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casualplayer

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Everything posted by casualplayer

  1. Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...
  2. Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I just finished Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It is very much science fiction of the good old social commentary vein. Extremely well written and constructed. Nested, connected short stories. I am amazed they could make it into a movie and now I want to see it to see how successful they were.
  3. Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Professor Ishmael Strom!
  4. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities I'm with Socio. If Batman in Arkham City used this term in regards to a woman, I would have a problem, refuse to purchase or play the game, and encourage others to do the same. But bad guys have to act badly otherwise you can't tell the bad guys from the good. And there is the problem, deteriorating discretion and being too complacent to teach people how to tell the good from the bad and the idea that zero tolerance policies help the situation.
  5. Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Supposedly he's a local guy, into SCA and gaming, massive geek cred. He also just happens to have scorched off a pretty damn good novel, the first of a short series. The hero telling his tale after his derring-do is done. Took me two tries to get going on it but once I reached the turning point I was hooked.
  6. Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Awesomesauce.
  7. Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. That warrior woman is off the charts amazing but I don't know if she is Exalted enough. Maybe if she had a frost giant's heart clenched in her teeth or had just cloven a mountain in twain. If she won the battle all by herself, that would be Exalted enough. I wish it wasn't a contracted piece because I would love a print.
  8. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities Sounds like there's a market for Big Macintosh swag.
  9. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities And I used Hustler as a source for a high school paper on atheism. There was a great interview of Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
  10. Re: Order of the Stick Seems like Rich could get a lot of mileage out of copy-paste. Or if you rack up a million dollar Kickstarter you might be able to afford an intern or even two.
  11. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities Massey, it's real important that you don't say anything that can be taken as insulting to Lemming's wife. Use up all the tact you have left if you have to.
  12. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities I think back to the 13 year-old gamer I was, and I have no problems imagining the sexist depths that gamer girls can find themselves subjected to. How sad though to be a grown man and still be a 13 year-old inside. The hobby matured: how about you? One of my favorite anecdotes: Jim Ward, one of the original fatbeards of Geneva, was trying to market his new RPG 1492, where The Old World was enlightened but The New World had elves. He just couldn't understand why restricting the options for the female characters, who had to originate from The Old World, would be offensive or even a dealbreaker. I mean, historically women weren't allowed to be military or get an education! Suggestions that enforcing historical realism in a fantasy game was a hard sell and discouraging half your potential customers was an even harder sell. He ignored us and that is why 1492 is the most popular RPG on the market today! Shows what we, the sales team at ACD, knew.
  13. Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Pugnacious.
  14. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities There is a fine line between sincere appreciation and lechery, and it is different for every woman. This is what makes dating interesting and exasperating.
  15. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities That joke was coming. If not from Ray then from me. Zero, we need to work on that self-esteem issue of yours. Maybe we can start by renaming you "Onepoint" and work our way up from there. Once you're Threepoint you can come in for a landing!
  16. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities Used to be that women were pretty darn scarce at cons, and treated like an alien species. Still remember the Trek con I went to when I was in high school that had Marina Sirtis as a guest, the intense, teeming hordes surrounding her wanting something they dare not name. Waves of flopsweat lechery. A girl throw into that stew wouldn't have stood a chance. I also remember Pacificon 91, where my girlfriend's GM just kept "bumping" into her. Almost had to put him down hard. I also scored big points at a early 90's con by offering to gift my soda to a lady so she could throw it in a creeper's face. While there is still improvement to be made, those days are mostly done. Geek social skills have come a long way. Admittedly they started out with nowhere to go but up, but they have dramatically improved. Your wife might get a lot of attention but it should be reasonably polite appreciation, and someone stepping over the line will likely get chastised by a passerby before you or she even get a chance.
  17. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities A lot of people treat internet forums like a bathroom stall. Every time we try to make world idiot-proof the world produces a better idiot.
  18. Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy D&D wasn't ever meant to encourage simulating "4-encounter workdays," even though that is what the gaming masses gravitated towards. You're criticizing the system for not working properly when being used incorrectly while incorporating character classes that were designed post-release by people sketchy on the design parameters. There's lots of things to criticize D&D for but Challenge Rating is not one of them. An adventure cycle is the time and events between full rests, full rests being the only meaningful increment of time in D&D.
  19. Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy So GMs take a flawed premise, that CR-equivalent encounters burn exactly 1/4 of party resources, multiply that out and try to max out every adventure cycle , assuming everyone in the party is the same level and every encounter is set precisely at that CR, and then there are introduced character classes that don't diminish progressively with each additional encounter bringing people to the conclusion that the forced, befuddled "4-encounter workday" that was not the intended use of the rules structure in the first place should be abandoned. I get that you had lots of company in this misinterpretation and misuse, but if you crap on the scale the balance shifts. More than STUN and SPD and END and PD and DCV, I think this kind of thinking is why I prefer HERO to non-HERO for fantasy.
  20. Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy You're one of the people, the people you mentioned before, who created D&D classes that don't have expend-and-recover abilities and didn't play nicely with the game's core paradigm? What did you want to go and do that for? Or you're one of the people who played in games where your GM lined up 4 beasties in a queue, you fought them one at a time and then took a nap or climbed a rope? Tough break, because that does make for boring, repetitive games. Guess your GM didn't get that "cunning" means in D&D that even though I might be the first person you meet I intend to be the 4th or 5th person you encounter, when you are depleted, weak, easier pickings. I'm sorry that your GM didn't realize the basic story progression of Mook (CR much less than party level,) Peer (CR slightly less or equal,) Lieutenant (CR equal or greater,) then Boss Monster (CR much greater) that leads to tense, satisfying, dramatic climaxes. Just because it wasn't used properly doesn't mean CR wasn't a useful tool. HERO is a little trickier to scale competition but still doable. If the adversaries have +3 DCV or greater on your party's OCV it hardly matters what the adversaries' defenses are because they won't be touched. If the enemies have defenses tough enough to soak the party's best attack their DCV hardly matters. If the antagonists' base attacks are enough to one-shot the party then all the party will be doing is turtling, Dodging or hunting for cover. You have to know your party thoroughly and make sure none of these areas is completely outclassing their capabilities. Slightly outclassing, that's good fun and makes for satisfying victories.
  21. Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy Yeah, those "people" deserve a swift kick in the pants. The Challenge Rating system of D&D was a nice framework for GMs to base adventures on. 3 CR=party level encounters/day, nice easy xp rake with room for dice to go cold and not risk a TPK. 4/day, ebb and flow, could go poorly, might have to press the panic button device, use the emergency exit item. 5/day, seriously harassed, risking coming up empty in the last battle, wizard might have to draw his dagger and fight. The GM could vary the number of encounters to easily manage the pacing, since D&D RAW has few motivators other than potential death and loss of stuff. You're probably right about CR being 1/4 rather than 1/6. Been a while.
  22. Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy A beginning D&D spellcasting character might have a bare handful of options, Magic Missile or Cure Light Wounds, and be able to cast them a limited amount of times per day. A beginning HERO spellcasting character probably has a wider selection of spells and can cast them as many times until the END runs out. D&D adventures are built off of Challenge Ratings, which means each encounter pegged at party level is meant to burn off 1/6 of the party's resources. Adventures built off of CR are serious mismatches against characters that don't have finite capabilities. This is what Markdoc was talking about; he "broke" D&D by making a character that didn't have a finite pool of abilities that could be GM-chipped away at. He HEROed D&D!
  23. Re: Help me grok HERO! Who knows? Maybe there's a hellmouth or something similar under Middleton. Maybe since Middleton is what the empowered have in common the town has special powers and allure. Lots of dramas get set in what appears to be unremarkable tiny towns. People just kept turning up dead around Jessica Fletcher. Keeping the setting focused allows you to explore the nooks and crannies and every little darkened corner.
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