification? If you're looking for moral justification, you're going to get a "fat chance of that" from me. Pragmatically speaking, if paying a Manager more money inspires their subordinates to work harder for the possibility of being promoted to being a Manager then the policy is justified.

[Crissa]

The best tech companies (employees to profit) have realized that just because you may be the best engineer does not mean you are a competent manager.

So these jobs often have alternate promotion tracks that don't include management, but do include pay scales equal to, or better than some pure management tracks.

It's just an interesting tidbit to me that for much of the last century being a middle manager was more valuable (got paid more) than any position of expertise either manual or mental.

-Crissa