Why GiTP saddens my heart a great deal

[ngilop]

Hello everybody, I guess the title might be a bit misleading, but I do ever so want to get something off my chest.

I would very much so LOVE love love. to try to play a game on this site.
And since homebrew is so, hmmm whats the word? ehh Im not sure but I guess I have to use plentiful. Anyways I have my own homebrew that Ive made and I think to myself.
Hey, why don't I post an advertisement looking for a game that allows homebrew and lay out what i like in a game and see if their are any takers?

I know the majority of the fish will not bite as my playstyle is more laid back, work really hard get rewards and make new friends whilst having fun, compared towhat Ive noticed the 'make really really powerful characters so you cna win' playstyle. ( ive never really thought of RPGs as 'winnable' games myself, I might be wrong here)

SO i put an advertisemtn up and i get one guy who seems interested and says he has a RL firned who like that type of game as well, then well.. it goes downhill

now I am not saying that zerg/tyrinids/aliens and predaotrs have no place in a fantasy game, nor that anime girls and mad biologist have a part in fantasy, its just those particular archetypes are not fantasy for me.

I grew up with Tolkein, Howard, Brooks, Burroughs, Bradley, Leiber and there are probably many more im forgetting to mention here. that to me si what fantasy and I think I make it clear that is what type of game im looking for.

It just really bums me out, ig uess that Im getting old and my 'breed' it seems is going the way of the dinosaur. I just want, i guess for lack of better term and 'old-school' game where its where you earn to be a hero. you know where theres the guy that is a weapon master, soem kind of super sneaky guy and some chick that can use magic.

yeah its hard and you actually have to think (ICLy that is) to get around some obstacles but its worth it to me.

Not only am i not keen on this whole 'optimization' kick and by optimization i do not mean 'don't make effective characters' I mean the kind optimization where you squeeze out every nano meter of power you can for your character and use slighly less that right writings of rules to make characters that just about everyone can admit was not the intent of the rules. but there i digress.

this thread is basically just the ramblings of an old man, who wishes for days of yore with what he remembers fantasy was like and how people got toghter at a table and played an RPG.

and maybe.. one day on this site somebody will swoop in and save his day and actually be interested in a game like what he longs for.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Not only am i not keen on this whole 'optimization' kick and by optimization i do not mean 'don't make effective characters' I mean the kind optimization where you squeeze out every nano meter of power you can for your character and use slighly less that right writings of rules to make characters that just about everyone can admit was not the intent of the rules. but there i digress.

That's something you see on the internet a lot not because people like playing those characters but because they like discussing them.

Those discussions do then inspire people to want to play them but you can't so easily stereotype someone just because you don't like something they like.

[Grinner]

The thing is that the fighter-rogue-wizard-cleric heroic fantasy horse has been beaten into a raw, bloody pulp by now. The natural solution to that problem is to expand into other genres. Plus, actually running a 3.5/PF game over the Internet is a massive commitment (Combat is a nightmare!).

If you really want old-school, might I suggest Microlite20?

[ngilop]

the game system has nothing to do with it, and I could care less if the party was meat sheild, trap monkey, heal-bot, and blaster liek the beat to dead horse you said.


I do not demand the party take up the D&D 'roles' meat shield, blaster, healer, trap dude. But I do enjoy being in a party that can handle every situation.
was my exact quote. and by that i meant if everyone plays a sword and board fighter we do not have much diversity.

what i meant by my suggestions as to archetyep is thaT i do not want to play in a 'fantasy' game where somebody is a Zerg swam overmind or that some kind of weird trasnfixionist bionengeered whatever is going to to be next to my warrior or person X's shadow assassin.

I guess it just makes my jaw go agape whne i say ' hey fantasy; and this is what i mean whne is ayt fantasy' then you have people who just read teh title of the thread where it says ' that allows homebrew' then they ut down whatever.

I am not sure I do not go inot other request threads that other users have posted and just put my 2 cents in for whatever I want as opposed to what teh OP is asking for.
I do not go inot lets say an oriental themed request game and say " im going to be this [homebrewed paladin] here nor do i go into sci fi games and say Im want to be a druid.

TO me requesting opposing themes is no worse than going into a D&D thread and saying ' i am going to play Worl dof Darkness' or the equivalent.


IDK it is just diseharting that literally after searching for a game that fits my criteria then succumbing to well maybe If i ask they will coem, i basically get the shaft and drove out of my own game becuase peopel want to sci fi it up in my own requested thread.

[AttilaTheGeek]

what i meant by my suggestions as to archetyep is thaT i do not want to play in a 'fantasy' game where somebody is a Zerg swam overmind or that some kind of weird trasnfixionist bionengeered whatever is going to to be next to my warrior or person X's shadow assassin.

I guess it just makes my jaw go agape whne i say ' hey fantasy; and this is what i mean whne is ayt fantasy' then you have people who just read teh title of the thread where it says ' that allows homebrew' then they ut down whatever.

So, you want to play a game where you're allowed to play your homebrew, but other people have to play within your definition of standard fantasy, and everyone can play whatever they want as long as it's a wizard, rogue, or fighter? Hypocritical much?

Also, what does "whne is ayt fantasy" mean? Maybe one reason you're not getting responses is because your text is difficult to understand.

[Alejandro]

i do not want to play in a 'fantasy' game where somebody is a Zerg swam overmind or that some kind of weird trasnfixionist bionengeered whatever is going to to be next to my warrior or person X's shadow assassin.

I don't want to play in a fantasy game where somebody is a thinly veiled Tolkien rip-off, or some kind of weird 'magic user' that is going to be next to my warrior, either.

Oh, wait.

[Grinner]

Also, what does "whne is ayt fantasy" mean? Maybe one reason you're not getting responses is because your text is difficult to understand.

I assume he's drunk-typing. You might get some better answers in about eight hours.

[ngilop]

I love how you have don't read what I type at all.

I said that I wanted to play MY homebrew and that other peopel can play other homebrew that don't matter but I was to play fantasy.

please actually read what I am attmepting to say, sorry if i have issues and sometimes missype words

Im not perfect and I never claimed to be. but appanrelty you, sir, are. congrats to you.

SO you don't midn that for example You say ' i want to play in a marvel universe setting' so i say 'ok, im going to be Ecthelion"

you would have no qualsm about that because hey soem bad mamma jamma elven warrior from Middle Earth is 100% my definition of marvel universe?

YOu missed my point completely. maybe you should read the example books that I gave, i mean well maybe not, you may or may not like those book..

but that is an aside, what i am saying is those books and the fantay therin is what I think of when i think of fantasy. and I explain as much when I look for a game that would allow homebrew.

BUt appeanrlt according to you I am not allowed to say ' hello i am mr person guy and I am looking for a game that has W, X, Y, and Z characteristics."

soand if i am less than thrille dbeucase soembody wants to play a D character istic character then I am at fault?

this is basically why I thik humanity is in such a craptacular state. everybody loves to say " no jsut becuase you say X is X doesn;t mean X is X, becuase person Y over here sasy X is really 3'

WHy is it I am a hyprocrit when I aks for a certain set of outliners for a game, and people purposely go outside of those?

I could see why if i just sauid ' i want to play an RPG where homebrwwed is allowed" and then said 'no' to people who did not want to play MY own self created homebrew.. but that is not what i sais in the least.

I said. what exactly type of game i was looking for and then people came in an went against what I had asked for.

but how about this.. whnever (if ever) i play a real life sit down face to face game with you i cna make a charatcer from any setting with any array of abilities and statisictcs no matter what game you ar eplaying and if you say anything contrary well, I will just happen to have this very thread pritned out for quotation as well as having it notified and point to where you said ' see where yous aid you want X and Y but person here made Z and you were disenheratened and that make syou a hypocrit"

[Morcleon]

now I am not saying that zerg/tyrinids/aliens and predaotrs have no place in a fantasy game, nor that anime girls and mad biologist have a part in fantasy, its just those particular archetypes are not fantasy for me.

I grew up with Tolkein, Howard, Brooks, Burroughs, Bradley, Leiber and there are probably many more im forgetting to mention here. that to me si what fantasy and I think I make it clear that is what type of game im looking for.

Well, you never did say that it was supposed to be a Tolkein-esque (or Howard-esque or Brooks-esque or anything-esque) game. All you said was that you wanted homebrew to be allowed and that you wanted all party roles to be filled. :smallwink:

Of course, if you actually did say that you wanted a "standard" fantasy game somewhere and I just completely missed, please quote it. :smallsmile:


I want one where Homebrewed(classes and feats.. maybe races) is allowed. I get enough 'core' D&D in real life, id like to try out some new stuff. this is actually 80% of what turns me away from prospective games on GITP

...you said homebrew. Not your homebrew, just homebrew in general. :smalltongue:

[Alejandro]

I think I understand you. You wanted to GM(?) a game and you wanted to use your fantasy homebrew, and some other people didn't?

[ngilop]

I know I siad homebrew

I guess i din't specifically say that untill my repsonce to your inquiry about the xenoalchenist.


but from my previous posts and my hots down about my playstle and how I roll, it should have been easy enough to infer i woukd have imgained. especially since everything i linked up to that point was pretty much 'classic ' if you will, fantasy.


I guess in hindsight I should have maybe written large tracts of text detailing what I would like to play in when i say 'fantasy' and D&D.

but in my mind I don't want peopel to have ot read an thesis on what in my opinion classifies as a fantasy idea for me.
BUt it seems the whole beating aroudn the bush plan of mine backfired.

again others have one definition of what consitutes fantasy others have differing views. maybe I should just go back to the drawing board and write up a new Looking for game advertisement that includes of course my original post and several paragraphs going into detail on whY i want to play homebrewed.

then i'll spend a.. well probably a whole additionla post on what I feel is fantasy and what I would expect in a fantasy world.

there a tons of great homebrew out there, do not get me wrong. Like the Sentai class, its fun and look neat. but would I ever want to see it at any of my tables with D&D, no. maybe if we were playing Power Rangers d20 or whatever that superhero d20 based game is ( mutants and masterminds..?)

and I didnt say i wanted all party roles to be filled, i said that I wanted a group that cna handle every situation thrown at us.

In the end what happened was that myself and other players just have differing definitions of what consitutes fantasy.

bascially to me its if you wouldn't really see it( or an exrapolation thereof) in middle earth or hyborea then its not 'classic' fantasy.

Other have different ideas and I applaud them for that, hell its what makes life and making friends wonderful that there are people out there with different trains of thought and ways of looking at a given thing.

its the similarities that draw us to others, whilst the differences are what truely binds us. i think soem wise person once said.. or was that someting I just made up to say to soem foreign exchange students..? (im old and memory is bad at times)

Anyways what was I talking about again....:smallconfused:

[Morcleon]

*blink blink*

Um, you could have just said "I want a Tolkein-esque fantasy game" and we would have known what you meant... :smalltongue:

Also, it's pretty hard to infer things based on text only. Most inferences that we normally make are tied into vocal inflections and facial expressions.

[Jay R]

My recommendation is that you write a long, detailed description of what you want. It should make clear that your game is classic fantasy, allowing homebrew that fits classic fantasy and disallowing other genres.

Specifically, it could have many examples of what will and will not be allowed.

The goal is to make sure that people who would not enjoy or fit into your game don't start trying to play it.

Good luck!

[Morph Bark]

Thing is, the majority of homebrew classes that aren't class fixes are based on things distinctively non-Tolkienian. A prime reason for this is that Core classes (and races!) are already heavily Tolkien-influenced themselves, excepting the casting mechanics, which are based on the works of Jack Vance, and the monk and barbarian, the last of which is supposedly Conan-inspired.

[Flickerdart]

My recommendation is that you write a long, detailed description of what you want. It should make clear that your game is classic fantasy, allowing homebrew that fits classic fantasy and disallowing other genres.
Calling Tolkien "classic fantasy" is a little inaccurate though - by the time LotR was written, the genre was already a hundred years old.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

I think the issue is that you weren't clear with your specific desires from the start. I saw the thread in question, considered signing up as a player or DM, and then realized that, if I did, I'd have to vet homebrew I didn't design, make calls on what was and wasn't acceptable, and do a bunch of other work to build a campaign from scratch. It's difficult, having a game billed as "homebrew allowed" and then having to make calls on what homebrew is acceptable.

Since you suggested the game as a player, that DOES mean the DM gets the final call in what he or she will allow. If you want a more focused type of game, you need to make that VERY clear from the start. Otherwise you leave it in the DMs hands, and are subject to whatever world, classes, and power level that DM feels comfortable working with.

I think the issue is less with the community and more with a game not meeting your exact specifications. That's acceptable: I've bowed out of many games where the tone, mood, DM, other players, world, and/or similar things ended up not matching my tastes. When you're not running the game you forfeit control of such things to whoever IS running it, for better or for worse.

I'd recommend trying again and making it VERY clear what sort of game you're looking for (and understanding that even then it may start to take a form you aren't personally interested in), or finding a DM who knows your preferences beforehand and has preemptively agreed to run the sort of game you want. I think the former will work better, but you new to understand that your ideal game will also have to compromise with the ideal game d all the other participants. This may mean you need to adjust your idea of "ideal" fantasy.

Alternatively, learn to love non D&D systems. You'll have less of this issue (probably) in a system with fewer mechanics to muck about in. FATE is one of my favorites, and really emphasizes character over mechanics. E6 could remove some of the problems you have with "Sci-fi" classes. Still, even in these, you will get "outliers" from your traditional fantasy ideals.

[Urpriest]

If you primarily advertise a game as homebrew and that's all you say, people are going to be interested in playing the most popular local homebrew, like Ozodrin and the like.

[Jay R]

Calling Tolkien "classic fantasy" is a little inaccurate though - by the time LotR was written, the genre was already a hundred years old.

I understand. I always thinks it's silly to call AD&D "old-style role-playing", since 1E was the new-fangled stuff that drove me out of the hobby for awhile. And the "modern school" of Chess has been out-of-date for over half a century.

Tolkien absolutely had his roots in both classic Victorian fantasy and in legend, myth, and stories of previous ages. He made his academic name by reviving the study of Beowulf as story.

In a very real sense, Tolkien is the dividing line between classic and modern fantasy, and has aspects of both.

[BRC]

If you advertise a thread as "Homebrew Allowed", you're likely to have people bringing their pet projects. If you want to use your Homebrew, I would save that for the content of the thread with DM approval. Or be the DM yourself, allowing you better control over the tone of the game.

I don't spend a lot of time in the PbP threads, but I havn't seen an epidemic of Super-optimization or people trying to bring Tyranids into Fantasy.

Now, I have seen people trying to create rulesets to simulate stuff like Tyranids, but that can fit perfectly well into a fantasy setting. Just stop thinking of them as Tyranids, and start thinking of them as giant magical bug things. Just because the inspiration may be Sci-Fi does not mean you can't fight them with swords and magic.

If you just say "All Homebrew is Welcome", then I could Homebrew up a "True Arcanist" class that gets sorcerer casting with the entire Sorc/Wiz spell list as spells known, with 10 9th level spells per day at level 1, full BaB, and d100 Hit die. If you advertise the thread as "Wanting to try out my homebrew", then other people are going to show up, not to play the game, but to try out THEIR homebrew, and while your homebrew may be a new take on a dude with a sword, their Homebrew is a mad scientist with an army of plant monsters.

That said, if you're totally attached to the "Fighter-Mage-Thief-Cleric vs Orcs, Skeletons, and Dragons" System, to the point where anything outside that is unacceptable, then you may be out of luck. Those elements are certainly still present and central, but usually as a jumping-off point for people's ideas. Nobody wants to play "The Fighter", they want to play their character, who happens to be a fighter.

[pife]

I can relate to much of what the OP says, but my angle is a little different. . I've been playing D&D since 1984, after reading an advertisement in an old (I think it was Donald Duck) comic book. Seriously.. Fell in love with D&D and gaming in general right then at 10 years old. High school, the military, jobs, wives and kids later, I still love it. But apparently my "style" isn't "k3wl" enough, lol.. I like to make characters. More to the point, I like to make personalities. D&D, WoD, GURPS, T2K, Cyberpunk, Ghostbusters, whatever the game may be.. I then like to take those personalities on adventures.. Basically, I prefer to make personalities that happen to have some crunch, not crunch that happens to have a personality.

Is there a retirement home for old gamers, lol? One where I don't need to know what Tier my character is, or what trifecta of divergent feats from three different types of sources would, (with a permissive DM and the right alignment of the stars) allow me to be virtually invulnerable to x, y or z? (usually X,Y, AND Z, lol)

PHENOMONAL COSMIC POWER!!! itty bitty living space Haha, it feels like I"m having one of those "back in my day, whippersnapper, I used to walk uphill both ways in a blizzard to get to my one room schoolhouse, where we ate sawdust for lunch, and when we ran out of ink, we used blood to solve our arithmetic problems and then went home and plowed the fields in the dark, barefoot" diatribes.. I'm not, really.. But I actually hesitate to post for certain games because everyone in them seems to know SO. MUCH. MORE.

But it's not that. They may know more mechanics, more "tricks", and more power to em. In a duel, any character I made would have to get astronomically lucky to kill one of theirs.. But chances are, I'm having as much or more fun. **disclaimer** This is in no way a shot at anyone. The beauty of these games is that they are large enough and diverse enough to support everyone's perfect style, and some of the fancy combos you kids come up with are impressive to say the least.. ** I just feel sometimes like I'm a scratched up vintage car gathering dust in a garage. I can still run with the best of em, but I'm nowhere near as fancy. So, to the OP. I know where you're coming from. I'm from there too! There are still good games for us here. Maybe we just need to do a better job of advertising! HEY!! OLD DM'S (and GMs, and referees, and Storytellers, and.. you know who you are).. We're still here.. Wanna game?

[Barsoom]

I know the majority of the fish will not bite as my playstyle is more laid back, work really hard get rewards and make new friends whilst having fun, compared towhat Ive noticed the 'make really really powerful characters so you cna win' playstyle.

....

Not only am i not keen on this whole 'optimization' kick and by optimization i do not mean 'don't make effective characters' I mean the kind optimization where you squeeze out every nano meter of power you can for your character

This is a recurring theme in anti-optimization rants. Everyone assumes their optimization level is just right, and all they do is make efficient characters. But heaven forbid they encounter someone who optimizes more than them. That's overpowered! That level of optimization must not stand!

[The Bandicoot]

Snop

Wait, you have to be old to prefer to play that way? Since when?

[pife]

Wait, you have to be old to prefer to play that way? Since when?

Touche', you're right. It's not exclusively an old/young thing and it was unfair to characterize it that way. It just seems that these days, young or old, it's less about the story and more about the "look what I can do" factor. And, on a similar but unrelated note, while there are certainly opportunities for a group consisting of a goblin necromancer, an elven paladin, a Succubus, and a Half-War Troll Troll to make sense, to me, in "my" imagination, under normal circumstances, that group is "broken".. It's off the rails, it's jumped the shark, there's no internal consistency. It would be refreshing to occasionally see a thread where the story is king, and the characters in the story make sense.

Tell me, would the Star Wars films work as well if you had Garfield the cat standing in for Darth Vader, Hulk Hogan for Obi-Wan, some little japanese anime schoolgirl was Leia, and Luke Skywalker was played by Billy Crystal? It's just incongruous.

[Morbis Meh]

Touche', you're right. It's not exclusively an old/young thing and it was unfair to characterize it that way. It just seems that these days, young or old, it's less about the story and more about the "look what I can do" factor. And, on a similar but unrelated note, while there are certainly opportunities for a group consisting of a goblin necromancer, an elven paladin, a Succubus, and a Half-War Troll Troll to make sense, to me, in "my" imagination, under normal circumstances, that group is "broken".. It's off the rails, it's jumped the shark, there's no internal consistency. It would be refreshing to occasionally see a thread where the story is king, and the characters in the story make sense.


I knew I detected the odour of Stormwind Fallacy... There's nothing saying that you cannot do both, have a solid character that can do really neat things while having an amazing personality. There's no reason why a game cannot focus on the story when characters are made to be effective in fact the example you proposed may have a rich and vibrant reason for the way it is and why it works. Just because it doesn't fit your definition of what a generic fantasy story should entail doesn't mean that it isn't well thought out and detailed. Heck the Paladin could have fallen and his atonement could be redeeming this specific succubus and the War Troll could be a poor/lucky schmuck who was reincarnated or cursed by some malevolant caster and the only way to regain his/her former body is to travel alongside this fallen paladin. I personally believe the more off the wall character concepts have much more potential for unique and satisfying stories that aren't cliche; however, the main point is that this is all a matter of personal opinion. You can have powerful characters that have detailed, organic and amazing backgrounds with players that are amazing role players.

[Maxios]

Touche', you're right. It's not exclusively an old/young thing and it was unfair to characterize it that way. It just seems that these days, young or old, it's less about the story and more about the "look what I can do" factor. And, on a similar but unrelated note, while there are certainly opportunities for a group consisting of a goblin necromancer, an elven paladin, a Succubus, and a Half-War Troll Troll to make sense, to me, in "my" imagination, under normal circumstances, that group is "broken".. It's off the rails, it's jumped the shark, there's no internal consistency. It would be refreshing to occasionally see a thread where the story is king, and the characters in the story make sense.

Tell me, would the Star Wars films work as well if you had Garfield the cat standing in for Darth Vader, Hulk Hogan for Obi-Wan, some little japanese anime schoolgirl was Leia, and Luke Skywalker was played by Billy Crystal? It's just incongruous.

I would still watch them for the comedy factor. ...I'm now making a picture of these new versions of the characters in Inkscape.

[Synovia]

I then like to take those personalities on adventures.. Basically, I prefer to make personalities that happen to have some crunch, not crunch that happens to have a personality.

That's funny, because D&D's class system pretty much says you have to make crunch with a personality. You want a thief with an animal companion? Too bad, either retrofit a druid or a ranger, or figure something else out.

Gurps/etc, on the other hand, really do let you make personalities with some crunch.


I knew I detected the odour of Stormwind Fallacy... There's nothing saying that you cannot do both, have a solid character that can do really neat things while having an amazing personality.



No, there's nothing saying you can't do both. BUT... the vast majority of PBP going on here, people aren't. A character with 5 different templates isn't "flavorful", its a crunchy mechanical exploit. "My Half-dragon Half-celestial were-ogre druid is AWESOME! LOOK AT HIS FLAVOR! Oh, yeah, he has a fleshripper companion and natural spell. And was a farmboy"

[Barsoom]

That's funny, because D&D's class system pretty much says you have to make crunch with a personality. You want a thief with an animal companion? Too bad, either retrofit a druid or a ranger, or figure something else out.Or, you could stop complaining and start looking at the right places (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a).

[Morbis Meh]

No, there's nothing saying you can't do both. BUT... the vast majority of PBP going on here, people aren't. A character with 5 different templates isn't "flavorful", its a crunchy mechanical exploit. "My Half-dragon Half-celestial were-ogre druid is AWESOME! LOOK AT HIS FLAVOR! Oh, yeah, he has a fleshripper companion and natural spell. And was a farmboy"

You're only looking at certain people really almost everyone I play with makes very effective characters but also cares very much about the story and their characters personality... Also that build you mentioned is horrendous lol between all those templates you would have an ECL 18 with one level of druid only probably the most useless build every since any standard level 18 druid would lay waste to this character without batting an eye

[Synovia]

Or, you could stop complaining and start looking at the right places (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a).
Way to ignore my general point.

3.5 is built with a general Crunch->Fluff methodology. You build "what you are" (a cleric) and then try to tweak it to "who you are". Systems like Fate start with "who you are" and build around that.

[Tavar]

No, there's nothing saying you can't do both. BUT... the vast majority of PBP going on here, people aren't. A character with 5 different templates isn't "flavorful", its a crunchy mechanical exploit. "My Half-dragon Half-celestial were-ogre druid is AWESOME! LOOK AT HIS FLAVOR! Oh, yeah, he has a fleshripper companion and natural spell. And was a farmboy"

I see much, much more complaint about this sort of thing than I actually see this thing.

Hell, usually if they do some of the more exotic options, they make the character work with them flavor wise as well.

More often, I see boring, lifeless farmboys as a straight class with little thought put into the character mechanically or flavor wise.

[Synovia]

More often, I see boring, lifeless farmboys as a straight class with little thought put into the character mechanically or flavor wise.

See, I see the "Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold as being little thought to flavor". I see the "I'm playing a Dwarf to get these melee combatant advantges" as lack of playing to flavor. When you're making character personality decisions to satisfy mechanical advantage as ignoring the flavor. How many of these venerable casters are complaining about their arthritis? How many of these dwarves who spent most of their lives underground are confused by the wide open world?

[Deepbluediver]

This is a recurring theme in anti-optimization rants. Everyone assumes their optimization level is just right, and all they do is make efficient characters. But heaven forbid they encounter someone who optimizes more than them. That's overpowered! That level of optimization must not stand!

Hehe. I remember an quote that expresses the same sentiment from the Blizzard forums when I used to play WoW. It went something like:
"Eveyone who spends less time on the game than I do is a noobish scrub, and anyone who spends more is a basement-dwelling no-life loser."


Glad to see that double standards are genre and medium-blind. :smallbiggrin:

[BRC]

See, I see the "Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold as being little thought to flavor". I see the "I'm playing a Dwarf to get these melee combatant advantges" as lack of playing to flavor. When you're making character personality decisions to satisfy mechanical advantage as ignoring the flavor. How many of these venerable casters are complaining about their arthritis? How many of these dwarves who spent most of their lives underground are confused by the wide open world?

...I now want to play a dwarf who wears a wide brimmed hat all the time (Preventing him from accidentally glancing up) because he spent most of his life underground, and will freak out if he sees the sky.

Remember, there is a different between "Flavorful", "Fitting", and "Archetypical".
Assuming standard western fantasy
A Mad-scientist wizard who refluffs their spells as inventions is Flavorful, but probably neither fitting nor archtypical.

A timid Wizard who is ashamed of and tries to downplay his own magical power is Flavorful and Fitting, but not Archtypical.

A haughty elven Wizard who looks down on the fighter as a mere Meatshield can be all three.

The difference is that while Flavorful and Fitting are both good things, Archetypicial can frequently mean "Cliched"

[Flickerdart]

How many of these venerable casters are complaining about their arthritis?
If I wanted to listen people complaining about arthritis, I would visit my grandparents more often, not play D&D.

Although maybe I could teach D&D to my grandparents...

[Morbis Meh]

See, I see the "Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold as being little thought to flavor". I see the "I'm playing a Dwarf to get these melee combatant advantges" as lack of playing to flavor. When you're making character personality decisions to satisfy mechanical advantage as ignoring the flavor. How many of these venerable casters are complaining about their arthritis? How many of these dwarves who spent most of their lives underground are confused by the wide open world?

...I always go for the flavour when i play a dwarf... ALWAYS and the venerable dragonwrought kobold is dripping with flavour you're just looking at a small percentage of people on this forum and ignoring the rest. If I age up any type of caster I always play up their age whether it's some crotchety hermit druid or motherly cleric. As for dwarves spending most of their lives underground that is silly, nowhere does it say that generic dwarves in dnd never leave their mountains and travel. There are certain races that usually prefer to remain underground ie Duergar but you're applying your own preference on the race and spouting that everyone else is doing it wrong. Sure the boards do theoretical optimization but that's what it is theoretical I have never seen anyone play using one of these build and if someone does bring in a powerful build they are usually very party friendly. I think that this is a great community and the people are it are good people feel free to bad mouth it all you want because it is not to your liking. It's your choice whether or not you go on here and people get sick of people shouting 'Your not playing like this therefore it's BADWRONGFUN' whether it's pro or anti optimization.

[Barsoom]

Way to ignore my general point.

3.5 is built with a general Crunch->Fluff methodology. You build "what you are" (a cleric) and then try to tweak it to "who you are". Systems like Fate start with "who you are" and build around that.Your general point is invalid. With enough knowledge of the system options you can build exactly what you want. Of course if you choose to complain without familiarizing yourself with the system options, that's your right, but right now you make yourself look like someone who's complaining about "lack of options in chess, because all the pieces move only in straight lines" without even bothering to look up how a knight moves.

[The Glyphstone]

Hehe. I remember an quote that expresses the same sentiment from the Blizzard forums when I used to play WoW. It went something like:
"Eveyone who spends less time on the game than I do is a noobish scrub, and anyone who spends more is a basement-dwelling no-life loser."


Glad to see that double standards are genre and medium-blind. :smallbiggrin:

You've never heard the phrase "Everyone driving faster than you is a maniac, and everyone driving slower than you is an idiot"?

[BRC]

You've never heard the phrase "Everyone driving faster than you is a maniac, and everyone driving slower than you is an idiot"?

Everybody driving exactly as fast as you is either tailgating or blocking you.

[PersonMan]

In my experience, the more effort put into optimizing a character, the more the player cares about the fluff, with a handful of exceptions.

I've literally never seen anyone in real life games who didn't fit this. The one who didn't do any optimization work had no personality, the one who did...had a personality, backstory, etc.

Why?

I have a simple theory. DnD is a complex system and it's often hard to get specific concepts done right. If you don't care about your character, you can just slap together a generic Fighter. If you care, you end up diving through books, looking for ACFs, spells, feats and skills to fit the concept. In the end you have an optimized character, who is all the richer in fluff for it.

While making mechanics, I often end up expanding a concept's backstory and other fluff as I work. Little things, like spending a few skill points on this or that, or buying a specific not-very-useful item. If I just slapped my character together without a care, that wouldn't be there.

--

Oh, and just a note: I've yet to see a single Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold in an actual game. I've never seen a venerable wizard without cool fluff attached to them.

[Worira]

Touche', you're right. It's not exclusively an old/young thing and it was unfair to characterize it that way. It just seems that these days, young or old, it's less about the story and more about the "look what I can do" factor. And, on a similar but unrelated note, while there are certainly opportunities for a group consisting of a goblin necromancer, an elven paladin, a Succubus, and a Half-War Troll Troll to make sense, to me, in "my" imagination, under normal circumstances, that group is "broken".. It's off the rails, it's jumped the shark, there's no internal consistency. It would be refreshing to occasionally see a thread where the story is king, and the characters in the story make sense.

Tell me, would the Star Wars films work as well if you had Garfield the cat standing in for Darth Vader, Hulk Hogan for Obi-Wan, some little japanese anime schoolgirl was Leia, and Luke Skywalker was played by Billy Crystal? It's just incongruous.

The only problem I see with that party is the paladin, because of the excessively restrictive code of conduct. The rest could quite easily fit into a cohesive party.

Your Star Wars analogy is flawed for a number of reasons: you're trying to shoehorn different designs onto already established characters, in an already established plot, and drawing those designs from a variety of different media and genres. And not only are the characters already established, but several of them are blood relatives, so it wouldn't make sense for them to differ too dramatically.

[Scowling Dragon]

I was about to dismiss this as just an old guys ramblings until I read the reaction to the OOTS fight. People just can't take anything but THE most optimized fighting options. And complain about it over and over even when given the answer. Dude its a combat situation, sometimes your mind slips or not.

You are right. There is this general mindset set towards maximizing power and efficiency then creating cool characters.

Power is not the issue. Power>Character creation is.

[Eldest]

I was about to dismiss this as just an old guys ramblings until I read the reaction to the OOTS fight. People just can't take anything but THE most optimized fighting options. And complain about it over and over even when given the answer. Dude its a combat situation, sometimes your mind slips or not.

You are right. There is this general mindset set towards maximizing power and efficiency then creating cool characters.

Power is not the issue. Power>Character creation is.

See, now I disagree with this. And I'm going to pull in some support for this. Here's (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=273563) the first OOC thread in the PbP section at the time. It's been running for forever, judging by the fact that this is thread number 6. There is one ultimate magus, one cleric, one duskblade, one spellthief, and one warlock. A cleric, one of the five most powerful classes. A mix of two more. And then three others, that aren't the most powerful. So obviously, there's something more important than pure power to them. I would go and pull more examples, but I really should get back to coding. I'll just end with this: the fluff part of a character is much, much harder to aid over the internet than the crunch, as crunch requires you to know the system of rules called D&D 3.5 (or whatever game system, I'm defaulting to 3.5 because it's my personal favorite). Most everyone on the 3.5 board knows said system of rules. Fluff help would require the poster to give all the details of the campaign setting he knows in order to receive an answer in the same detail. Ergo, rules are discussed more often on the boards than fluff.

[TuggyNE]

Glad to see that double standards are genre and medium-blind. :smallbiggrin:

People are people, the world over. (And people are mostly jerks and generally kinda stupid.) :smallsigh:

[Devils_Advocate]

OK, there seem to be some comments in this thread to the effect that this gosh-darned modern trend of powergaming is detrimental to D&D, which used to be about the story, dagnabbit.

Reality check, folks: Dungeons & Dragons started out as modified wargaming focusing on a small group of elite individuals with this weird new "roleplaying" stuff gradually layered on. The game has always been at its heart about sending your dudes into monster-infested dungeons to get lewt and XP.

It's like Tetris: it's open-ended, lacking a final victory condition; but you can certainly make progress (in the game aspect, not just the story aspect) -- you have an actual point total, for pity's sake; and thus you can be "winning" in the sense of doing well, as one might describe oneself as "winning" a game of chess prior to actual victory; you can still lose (A total party kill means that your team has been defeated); so there's a clear difference between playing well and playing poorly, by design.

The traditional assumption was that your character's goals were your own, so having your smelly low-Charisma dwarf smooth-talk his way out of trouble would be considered "good roleplaying" because you used your roleplaying to achieve what you were trying to achieve. (Traditionally, Charisma was kind of a joke.) The comparatively recent alternate assumption is that your character is supposed to have its own desires and personality and thus good roleplaying is portraying that convincingly: You're supposed to have your character try to do what it wants to do rather than try to have your character do what it wants to do. Talk about your subtle distinctions, amirite?

So let us not define "old-school roleplaying" to exclude the way that the hobby was at and soon after its infancy, for that way lies madness.

So, what did change? Well, most pertinently, D&D evolved to become essentially "winnable" at character creation. In the olden days, the whole point was that clever, cautious, judicious tactics and resource management were necessary to prevail; that was the game. But in 3E, the right build lets you just power your way through lots of stuff. (And the right build plus excellent strategy plus excellent tactics means that THE WORLD SHALL BE YOURS, MWAHAHA.) From an old-school perspective, this defeats the entire point of the game by removing the challenge.

Whereas someone not accustomed to that style of play is more likely to say that character building is part of the game too, so why is making the best choices there somehow less legitimate than choosing the best actions for your character during play? Like, why would you want your dude to suck, man? Do you WANT to be a drag on the team? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys)

And the answer is that the game used to be fun but then they changed it and now it sucks (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItSucks). Because the challenge is the whole point! When a character gets to be really good, you're supposed to retire him! THAT IS WHY I WANT MY DUDE TO SUCK! You're trying to trivialize every possible encounter, you MUNCHKIN! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Scrub)


This is a recurring theme in anti-optimization rants. Everyone assumes their optimization level is just right, and all they do is make efficient characters. But heaven forbid they encounter someone who optimizes more than them. That's overpowered! That level of optimization must not stand!
But "optimized" isn't the same as "powerful". The optimizer builds a given character concept as well as possible. A munchkin asks "Which character concept gives the most plusses?"

It sounds like ngilop is talking about optimizing munchkins in particular.


the venerable dragonwrought kobold is dripping with flavour
I remember seeing venerable druids described as "very flavorful" once before. I gotta say, I'm not quite sure what to make of statements like this. See, I had thought that "flavor" in the context of RPGs referred to the detail given to a combination of build options to "bring it to life" as it were.

So are you saying that those options are given more "fluff" in the rulebooks than alternatives? Or is it just, as I suspect, a way of referring to something that tastes deliciously cheesy? ;)

Or maybe "flavorful" means distinctive, so a human fighter who grew up on a farm is "bland", and less familiar races and classes and whatnot serve as alternatives to an original backstory as means of making a character more appealing than that? Thus explaining why someone would want to make e.g. a druid with multiple templates, when the more powerful option is just straight Druid with Natural Spell (and the crazily broken option is just Planar Shepherd)? Maybe?


With enough knowledge of the system options you can build exactly what you want.
Synovia never denied that, though. It's not that there aren't lots of options to work around the fundamentally restrictive nature of a class-based system, it's that you need to work around it instead of it just being easy and straightforward to build whatever you want as a core design principle.

So far as I can see, you're responding to the complaint that in order to build a non-standard character you have to hunt through piles of splatbooks and jump through just the right hoops by saying that you can build a non-standard character so long as you hunt through piles of splatbooks and jump through just the right hoops.

Which is indeed missing the point.


People are people, the world over. (And people are mostly jerks and generally kinda stupid.) :smallsigh:
"I immediately noticed that 95% of everyone on the opposite side of every argument were complete idiots. After a while, however, I started to realise that 90% of everyone on my side of every argument were also idiots. Then I realised that statistically, that meant there is a 90% chance that *I* am an idiot. And now I don't post on the Bioware forums anymore."
- Druplesnubb, MSPA forums

[Morbis Meh]

I remember seeing venerable druids described as "very flavorful" once before. I gotta say, I'm not quite sure what to make of statements like this. See, I had thought that "flavor" in the context of RPGs referred to the detail given to a combination of build options to "bring it to life" as it were.

So are you saying that those options are given more "fluff" in the rulebooks than alternatives? Or is it just, as I suspect, a way of referring to something that tastes deliciously cheesy? ;)

Or maybe "flavorful" means distinctive, so a human fighter who grew up on a farm is "bland", and less familiar races and classes and whatnot serve as alternatives to an original backstory as means of making a character more appealing than that? Thus explaining why someone would want to make e.g. a druid with multiple templates, when the more powerful option is just straight Druid with Natural Spell (and the crazily broken option is just Planar Shepherd)? Maybe?


What I mean for it is that it is creative and the fluff potential is not limited by the mechanics behind but by the imagination of the player. My point is that just because a player has chosen powerful mechanical options doesn't limit the fluff of the character. In my mind it is independant because a character's backstory, personality and goals are solely based on the Player's creativity. So the way I see it is that the fluff can be good no matter the kind of build the player has made since it is largerly independant from the mechanics. You have people that firmly believe classes are a metaconstruct so a fight or a wizard is exactly that instead of whatever fluff the player wishes to use.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

What I mean for it is that it is creative and the fluff potential is not limited by the mechanics behind but by the imagination of the player. My point is that just because a player has chosen powerful mechanical options doesn't limit the fluff of the character.

Exactly.

I used to frequent a number of freeform RPG sites. Freeform RPGs, especially those based in the supernatural or featuring heavy PvP elements (like these were) often have a bad reputation of spawning Mary Sue characters, and they definitely do. That said, it makes a HUGE difference if that level of power is wielded by someone who just wanted to make a really powerful character (the prototypical Mary Sue in that genre of gaming), or if that character was played by someone honestly good at character building and roleplaying, in which case the potentially absurd levels of power were, quite frankly, completely fine in the context of the game.

The same translates to D&D and other RPGs. Just because a character is powerful or uses an effective (even a tremendously effective) build doesn't mean that character doesn't have an amazing story, a strong RP player running it, or a compelling and three dimensional personality.

[Felyndiira]

That said, it makes a HUGE difference if that level of power is wielded by someone who just wanted to make a really powerful character (the prototypical Mary Sue in that genre of gaming), or if that character was played by someone honestly good at character building and roleplaying, in which case the potentially absurd levels of power were, quite frankly, completely fine in the context of the game.

Just as an added note, from my experience in freeform RPGs, it is usually very easy to tell between the two types during character creation phase if you don't put a restriction on background size. Almost always, the person with a Mary Sue character will either have a poorly thought-out background with random points, or will devote their background entirely towards justifying their powers (the second one being pretty much 100% an indication of a powerplayer). Alternatively, they'll go out-of-hand in explaining a single quirk or event and brush aside any possible additional things not related to that one dimension.

The people that make characters to honestly character-build tend to make entirely different styles of backstories. They'll either make a character that is really open-ended with some descriptions of multiple facets of their life, or they'll put a lot of flavor (imagery, descriptions, philosophy) into their backgrounds as a way to get to know the character despite having only one or two important events as the focal point of the backstory. Basically, you either get to know how the character grew up and perceives his environment, or you get to know how the environment grew and perceives the character. Both are indications of an honest character builder.

[Devils_Advocate]

this is basically why I thik humanity is in such a craptacular state. everybody loves to say " no jsut becuase you say X is X doesn;t mean X is X, becuase person Y over here sasy X is really 3'
But that's not really what's happening here. It's not like someone saying that odd numbers are even. It's more like someone saying "No, not all even numbers are positive, negative numbers can be even too". Which is correct.

Look, essentially, you're saying "By 'fantasy', I mean exclusively this one particular type of fantasy and not anything else. Now then..." I would recommend against trying to redefine a term in that way; just choose a more specific phrase for the more specific concept you have in mind. You mentioned "classic fantasy" later. That's much better! Just one more adjective should pretty much cover it, probably. Maybe "classic heroic fantasy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroicFantasy)".

The word "fantasy" is supposed to evoke any wondrous scenario the imagination can conjure! (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5416-Kingdoms-of-Amalur-Reckoning)


from my previous posts and my hots down about my playstle and how I roll, it should have been easy enough to infer i woukd have imgained. especially since everything i linked up to that point was pretty much 'classic ' if you will, fantasy.
You shouldn't start a thread under the assumption that the respondents will be familiar with your post history. In all likelihood at least a few won't be.


Tell me, would the Star Wars films work as well if you had Garfield the cat standing in for Darth Vader, Hulk Hogan for Obi-Wan, some little japanese anime schoolgirl was Leia, and Luke Skywalker was played by Billy Crystal? It's just incongruous.
Star Wars has a wrinkled green tiny muppet as the wise old mentor figure and the chosen weaponry of the most elite warriors in galactic civilization is swords made of laser. None of that would be incongruous at all and could work just as well.

But it certainly would work differently, and something with all of those differences wouldn't be Star Wars, it would be something else. Perhaps this is your point, or at least (if I might be so bold) the point you should have been making.


In my mind it is independant because a character's backstory, personality and goals are solely based on the Player's creativity. So the way I see it is that the fluff can be good no matter the kind of build the player has made since it is largerly independant from the mechanics.
... So, would you agree that "venerable dragonwrought kobold" doesn't have more flavor than, say, "young adult human paladin"? Because that was my point (Each is just three descriptors and thus barely any flavor at all yet), but it seemed like you were saying the opposite.

[Morbis Meh]

... So, would you agree that "venerable dragonwrought kobold" doesn't have more flavor than, say, "young adult human paladin"? Because that was my point (Each is just three descriptors and thus barely any flavor at all yet), but it seemed like you were saying the opposite.

In absolute terms they are equal, from a personal standpoint I prefer the former it just invokes a unique image in my mind and I have never been a fan of DnD paladins :smallbiggrin: Like I mentioned earlier the fluff is dependant on the player so one concept may be stimulating to a player (eg the kobold... I miss Deekin lol) and another concept may just be flat. What can I say I like odd concepts: Half Orc Bard named Mr. Jangles a travelling war hero searching for fame and women while banging on his tamborine.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Locked for review.