Tabletop Community Watch

[Eldar faggot]

I am personally feeling like you have more problem with high fantasy/anime writing than "freak races".
If elven subrace is porly characterised or it's simply shit writing.
Still even weeb fantasy and high fantasy can be valid, since there are numerours ways you can do fantasy. You just DON'T MIX THEM, and you make sure players realise in which setting they are and act accordingly. In the group of friends it's usually really easy. However if you are playing with randoms this could be much harder to negotiate and you should be ready to filter what players want and even players themselves to not turn your game into a horror story, which I assume is the main fear of anti-freakshit crowd.

High fantasy is different to weeb fantasy. Demon's souls and Dark souls are high fantasy. Dark souls 3 is weeb fantasy. When players start acting like final fantasy characters and flying around with magical swords you're crossing into freak shit territory.

The freak element of freakshit is the special snowflake parts rather than wanting to play as a werewolf or a half demon.

 

[SpaceMovie1992]

I have to agree.

After nearly a year and a half on Roll20, I've realized how socially functional I am compared to other people.

I remember working with a new player to create a character, doing this for one hour, then having that guy leave. His excuse was that he got angry he was playing a system he didn't know, and with people wasn't familiar with, and being asked to do things he didn't understand. When we weren't even beginning to play the game. And I was putting it down that I would teach the system.

The "Loves the idea of TTRPGS" to "oh fuck it I'll just play an MMO or CRPG" pipeline. Many such cases!

 

[Agarathium1066]

I am personally feeling like you have more problem with high fantasy/anime writing than "freak races".
If elven subrace is porly characterised or it's simply shit writing.

There's a lot of 'classic' fantasy stuff that is genuinely poorly explained and done. The 'new' Drow are a great example of making a super bland sub-race that is special and different for an arbitrary reason. There's so many bells and whistles slapped onto older established archetypes that if someone's willfully aiming to play something in a shitty fashion they'll manage it.

 

[Adamska]

High fantasy is different to weeb fantasy. Demon's souls and Dark souls are high fantasy. Dark souls 3 is weeb fantasy. When players start acting like final fantasy characters and flying around with magical swords you're crossing into freak shit territory.

The freak element of freakshit is the special snowflake parts rather than wanting to play as a werewolf or a half demon.

And yet magical weapons and armor is one of the ways to blunt that curve.

Also you're probably going to want to clarify on Final Fantasy chars and what you mean by that.

The "Loves the idea of TTRPGS" to "oh fuck it I'll just play an MMO or CRPG" pipeline. Many such cases!

My personal favorites are the terrible "we created or want to play in THIS setting, but don't want to DM it. So can you DM it for us?" posts on Roll20. Those always sound like hell since I fully expect them to chimp when you actually try to run the game due to them wanting it this way.

Like, fuckers, one of you take the bullet and run at that point holy shit.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Limit the max amount of spells the caster can have in their spellbook according to their intelligence. Sure, most are going to buffstat that shit as hard as possible, but don't use the 1/E (Unlimited) for 19+ Int.

Put hard caps on the damage (Like the old 10d6 max damage on fireball)

Bring back in Concentration checks.

But the absolute BIGGEST one!

Have monsters and NPC's aware that magic exists and you can apparently buy magic boots at the corner store.

 

[Adamska]

Limit the max amount of spells the caster can have in their spellbook according to their intelligence. Sure, most are going to buffstat that shit as hard as possible, but don't use the 1/E (Unlimited) for 19+ Int.

Put hard caps on the damage (Like the old 10d6 max damage on fireball)

Bring back in Concentration checks.

But the absolute BIGGEST one!

Have monsters and NPC's aware that magic exists and you can apparently buy magic boots at the corner store.

Also do make sure you remember that certain monsters have SR.

Oh, and that certain monsters are actually resistant and take DR from magic in general. We relearned a while back lycanthropes are resistant to even magic; only silver does full damage on them.

Also, the spamming of magic devices and planning the ambush was a great way to have this one boss be kind of a threat. He'd use limited dimension doors and cloud kill gas grenades he was immune to to douche them. He also had mystic drones that used wands. The idea was he was trained to ambush and kill mages, so he set himself up to do it. Even had SR, and decent SR too; at least enough that the occasional spell from my fairly optimized caster crew couldn't guarantee a spell on him.

 

[George Lucas]

It seems like this thread is mostly about D&D, Warhammer, and other nerd shit, but OP said boardgames apply, so I'll leave this here:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23540/shikoku-1889

BGG is a website for boardgame enthusiasts to sperg about whatever latest crazy boardgame is hot right now. There are places for reviews, and each game has its own forum, so this looks like a great source for general autism and drama.

The particular board game I linked is trending (even though it came out in 2004). I don't know anything about the game except that it looks very autistic. So, it inspired me to do some research into Historical Board Gaming, including the Hex & Counter community on Reddit. In short, this a place where people play boardgames that are about as complicated as computer games without the help of modern technology. I'll report back later with what I find.

EDIT: I’ve played historical wargames for years. I just never looked too deeply into the online side of things, where I hope to find autism and nerd fights.

 

[Wormy]

It seems like this thread is mostly about D&D, Warhammer, and other nerd shit, but OP said boardgames apply, so I'll leave this here:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23540/shikoku-1889

BGG is a website for boardgame enthusiasts to sperg about whatever latest crazy boardgame is hot right now. There are places for reviews, and each game has its own forum, so this looks like a great source for general autism and drama.

The particular board game I linked is trending (even though it came out in 2004). I don't know anything about the game except that it looks very autistic. So, it inspired me to do some research into Historical Board Gaming, including the Hex & Counter community on Reddit. In short, this a place where people play boardgames that are about as complicated as computer games without the help of modern technology. I'll report back later with what I find.

If there's any Lolcow material on BGG, I honestly haven't seen it, and I paruse it quite a bit. Then again, aside from Zombicide, the shit I look up there tends to be mostly be ancient titles.

Don't get me wrong, if I find lolcow material about titles like, say, Divine Right, Intruder, or Sniper!, I'll be on that like stink on shit.

And oh ho ho ho, you just discovered the world of old school wargaming, did ya? Godspeed, my friend. As someone who played a few in the day, you've got a heck of an iceberg to chip.

 

[Butcher Pete]

It seems like this thread is mostly about D&D, Warhammer, and other nerd shit, but OP said boardgames apply, so I'll leave this here:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23540/shikoku-1889

BGG is a website for boardgame enthusiasts to sperg about whatever latest crazy boardgame is hot right now. There are places for reviews, and each game has its own forum, so this looks like a great source for general autism and drama.

The particular board game I linked is trending (even though it came out in 2004). I don't know anything about the game except that it looks very autistic. So, it inspired me to do some research into Historical Board Gaming, including the Hex & Counter community on Reddit. In short, this a place where people play boardgames that are about as complicated as computer games without the help of modern technology. I'll report back later with what I find.

Babby discovers Advanced Squad Leader.

Hex and Counter was D&D before D&D was. Gygax and Arneson just reduced units of roundheads to a single fighter character and reskinned the cannon as a fireball-tossing wizard.

ASL and the like can be fun to certain types of people, but that shit gets complicated.

 

[anti SJW]

Babby discovers Advanced Squad Leader.

Hex and Counter was D&D before D&D was. Gygax and Arneson just reduced units of roundheads to a single fighter character and reskinned the cannon as a fireball-tossing wizard.

ASL and the like can be fun to certain types of people, but that shit gets complicated.

ASL got nothing on Star Fleet Battles for complexity.

 

[Ghostse]

I'm sure BGG is saturated with high quality cows, but good luck finding the social maladapted autists that are hidden in the socially functioning autists. Remember these are boardgamers and not pure vidya. The average board game player has to practice at least enough hygiene and possess enough social functioning that at least one other human being will tolerate them for 2-4 hours at a stretch.

 

[TremendousBoredom]

ASL got nothing on Star Fleet Battles for complexity.

Dear god. Mid turn speed changes and Andromedan fractional accounting. Or "How to make your friends used to more rules light stuff absolutely have a breakdown".

 

[Shaka Brah]

I'm sure BGG is saturated with high quality cows, but good luck finding the social maladapted autists that are hidden in the socially functioning autists. Remember these are boardgamers and not pure vidya. The average board game player has to practice at least enough hygiene and possess enough social functioning that at least one other human being will tolerate them for 2-4 hours at a stretch.

For real. VTT/discord RP/Tabletop Simulator is where the real insanity is, because those people don't need to physically leave their homes (or convince people to enter them) to get players.

 

[ZMOT]

I'm not a big roleplayer so I don't have the answer to this but how big of an impact has Critical roll had on the freakshit crowd and how much has anime/gaming had? People usually take ideas from other media they watch/read. If you read a lot of tolkien and conan you have mostly grounded characters. If you watch Tokyo ghoul and play Genshin Impact you're going to want those weird half demon lolicon characters with dual katanas.

>people base their characters on something that doesn't exist in the source material



dunno if zoomer or MUH WEEBS, but I think it's time for a little history lesson:
interview with a vampire came out it 1976 and was highly popular. so popular in fact they made a movie of it in 1994 with none other than tom fucking cruise (this is such a big deal most people who weren't around that time can hardly understand, on top of catapulting some other random actor you might have heard of into a-list status). the novel and thus the movie had a child vampire, or to stick with the vernacular "200 year old loli".
so where do you think suddenly all the gay vampires and loli characters came from in the fucking 90s when anime wasn't even a blip on most nerds radar?

it's almost like people always crib shit from what's popular at the time, and since most people are dumb they do so in the dumbest way. so if they start pulling a "grounded" legolas out of their ass to surf on shields it has fuck all to do with the source material (unless you can show me where that happens in the books) and comes down to the individual player, same way le edgy tragic drow/undead murderhobo and lolsorandumb kender does, or warforged with a 1 feet titanium dick (not freakshit, right?).

Still even weeb fantasy and high fantasy can be valid, since there are numerours ways you can do fantasy. You just DON'T MIX THEM, and you make sure players realise in which setting they are and act accordingly.

dunno, lodoss war and berserk are quite popular and work just fine (as do other stuff most people haven't even heard of). gandalf going toe to toe with a balrog is not much different, it's just that tolkien's focus wasn't on flashy combat so it happened "off screen" instead of wuxia the fuck out of it.
when the movies came out it generated a whole horde of "I wanna be a wise wizard zapping shit", not to mention harry potter is even older than those movies and reinforced that even more. you always had an awful lot of people with only surface knowledge of nerd shit, so coming into that hobby more often than not lead to the exact same stuff people complain about now, only difference is that numbers have gone up massively, because nerd shit is popular and dumb consoomers always follow what's popular.

same shit, different year.

 

[Corn Flakes]

it's almost like people always crib shit from what's popular at the time, and since most people are dumb they do so in the dumbest way.

I still have flashbacks to the hordes of indoor-sunglass-wearing trenchcoat-and-katana dark-and-brooding edgy boys in RPG chat rooms back in the early-00s.

I haven't checked recently, but I imagine their modern equivalent is My Hero Academia-style teenage "heroes" these days.

dunno, lodoss war and berserk are quite popular and work just fine (as do other stuff most people haven't even heard of). gandalf going toe to toe with a balrog is not much different, it's just that tolkien's focus wasn't on flashy combat so it happened "off screen" instead of wuxia the fuck out of it.
when the movies came out it generated a whole horde of "I wanna be a wise wizard zapping shit", not to mention harry potter is even older than those movies and reinforced that even more.

It just occurred to me that the movies depict Gandalf swinging a sword or a staff around a lot more often than casting spells. My brawl-happy Orcish Wizard is vindicated.

 

[SpaceMovie1992]

Latest Volo's errata dropped, and it's pozzed as shit!

r/dndnext - Writeup of all the lore thats beein removed from Volos

3,883 votes and 1,869 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/12/dd-wotcs-new-lore-changes-raise-questions-among-players.html

In an effort to make sure that no negative concepts from human history are ever brought up, there are to be no references to practices by fantasy races that could be construed as inherently evil.

-Fire Giants do not take captives for ransom or use slave labor.

-Gnoll packs are no longer rapacious, mindless warbands (probably because furries want to fuck them).

-Beholders are no longer racial supremacists.

-Yuan-Ti don't have any personality or culture beyond being snake-like people now (again, probably because furries want to fuck them).

-Mind Flayers have their hive-mindedness de-emphasized because the comparison might be offensive to the Chinese.

Monster alignments are also gone! Please, feel free to stick a lawful good pacifist Illithid in your game. That makes sense.

As corny and outdated as the alignment system may seem in modern times, and as often as it ends up presenting snags for players and DMs alike (CN joker irl characters, people being incapable of playing LG correctly ever, CE murderhobos), having it in place gives the world some texture and easy story hooks and setups for the players. Gnolls are ravaging a county because that's what they do, and the party get hired by the authorities to put a stop to it. A nobleman is trying to ransom his useless failson adventurer from a Fire Giant warlord and hires the party to be the bag-men. Simple story hooks that can branch out into more complex issues and themes when the party has had time to gel and establish itself.

Now, with this increased focus on making every race and species "nuanced" (read: boring, and just humans with a funny looking model), what's a newer DM to do? The old grognards will do what they have always done and ignore errata they don't like, but someone opening the monster manual looking for inspiration is just going to end up confused and bored (a common experience when dealing with the Forgotten Realms) because there's nothing that points to a natural antagonist for the party. If Beholders are just solitary, neurotic hoarders, there's much less inherent motivation for them to be antagonists than if they're solitary, neurotic hoarders who want to dominate lesser races and use them as pawns in schemes against other Beholders.

Want to see these outdated and icky tropes being used to great effect to make a compelling story? Check Baldur's Gate 3 out! Mind Flayers are acting evil. Gnolls are acting evil. Goblins are acting evil. Everything in the Underdark acts evil and hostile. This creates conflict and gives the player something to actually do! Interesting concept, innit?

And the best part is that Volo is a stupid cuck that gets bullied by goblins. May the same fate befall every named character associated with mainline DnD products.

 

[Gingervitis]

-Gnoll packs are no longer rapacious, mindless warbands (probably because furries want to fuck them).

Eh. As much as I don’t like the rest of the lore removal and I don’t like what it will inevitably become before everything goes back to normal, I have to at least admit that this part of Volo’s was dumb. They were playable in every other edition of D&D. Why not this one?

 

[Corn Flakes]

Eh. As much as I don’t like the rest of the lore removal and I don’t like what it will inevitably become before everything goes back to normal, I have to at least admit that this part of Volo’s was dumb. They were playable in every other edition of D&D. Why not this one?

Because the fewer furry hyena dickgirl enthusiasts among the D&D playerbase, the better. That's why.

 

[Kabuki Actor]

"I like hard magic systems" psuedo-designs a soft magic system.

 

[Ghostse]

Eh. As much as I don’t like the rest of the lore removal and I don’t like what it will inevitably become before everything goes back to normal, I have to at least admit that this part of Volo’s was dumb. They were playable in every other edition of D&D. Why not this one?

When I see Gnoll race blocks in other editions, I assumed that was to make Gnoll counter-adventurers as enemies, or for powergamers. Gnolls are as a race worshipping Yeenoghu, a not very nice demon. I don't know how you make a gnoll adventurer except as an easily ammused Drizzt.