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Roleplaying Culture

Unread postby icycalm » 10 Feb 2021 19:01

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https://twitter.com/culturevg/status/13 ... 5561403395

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I will eventually give the answer—and all its consequences etc.—in great detail near the end of the Role-playing Culture multi-part essay I've been publishing on Patreon, but you can try to guess it right now if you want. It really isn't that hard once I've framed to you the question in such blatant terms. The typical faggot would say that both types of RPGs have their pros and cons, but the reality is that tabletop ones have NO CONS except ONE, but that one is MASSIVE, and ONLY VIDEOGAMES can fix it. Of course fixing only that still gives you a worse game since the videogames suck at everything else, so eventually videogame designers will have to work on all the other issues too, but Fantasy Grounds and TaleSpire et al. are precisely the solution, so work on everything has already begun (though good luck finding anyone except me, and now my readers, who understand this).
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Unread postby Some guy » 10 Feb 2021 22:25

My guess is that videogame RPGs can be real-time whereas tabletop ones can't.
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Unread postby recoil » 11 Feb 2021 00:01

It's missing the visual aspect that videogames excel at. A 4K television with graphics crafted by an artist is better than my imagination.
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Unread postby ChevRage » 11 Feb 2021 01:21

I initially agreed with recoil on this, but I think posters and such count as graphics so can be included in tabletop to some extent.

I'd say it's probably the removal of the other players and DM and transforming them into the world the RPG is portraying. Instead of playing with your friends, you are playing with other living breathing characters in the world, and it's not the DM reacting to your choices, but the rest of the world. Or at least, that's how it's supposed to seem. Even if the players put on masks of their own characters, it doesn't change the fact you are still sitting around a table, or on a couch or whatever, with them.
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Unread postby recoil » 11 Feb 2021 01:59

I should clarify. With tabletop, at best, you can have miniatures, maps, posters, etc. But with a videogame, we can have a fully mapped out 3D world in a first person view in VR. Which reminds me there's a tweet where icy recommends modding Last Oasis to run Dark Sun campaigns.
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Unread postby Some guy » 11 Feb 2021 09:38

Damn I think Chevvy is actually right...
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Unread postby icycalm » 08 Jul 2021 05:13

In my Role-playing Culture essay, I repeatedly dump on the overwhelming majority of DMs due to how much they suck, and how many misconceptions they've created. So I think this thread would be the perfect place to give some examples of this suckage.

Behold the level of the average DM: https://imgur.com/gallery/9ZveC31

Nothing at all about his campaign is even decent. He even manages to make TaleSpire look bad with all those boring drab locations. He can't write or even spell for shit, and he's WRITING this campaign. The very setup of the campaign is dogshit.

Cayzn wrote:Our game will contain around 20 players at any given time with no set groups, that will need to reach out to other adventurers to form expedidtion groups between 3-5 players and explore this new world together.. and make it back alive of course.. Each time a group comes back, they bring back knowldge, both for the NPCs including information about resource locations, but also knowledge for the other PCs, which could include hostile areas, dangerous monsters, or even now empty dungeons that may still contain loot.


He sounds like a disabled person and his campaign sounds like a bad videogame from the 1970s.

A good half of DMs are like this. Many of the rest are just stupid.

And then of course there are some decent and some good, and finally some great ones. I would estimate these latter demographics contain 10-20% of DMs overall.

Count yourself lucky if you're playing with one of them. If they are using professional adventures, chances are they are one of the decent ones.
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Re: Role-playing Culture

Unread postby icycalm » 14 Sep 2021 22:13

https://paizo.com/products/btpy9zk9/dis ... Taverns#76

Alex Smith 908 wrote:Yes the highest selling fantasy TTRPG on the market makes less than 5% of the revenue of Magic the Gathering the single most popular table top game period in the current market. WotC is first and foremost a company to make Magic cards and everything else is at best secondary. D&D is not even mentioned in their share holders meetings, whereas Magic is toted as one of their top brands responsible for a substantial level of growth.

Hasbro only keeps making D&D for the cultural penetration value, if it makes a profit that's just a nice bonus.

edit: Just another point even in D&D's golden era of mainstream play the 1980s, the D&D tie-in novels outsold the actual rulesbooks by a factor of 4 to one. Dragonlance and Drizzt were more popular than actually playing the game.


I am glad that on Insomnia we’re finally playing the real game and not the licensed bs.
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Re: Role-playing Culture

Unread postby icycalm » 17 Sep 2021 03:05

There's some bs SJW issue blowing up at Paizo, and I don't care about that. But it has led to some solid posts being made among the sea of stupid faggotry. All the points below support my arguments in the Role-playing Culture essay.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43h0a?I-wo ... easy-it#12

thaX wrote:The thing to remember is that Pathfinder is more than just the rules, as the setting is very much something that Paizo has worked hard to cultivate and expand on. Starting on a little island surrounded by a number of nations, it has become the ultimate kitchen sink setting.

Yeah, you can use the rules and create your "own game." The setting, however, is the backbone of the Pathfinder experience.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43h0a?I-wo ... easy-it#26

Leon Aquilla wrote:You can crib the rules from Pathfinder 2e easily, for sure. But if they cared about that they wouldn't have put them all up for us to use for free.

But I don't buy Paizo products for the rules, but the creative world they've built, which is definitely copyright.

With no disrespect to Owen Stephens above, I don't find a whole lot of 3rd-party stuff that well done. And a lot of it is just taking stuff that already exists and "converting" it to the pet ruleset, regardless of whether it's thematically appropriate or is balanced. 3rd party material is best when it fulfills a niche currently unfulfilled: That's why I bought Fat Goblin Games' "Close Encounters: Hyperspace Fiends", because it converted a lot of 1e demons/devils that I felt were important to Starfinder.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43h0a?I-wo ... easy-it#27

Lissa Guillet wrote:The setting is what makes Pathfinder great. Rules are rules. Some people will like them, others will find ways to do their own thing: house rules, 3rd party publishers, whatever. You can pick and choose the rules all you want. They are really selling you Golarion or the-mystery-of-what-happened-to-space-golarion. It's in the pathfinder/starfinder society. It's in all the books after the rules. It's in everything they produce because that's what's important. Rules are rules, but Golarion is the magic that binds it all together, this world built by a 100 authors and everyone who plays and reads all the flavor text.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43h0a?I-wo ... easy-it#34

Owen KC Stephens wrote:There are at least three camps, none of which are small.

Gimme the rules, I don't care about the setting.

Gimme the setting, I don't care about the rules.

Gimme both, I need them together.

Obviously, Paizo has a significant advantage in marketing to all three at once. And since no one can do the setting without Paizo, and Paizo already gives away the rules without setting for free, pretty clearly they don't see people trying to steal those markets as serious issues.

Of course, there are sub-groups, like "Gimme these rules AND a complete setting, made by these people, with this tone, I don't care if it's Golarion." That group MIGHT be one someone could steal... but it would be difficult and time consuming.

I sat in a lot of meetings about these questions for Starfinder and PF2 within the company. Everyone involved is expertly aware of the potential risks, and what it would take for any person or group to try to capitalize on them in a way that would damage Paizo's sales.


A bunch of faggots are saying "LET'S MAKE OUR OWN VERSION OF PATHFINDER AND STEAL PAIZO'S LUNCH" lol, while they can't even compose a proper sentence.
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Re: Role-playing Culture

Unread postby icycalm » 20 Sep 2021 22:37

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/s ... post530371

Valatar wrote:All I can say is, thank God for Wizards of the Coast's bold new stance on evil races. Without that, I wouldn't have been able to play my non-evil Drow. In 1993. With Unearthed Arcana rules. Which were published in 1985.


https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/s ... post530440

Myrdin Potter wrote:Or the non-Evil (Chaos) Orc Character in Men and Magic, Vol 1 of the original D&D rules from the mid-70's.
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Re: Role-playing Culture

Unread postby icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 05:30

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43hgw?Stor ... ilitude#14

People in rec.games.frp.* used to talk about the Threefold Way, the divide between Storyteller, Simulationist (=verisimilitude) and Gamist.

Storyteller is (by that definition) about the GM and players creating a narrativist story about their characters. It has a plot with High Drama and Character-Shaping Conflict and Emotional Resonance and Acting and all that fun stuff. Without which it's just a boardgame.

Simulationist is the GM creating a world which makes internal sense, and players doing what they "realistically" can within that coherent world. Balance is not relevant. If there should be a dragon or a giant or a peasant there, that's what's there. Without this, the game is just incoherent babble with dice.

Gamist is about balance, action, risk, rules and fun. It's what ensures a 1st level party doesn't face a mob of fire giants or carry a truckload of Holy Avengers. Without this it's not a game, it's just collaborative storytelling and/or railroading.

Different groups want, and different game systems provide, a different balance between these 3 elements. One session of a campaign may have an entirely different balance from the next. Amber (very Storyteller) and Living Steel (very Simulationist) and 4e (very Gamist, IMHO) will inevitably give different experiences, and some people won't like some of them for that reason.

The trick (which needs a good system and an expert GM) is to get lots of all three. Of course, some GMs are just bitter, spiteful railroading incompetents, and they tend to provide not enough story, verisimilitude or game.

But calling someone else's game badwrongfun because you prefer a different balance is elitist, fallacious and arrogant.


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43hgv?Open-World-campaigns

I'll admit it: I'm a bit of an elitist. I have very strong opinions about ttrpg's and what makes a game/session better or worse than others.
But I've tried to lighten up. I've tried to open my perspective a bit and give people outside my old crew a chance.

And...I mean...there were fun little moments. But I spent the majority of the time grinding my teeth or wishing I was elsewhere.

I can understand wanting to offer players as much agency as possible. That's cool. But the less restrictions there are, the more issues there could potentially be with things like pacing.
I don't like being told "there's fun stuff n this game. Go find it." Like. I have such precious little free time nowadays. Can we just skip to the point where we find something fun?
Don't get me wrong. Haggling over told at the inn, drinking contests--they can all be part of the fantasy and discovery and expression. But if we've been playing for 2 hours, I would hope that there's more to it than that.

If I may offer a brief example:

We come into town. The scene is set, but there's nothing inherently interesting as of yet. The GM asks what I do. I figure, I'll find the nearest tavern, get some food and a room and listen for any interesting rumors. I basically put up a big sign that says "PLOT HOOK WELCOME". I learn about some stuff that happened recently, but it's all resolved. Nothing needs to be done. No problems or mysteries present.
Then the GM asks the other five players. None of them seem to have my experience, so they flounder a bit and spend quite a bit of time on a bunch of nothing, and the GM gladly indulges them.
It takes over an hour and a half to get through their what do you do's.

At the end of the day, we pack up and head out again. The GM asks us "which direction do you go?" Um. I don't know. I don't have a map. Or a reason to want to go anywhere in particular. So we just pick a direction at random.
Some trolls ambush us. We fight them and defeat them. It's been three hours, now.

--is this normal? Is this enjoyable to anyone? I'm just so confused, frustrated and disheartened from the experience.
I made a pretty neat character. I asked about the setting and the game, to make sure he fit into them both as well as possible. But I got nothing, so I made a character just full of story seeds and specific motivations and all sorts of stuff. And the GM just...shot it all down or ignored it, and gave us...I don't know. Errands and a bog-standard random encounter. I didn't sign up to play Road Trips & Errands.

Has anyone else run into this? I'm struggling to find a way to tell these guys I'm bored out of my skull without being offensive. It doesn't help that they think the GM is absolutely amazing. None more so than the GM.
And I get it. I get prickly, too. It puts you in a very vulnerable position, running a game. But...I want to get better at it, not stagnant. I just wish more people were at least slightly open to even gentle critique.
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Re: Role-playing Culture

Unread postby icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 17:10

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Colville just retweeted this. That’s pretty based. The reactions of his massive following are starting to pour in. He did them the best favor ever.
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Re: Role-playing Culture

Unread postby icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 17:19

He just tweeted the Battlegrounds site to 100,000 people. Not even random people but TTRPG fans.

If I can get three more players for a fifth group out of this it will be worth the hazing I am currently getting in the comments.
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Re: Role-playing Culture

Unread postby icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 17:59

He blocked me because someone in his comments told him that I am “homophobic” lol. And I am sure the retweet is gone too now. Fun while it lasted!

Will just have to do this the hard way, as with everything, grinding it out over years and decades.

Meanwhile Colville will be forced to adopt the even more dumbed down 5.5E that’s coming out soon. Eventually the dipshits will get back to playing 1974 D&D with a bunch of histrionic trannies on a Twitch that outright bans depictions of heterosexuality.
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Re: Role-playing Culture

Unread postby icycalm » 29 Sep 2021 19:24

https://twitter.com/culturevg/status/14 ... 3964861451

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Click through to the thread I am quoting to see how bad most DMs are. Not ONE of the responders seems to run professional adventures. Everyone is a douchebag and their games sound retarded!

You don’t know how lucky you are to have me as DM and be playing in my world.
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