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teh bunneh

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Posts posted by teh bunneh

  1. Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

    in Non-Gaming Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

     

    When I go to cons with lots of cosplayers, I always politely ask if I can take their picture. If they say yes, great! Some polite chit-chat, "Your costume is really great, did you make it yourself? I love that show, she's my favorite character, etc." Once the pic is taken, I thank them for their time, wish them a happy con, and give them a friendly smile. If they want to talk more or hang out (hey, it happens sometimes!) that's great! There's no touching, there's no getting all up in their space, nothing like that. I don't stare at their boobs, leer at them, or say rude things. Costuming is an art form, another type of geekery, and I appreciate the effort they put into it. If they say no, I thank them for their time and move on.

     

    The only time I wouldn't ask permission first is if they're in the costume contest. But I figure if they're up on stage then they won't mind too much (assuming pictures are allowed, which they usually are).

  3. Fantasy Race Bloat?

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

     

    Cool. This is the thing that bugs me in a lot of games' date=' is when someone remarks "I'm an (X), therefore I have to (Y)", where X is a race, class, or just about anything. I'm an elf, so I have to hate cities. I'm a dwarf, so I have to hate goblins. I'm a wizard, so I have to be a bookworm nerd. I'm a paladin, so I have to be a humorless stick-up-the-ass. The list goes on ... it's one thing if you choose to follow the stereotypes, but it drives me nuts when people think that they're ironclad requirements.[/quote']

     

    Heh. In my world, there's a bunch of common Elvish superstitions. One of them is that you're never supposed to sleep on the ground. Another is that you're not supposed to wear white clothes unless you're in mourning. Both of them are considered very bad luck. I mentioned this to one of my players, who was playing an Elf, and he scoffed. "You're not supposed to wear white??? That's just a silly superstition! It has no scientific basis! Not at all logical, like never sleeping on the ground! Sleeping on the ground is dangerous, everyone knows that!"

     

    He played the character as scoffing at a great many Elvish customs, and embracing a bunch of different ones for no apparent reason. :lol:

  6. Fantasy Race Bloat?

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

     

    But I suppose this is the question (and it's not intended to be an accusation, and I apologize if it comes off that way) ...

    If I built my elf character and explained that was how and why I was going to play it, would you tell me 'No, you're doing it wrong, do it my way'?

     

    No, of course not (and don't worry, I didn't take is as an accusation). :) All people are individuals. While something might be a-typical of the Elvish race, adventurers in general are a-typical people (it takes a strange sort to leave home and family to run off and kill monsters for a living). Besides, what you described isn't that unusual among Elves in my world. If you put that info into his background -- how he tends to behave and why -- I don't think I'd have any problem.

  8. Fantasy Race Bloat?

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

     

    This is preferential to what I usually get' date=' which is 'You must be aloof and detached and snotty ...' and so forth. Me, I would think this would cause elves to have a high suicide rate ... they would almost literally find themselves BORED TO DEATH and need to find something to do to occupy their time to keep from going crazy. I'd play such an elf like he had a daredevil death wish and the attention span of a ferret on crack (slightly hyperbolic).[/quote']

     

    It is fairly typical for Elves to pursue a particular career with a single-mindedness that shocks humans, becoming incredibly gifted at it. Then, after 20 (or 40, or 80) years, abandon that career and go after something else. They also tend to settle in one place for a few decades, then without warning move elsewhere and put down new roots. But no, there is not a very high suicide rate, as Elves tend to have a morbid fear of death (since it doesn't occur naturally very often among their people, they don't quite have the same understanding of it as the shorter-lived races do).

     

    They're an odd people, to say the least. :)

  9. Fantasy Race Bloat?

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

     

    I've got a lot of fantasy races in my FH game (as mentioned before), and I do my best to make them unique but still playable. A lot of the flavor for their cultures comes from their genetics. Elves can live for hundreds of years. What would that be like? How would just that simple fact effect the culture and personality of a people? Pretty drastically, IMHO, so in my world the Elves have some odd idiosyncracies that humans find simply baffling. Some big, some little, but all with a reason behind them.

     

    That said, each individual is different, and PCs by their very nature tend to be unique. So if someone wants to play a different race, they will still infuse that character with his own personality. But I do encourage my players to think about the differences between races ("Imagine these people that you're adventuring with -- your friends -- will be dead and buried in just a few short years, while you'll be still just as strong and vital as you are today. How does that affect the way you view them, and the way you view yourself?").

     

    And near-immortality is just one of the many physical things that makes them different. They can see in the dark. They tend to be more physically graceful, but less muscular than humans. And so on. The other things have an effect on their culture (and their personalities) as well. Now, an Elf who grows up among humans is not going to pick up on all of the things that make Elvish culture different, but they most likely still aren't going to just be a human-with-pointy-ears.

     

    And the other races have their own physical, cultural, linguistic, and personal idiosyncracies as well. Some of them are pretty well-developed, others are just placeholders for rough ideas, until a player wants to actually play one in a game and I have to come up with something. ;)

  10. Today's Dumb Criminal Story ...

    in Non-Gaming Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Today's Dumb Criminal Story ...

     

    I guarantee this is what was going through his mind...

     

    "Hey, there's a huge box of quarters here in the garage, buried under a bunch of other crap, with a half-inch of dust on it. They don't even know it's here! Because if they did, they wouldn't just leave it sitting out here in storage. There's gotta be at least 30 or 40 dollars worth in here, and they don't even know it! ...Dude, if I took it, they wouldn't even realize it was gone. How cool is that?"

  13. The cranky thread

    in Non-Gaming Discussion

    Posted

    Re: The cranky thread

     

    My arterial access didn't clot properly today. While driving home, it started bleeding. The passenger seat of my car now looks like someone got stabbed in it.

     

    I tried to clean it, but the upholstery is cloth ... that's not coming out.

     

    See, I think you should take this as an opportunity to create a great story out of it. Pick up a hitchhiker and say something like, "Oh, don't worry about the bloodstains. They're from someone else. I never kill you college kids; I'm more into nurses." :eg:

  14. Fantasy Race Bloat?

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

     

    I've got a ton of different (player) races in my long-running Fantasy Hero game. In the West (where most campaigns take place), you've got pretty much the standard Tolkien-esque races:

    - Humans

    - Hobbits (3 varieties)

    - Elves (5 varieties)

    - Dwarves (3 varieties)

    - Godstouched (with either divine or demonic blood)

     

    In the South, you've got:

    - Humans

    - Saurians (lizard men, 2 varieties)

    - Wemic (lion men)

    - Osirans (egyptian demi-gods, sorta)

    - Godstouched (with elemental blood -- fire, sea, wind, sand)

     

    In the South-East, I have:

    - Humans

    - Bengali (tiger-men)

    - Punjabi (kinda like elves, kinda)

    - Tamili (tiny flying bear-like critters)

    - Urdu (kinda like dwarves, kinda)

    - Vanara (monkey men)

     

    In the Far East, I have:

    - Humans

    - Hengeyokai (animal shape-shifters)

    - Korobokuru (kinda like dwarves)

    - Nezumi (rat-men)

    - Godstouched (5 varieties -- sea, sky, mountain, forest, and sun)

     

    So depending on where the game takes place, there's all sorts of varieties (even enough to keep Crosshair Collie happy, I'd wager). ;) There's a logical explanation for the wide variety of sapient races, but it's not particularly important to the players so it's never really come up. They all just assume "it's magic!" and are happy with that.

  15. What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

    in Non-Gaming Discussion

    Posted

    Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

     

    I put myself in the "love 'em" column. The thing about Covenant that folks should understand is...

     

     

     

    He does commit a reprehensible act in the first part of the book. No doubt about that. But in his mind, he believes he is in a dream. He believes there are no consequences to his act, any more than there are no consequences for anything you do in a dream. I've dreamed of murder, theft, all kinds of horrible things, and when I wake up there's nothing left of that act but a rapidly-fading memory. That's where Covenant thinks he is.

     

    Over the course of the books, he begins to discover that the Land and the people within it are real (or rather, whether they're objectively real or not no longer matters to him -- they become real to him), and the weight of his terrible actions (and inactions) bears down on him.

     

    It is, for my money, a very interesting study in human psychology. Covenant is very much an anti-hero, and is very passive throughout the whole thing so it's kind of hard to like him as a Hero. So I totally understand where people are coming from who don't like the books. :)

     

     

     

  17. I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!)

    in Non-Gaming Discussion

    Posted

    Re: I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!)

     

    We had set up a "Cabin in the Woods" thing, in which a handful of young men and women would be sacrificed in gruesome ways to appease the elder gods. But during the night, the young folks had scattered into the woods and we had lost track of them. When morning came, we found one of the women who had apparently tried to hide in a hollow tree. She was dead. We sent a team of soldiers and helicopters in to retrieve the body, but it was a trap!

     

    The girl was not dead, and her friends were lying in ambush around the area. One of them shot down our chopper. The others attacked our troops. One of the girls had managed to catch one of our monsters (a dinosaur) and was riding it around, crunching our vehicles and soldiers. One of our tanks fled from the chaos, chased by the dinosaur. I was running along with the tank, fleeing the destruction of our forces. Part of me felt proud that these kids had managed to subvert the whole thing, and I was thinking that the Elder Gods would be pleased by the carnage, even if it wasn't what we had planned.

     

    The tank and I, still chased by the dinosaur, fled up into the mountains along a narrow, rutted trail. I was getting tired, and the tank was running low on gas. I was thinking, "There's no way the dinosaur could still be chasing us, it must be exhausted as well!" But it was still there on our tail, and gaining! The dino made a heroic leap and landed on the ridge ahead of us. I immediately turned around and ran the other way, hoping that destroying the tank would slow it down enough that I could get away. I ran back down the mountain until I found a place to hide. I crawled up under a boulder and hoped when the dino came back it would continue along the path and miss me.

     

    I didn't count on the girl's other friends though, who had been following us up the mountain more slowly. They spotted me, pointed their weapons, and told me to come out. I had no other choice, so I raised my hands and came out. I said that I would tell them everything about what was going on...

  23. Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

     

    GM: This is a hospital for patients with serious mental illnesses.

    PC#1: Can we talk with them?

    GM: They're suffering from all sorts of delusions. They hear voices. They'll talk to you whether you're there or not.

    Me: Great! That should save us from having to make the trip down there! :rofl:

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