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Reminded me of that cock mongler MacLennan, who complained in one review how impossible it was for him to actually sit down and write something for others to tear down for laughts.
AD&D for life. Cook wasn't hiding the fact how he designed the 3rd ed to be purposefully unbalanced. What 3, 4 and 5 lack is a simple class like the fighter who can pull up his weight along wizards and clerics and is playable by drunken newbies you can just tell to roll for attack and damage once in a while. Something your parents can play without pulling out Monopoly immediately after you tell them they first have to read 100 pages of rules.
My first started my first project with ttrpgs I thought it'd be really easy turns out it's extremely hard in those about 7,000 meetings about extremely arbitrary things like range tables
None of these people have a creative bone in the body they just want to control it so they can Porsche political agenda
Which is funny because the only people I've ever had problems with in games is not neo-nazis I've been no problems playing games with them
It's leftist
 
The groupthink weighs in on the kerfuffle with Jessica Price, based upon this thread: https://archive.is/ty2dF

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In case it hasn't been posted here's a link to the goods from Mrs. Smirk herself.


If Jessica Price was drowning I'd put a firehouse down her throat. However, I must admit this circular firing squad stuff is pretty entertaining. I can't believe companies refuse to understand that THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HIRE THESE PEOPLE.
 
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Paranoia was Greg Costykan who was also working with Steve Jackson Games at the time. I’ve always felt like Paranoia seemed more like an SJ game than a West End game.
Paranoia was one of the most fun games to GM because it outright encouraged pure sadism. I always used to yell the mission briefing straight into a styrofoam cup and then punish the players for not understanding it even though it was completely unintelligible. I'd also crumple up the mission map they got and then badly photocopy it three times to make sure it was completely worthless too.
If Jessica Price was drowning I'd put a firehouse down her throat. However, I must admit this circular firing squad stuff is pretty entertaining. I can't believe companies refuse to understand that THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HIRE THESE PEOPLE.
Lmao imagine believing anything a raving schizo like Jessica Price says.
 
In case it hasn't been posted here's a link to the goods from Mrs. Smirk herself.


If Jessica Price was drowning I'd put a firehouse down her throat. However, I must admit this circular firing squad stuff is pretty entertaining. I can't believe companies refuse to understand that THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HIRE THESE PEOPLE.
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Paranoia was Greg Costykan who was also working with Steve Jackson Games at the time. I’ve always felt like Paranoia seemed more like an SJ game than a West End game.
Ultimately, it's a Costikyan game. There's no father to his style, as they say. He also made Toon, which if anything is more ridiculous than Paranoia (or at least it lends itself to being played ridiculously because it's so rules-light).

Paranoia was one of the most fun games to GM because it outright encouraged pure sadism. I always used to yell the mission briefing straight into a styrofoam cup and then punish the players for not understanding it even though it was completely unintelligible. I'd also crumple up the mission map they got and then badly photocopy it three times to make sure it was completely worthless too.
It's an odd case of a game that encourages an adversarial relationship between the players and the GM, but still manages to be actually fun. Compare to, say, Hackmaster, which some people claim to have played and enjoyed, but I tend to doubt it.
 
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Given how widely the term violence gets applied in SocJus circles, they already have.

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Hey @ryu289 , even RPGNet thinks you're an annoying sperg.
A… am I reading that right?
You’re allowed to have rules in RPGs to cover disabilities… but you’re not allowed to discuss them as if they imply a negative outcome because that’s ‘ableist’?
That’s a whole new category of retarded. Being in a wheelchair is not a superpower.
 
It's an odd case of a game that encourages an adversarial relationship between the players and the GM, but still manages to be actually fun. Compare to, say, Hackmaster, which some people claim to have played and enjoyed, but I tend to doubt it.
Weirdly despite the adversarial elements in Paranoia the GM actually is motivated to helps the players succeed, despite the range of awful stuff they put them through as well as the inter party conflict encouraged.

Admittedly this is often because if the players fail they get to skip out on extensive misery. In its own hideous way Paranoia is more of a storyteller reliant system than those with mechanics to support the same because it's ultimately a comedy and a proper comedy requires reality to bend slightly to ensure that the players make it through right to the end.

For a game of Paranoia to really work though everyone needs to be there to have fun. If you take it too seriously then the first player who "accidentally" starts up a machine someone else is investigating is going to set of a chain of slap fights that'll collapse the whole thing even with unlimited clones.
 
For a game of Paranoia to really work though everyone needs to be there to have fun. If you take it too seriously then the first player who "accidentally" starts up a machine someone else is investigating is going to set of a chain of slap fights that'll collapse the whole thing even with unlimited clones.
The players are also usually entirely fine with killing each other even without intervention. And there's always at least one player whose response to a "DO NOT PRESS BIG RED BUTTON" sign is to press the big red button.
 
So once upon a time I kickstarted an evil hat game. Today an update was posted on it.

To long-standing backers of Evil Hat, I apologize for the up-to-15-other copies of this message you're going to see. We've asked Kickstarter to change our profile name to drop the "Fred Hicks /" part off the front of it, and they sound agreeable to it but want us to update every project with a notification and explanation of the change before they'll do it. The reasons for the change are (at least) threefold:

  • I'm often not the one actually running our Kickstarters these days; it's a team effort now and I'm only sometimes on that team
  • I'm not necessarily going to be at Evil Hat forever, so it'd be weird if Evil Hat's KS account made it look otherwise
  • The formatting of the profile name "Fred Hicks / Evil Hat Productions" means that every dang project has launched as Such-And-So by Fred Hicks / Evil Hat Productions, and... it's very rare that I'm actually the primary author (if author at all) on our projects here, so it reads pretty misleading (to me) to suggest that these wonderful games are "by" me. They're published by a company I founded, the company running our Kickstarters, so that's where the focus should be.
Wow, you got to the end of the list? You really are a dedicated fan! Fingers crossed — soon our profile name should be simply "Evil Hat Productions", and you too can experience the glorious mostly-irrelevant change as well.

Thank you as always for your support and attention.
 
So once upon a time I kickstarted an evil hat game. Today an update was posted on it.

To long-standing backers of Evil Hat, I apologize for the up-to-15-other copies of this message you're going to see. We've asked Kickstarter to change our profile name to drop the "Fred Hicks /" part off the front of it, and they sound agreeable to it but want us to update every project with a notification and explanation of the change before they'll do it. The reasons for the change are (at least) threefold:

  • I'm often not the one actually running our Kickstarters these days; it's a team effort now and I'm only sometimes on that team
  • I'm not necessarily going to be at Evil Hat forever, so it'd be weird if Evil Hat's KS account made it look otherwise
  • The formatting of the profile name "Fred Hicks / Evil Hat Productions" means that every dang project has launched as Such-And-So by Fred Hicks / Evil Hat Productions, and... it's very rare that I'm actually the primary author (if author at all) on our projects here, so it reads pretty misleading (to me) to suggest that these wonderful games are "by" me. They're published by a company I founded, the company running our Kickstarters, so that's where the focus should be.
Wow, you got to the end of the list? You really are a dedicated fan! Fingers crossed — soon our profile name should be simply "Evil Hat Productions", and you too can experience the glorious mostly-irrelevant change as well.

Thank you as always for your support and attention.
So what are they firing him for?
 
Sadly, no. I think you've got me edged out. I had the 1983 Basic set (BECMI) with the two books (player's handbook and DM handbook).

God, those days. My friends and I barely knew what the fuck we were doing. We would just draw up maps and fill them with monsters and then send each other through them like a real-world Rogue/Moria run.
I've got the white box stuff ("0th edition") around somewhere in a storage bin.

Worship me, oh nerdlings.
 
The players are also usually entirely fine with killing each other even without intervention. And there's always at least one player whose response to a "DO NOT PRESS BIG RED BUTTON" sign is to press the big red button.
They are, and unlike most games that allow and encourage that the GM objective is for them not to devolve into infighting that prevents the success of the mission but for success to occur despite that, not least because failure or early mass destruction is not as fun as success.

It's a tricky balancing act. Which these mods could learn from.
 
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They are, and unlike most games that allow and encourage that the GM objective is for them not to devolve into infighting that prevents the success of the mission but for success to occur despite that, not least because failure or early mass destruction is not as fun as success.

It's a tricky balancing act. Which these mods could learn from.
Nah, Paranoia is ableist, transphobic, and incredibly misogynistic.

I can't be bothered to make up reasons why, but they don't put any effort into justifying their blinkered viewpoints either. They'll just dismiss something on a third-hand account and will never bother to form their own opinions. I would say 90% of the userbase and 100% of the mods at RPGNet are a lost cause, and best treated as a warning sign to avoid rather any attempts at rehabilitation.
 
I would say 90% of the userbase and 100% of the mods at RPGNet are a lost cause, and best treated as a warning sign to avoid rather any attempts at rehabilitation.
I dunno, I am getting an idea for a paranoia campaign where you're the mod of a once-popular message board that's now being constantly invaded by nazis...
 
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