Gareth's experience with RAW and the hobby

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 01:14

So, this context goes all the way back to 1e, and I wish I was kidding, and I am not. Do you still want it back that far?

BESW

Pre-emptive PSA: the NAB doesn't relax Be Nicery, only long-winded ramblery. I suspect the subjects of this discussion may be emotionally fraught for you; if you wind up unable to keep the salt to a bare minimum, I'll set up a Discord chat or something.

Lord_Gareth

Yeah I was gonna disclaimer this and ask for the audience's help in me keeping a lid on mein NaCL

'Cause this is indeed something in which I have years of bad blood and unresolved grudges

BESW

The Fairy Nuff brandishes her whacky stick helpfully.

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth I'll help.

1e's a good starting point for me--it's practically where I left off =)

(Disclaimer on my end: I've been pretty tired and headachey parts of today. If I pull the ripcord at some point, it's not necessarily a reflection on you.)

Lord_Gareth

'Kay

nitsua60

May 9, 2017 01:25

(Also, I'm going to grab a snack and drink. Brb.)

Lord_Gareth

This goes back, as many things go back, to Gygax. D&D's roots, and thus the ultimate roots of our entire hobby, date back to war gaming. I can say from experience that the wargaming community can be...intimidating. Intimidating is a good word, I think. It isn't just the buy-in to participate, though it's that

It isn't just the expense on thick rulebooks which you must then essentially know by heart, though it is indeed also that

It's that at the level of investment involved - time, money, effort, passion, strategy, tactics, travel - war gaming draws people for whom the hobby is an important, even defining part of their life

nitsua60

okay

(Though I've got to believe there are casual wargamers? Maybe just that the demographic skews stronger there than in other hobbies?)

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 (There are, but they require certain circumstances to arise, usually a friend into war gaming who lets them borrow figures or use proxies)

(That plus casual access to a space to play such as a basement [again provided by another war gamer] or an FLGS can permit casual participation)

(But it's very much not the norm)

nitsua60

(okay)

Btw, it's been long enough to get this conversation to take place that I've forgotten the theme. I.e. you're setting the stage, but I forget what play I'm at. =D

Lord_Gareth

D&D spread from Gygax and Arneson first to the war gaming subculture and then slowly beyond it, and from that subculture it picked up that same intimidating nature, fractious elitism, and passionate investment. Of the many things I hold against Gygax for what he did to this beautiful hobby he created, the use of his influence to enshrine both bullying players and the idea of an adversarial GM are the ones that make me most angry

The term 'munchkin', the earliest known part of the conflict that would later be branded 'RAW vs. RAI', came from demeaning players who made gnomes, dwarves, or halflings, because these races were mechanically superior so clearly these players only wanted power and were not playing 'right'

nitsua60

May 9, 2017 01:32

@Lord_Gareth How did he do this?

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 Gygax was a rock star. Some of it was just things he said, but a lot of it were things he created and enforced at his own tables and encouraged others to do. He would invent monsters to punish players for playing 'wrong' or for ignoring aspects of the game he felt were vital

He was brutal & unforgiving in his encounter and dungeon design; early 'dungeon crawls' were his idea, including and especially contributions like White Plume Mountain and Castle Greyhawk, where death came without warning or pity

It's been speculated that part of the reason he betrayed Arneson and cut him out of Dungeons and Dragons as a product line was because of their wildly divergent DMing styles; Arneson disagreed, sometimes publicly, with how Gygax was shaping the community and tended to encourage more roleplaying and creativity in his own games

We'll never know. Arneson's career in roleplaying essentially ended when his half of the work was stolen from him

(And if I seem bitter about that, I definitely am)

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth What's your personal investment? Were you part of the Twin Cities group?

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 No. This all happened before I was born. I just had to eat the fallout from all of this, which echoes in the industry even today. Additionally I got the chance to look into Arenson's setting and some of the adventures created from it and I'm angry about what could have been and wasn't.

Plus, honestly, I just hate traitors. Gygax destroyed his partner for selfish gain and vainglorious pride

I used to worship the guy. Finding out what he did felt like a slap to the face.

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth How do you know this? I.e. there are, let's say... conflicting accounts out there. And, frankly, no one really comes out smelling like roses.

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 Some of it is inference from the legal proceedings and business filings. Some of it is contacts who were there, people who got me into RPGs that got into them when they were still growing, players who went through the Satanic Panic

nitsua60

May 9, 2017 01:38

I mean, that the split basically ended Arneson's career is easily-established as a matter of historical record. But that it was EGG's pride and selfishness...?

BESW

Okay, we're already getting into personal attacks.

Try describing the qualities of the person's actions, not the qualities of the person.

Lord_Gareth

Let's move on for the moment then. We can circle back later but the TL;DR is I don't have double-blind proof I can offer you, only what I've come to believe from the sources I have on hand. Again, I started this from the attitude of essentially hero-worshiping the guy

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth I'm not trying to undercut you here: just trying to figure out your sources. I've read a half-dozen books and a few internet accounts of some of the times you describe, but I know there's plenty more out there. I'm always open to learning more, so I hope you'll share those sources.

(But, moving on.)

Lord_Gareth

'Munchkin' as you may have noticed is still a surviving term, a sort of generalized insult aimed at the idea that a player is power-gaming or only playing to 'win' or disruptive or or or

The word has almost no real specific definition left

BESW

When emotional qualifiers like "betrayal" and "traitor" are necessary to communicate your perspective, keep it in your perspective: you can feel betrayed by Gygax, that's not an issue; calling Gygax a traitor is a line of dialog that's harder to keep in Stack chat, and leads to queries like @nitsua60's.

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 01:42

It's just an epithet now, spit at people for varying levels of offense ranging from caring about the rules to actually being disruptive

@BESW Noted

Now, you may or may not have read Magician's excellent 'there is no such thing as D&D' article

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Sure. Though I'll note I've never actually heard it used in the wild. Just in internet-arguments.

@Lord_Gareth I've read it.

BESW

It gets linked semi-regularly, to the point that he's now officially known as Our Own Magician.

nitsua60

@BESW [ahem] "Our Very Own," you mean =)

Lord_Gareth

This remains true, but it was especially true in the era defined by AD&D and later AD&D 2e. The rulebooks were/are full of null-pointer exceptions, unmade or half-made rules, and the culture of DM authority meant that every table was sharply unique

2

BESW

yes, I do.

doppelgreener

May 9, 2017 01:44

> Not all a man knoweth may be said, not all that can be said may be regarded as timely, and not all that is timely may be suited to the capacity and policies of Stack Chat.

3

(with apologies to BESW)

Lord_Gareth

One easy example is that between the original 1e when Arneson was still a legal partner all the way up to when 2e was transitioned to 3.0, there would be calls for 'morale checks' in monster manuals and adventures. At no point was a morale check ever defined

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth True. I still make them up on-the-fly =)

OTOH, the old Encounter Reaction Tables did pretty nicely, IMO.

Lord_Gareth

So you have this culture that grew out of an elitist, tournament-focused background (and had tournaments of its own) in which any given DM had to construct a good half the game him/herself and in which that DM was regarded as the ultimate authority at best and usually your adversary as opposed to another player owed and owing respect to the group

nitsua60

(I still pull them out on occasion, even running 5e primarily.)

Lord_Gareth

'Munchkin' transitioned from 'this guy rolled a dwarf at the tourney' to anyone seen as trying to use the rules to 'usurp' the DM, and picked up synonyms like 'rules lawyer' or later, 'power gamer'.

In the early 2000s with the advent of 3e and the added influence of White Wolf on the industry, another term got coined - 'rollplayer' - along with the articulated belief that investing time in learning or using a system, and being good at that system, made you a poor roleplayer and vice-versa

nitsua60

May 9, 2017 01:49

(Wow. I put my 2e DMG upright on its spine, and it falls open to p. 103, Table 59: Encounter Reactions.)

Lord_Gareth

The famous Stormwind Fallacy developed as a direct pushback to the prevalent belief that if you were a 'good' player you would be bad at "the game"

Sec I need more coffee

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Audience-check: I didn't touch an RPG between basically 1995 and 2015: can you manage a brief sidebar on what WW has to do with anything?

Lord_Gareth

Def, gimmie a sec

nitsua60

yup

Lord_Gareth

Headache pills at last

Okay so! As you know, several competitors to D&D would emerge out of the early years of RPGs, several of which are notable for inventing or formalizing ideas used to this day

The one I always remember because it's just so unexpected is the fact that GURPS Bunnies and Burrows created the first skill system

Which is like

'Wat'

Many did not last. Others cling to smaller but dedicated fanbases and are curated for various reasons by new owners.

White Wolf emerged as the first persistent, real competition to the behemoth that is Dungeons and Dragons

nitsua60

May 9, 2017 01:56

@Lord_Gareth What do they make?

Lord_Gareth

Their World of Darkness line of games tapped a market frustrated with D&D's limitations by being almost everything it wasn't. Tired of fantasy? World of Darkness was modern. Sick of random chance defining your character? Everything about your concept is in your control.

WoD was ostensibly a horror line

But as horror games, and I say this with all the love in my heart, they could not have failed more miserably. They are at best action-thrillers with horror makeup on

@nitsua60 As said above, the ones that got initially famous were World of Darkness. They also created Aberrant, Exalted, and Scion

Among a few others

Shalvenay

Mage

nitsua60

gotcha

Lord_Gareth

They have a comedy card game by the name Pimp: the Backhanding if you ever want to feel like an awful human being but don't wanna give Cards Against Humanity your money

nitsua60

I'll pass.

An honest look in the mirror in the sober light of day'll do that, every time.

(Cheaper, too.)

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 01:59

In some ways White Wolf was the seed of the narrative game movement; their DM position was/is called the Storyteller and their company culture (and thus the writing and advice they gave) was about creating stories rather than the more challenge-oriented style of D&D

nitsua60

Okay.

Lord_Gareth

Buuuuut there were some problems and downsides. White Wolf's pushback against D&D came with the idea that its complex rules system was inherently bad and so was anyone who got involved in similarly complex systems

BESW

You may be more familiar with World of Darkness as the setting of Vampire: The Masquerade. Their WoD game Mage was the first non-D&D game I ever experienced, and introduced me to the concept of phrasal character traits replacing an alignment grid.

Lord_Gareth

Their advice to storytellers in their supplements (either in the GM sections or in articles such as the Werewolf: the Apocalypse Player Guide) was universally adversarial and often traded on the Storyteller secretly cheating the players out of their well-earned victories. Vampire, especially, was bad about this

So at a time when the problem the Stormwind Fallacy would later call out was forming, the major competitor to D&D was busy exacerbating it

BESW

That is why I stopped playing Mage after a single session and didn't pick up a non-d20 game again for four years.

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 02:01

The creative director at the root of WW's company hostility would not step down until 2014, during the development of the as-yet-unreleased Exalted 3e

@nitsua60 - Sufficient context for me to move on at this point?

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth I suppose. Remember, I don't even know where you're headed. So I'm just listening--I don't know whether it's enough context. But I can tell it's what you think is the important context, so we'll rest on that.

Lord_Gareth

Also if you decide to read the articles in the Werewolf: The Apocalypse Player's Guide I would suggest you do so with your choice of either comfort food or hard liquor 'cause they're depressing

Alright, so!

In the late stages of 2e, the online RPG community starts to form. It was primitive at first and I can't speak much to the early days. I know the fumble chart my group used - "Good Hits, Bad Misses" - came from there, and that Sean K. Reynolds described himself as 'the most hated man on the internet' while webmaster for TSR (a feat he was bragging about on the Paizo boards up until his public and messy resignation from their team). The dial-up era is largely a mystery to me

When I went online to find my fellow gamers, D&D had recently transitioned to 3.5 in recognition of the fact that rather than updating 2e, WotC had accidentally made a whole new game and needed to act like it, which they did.

It went about as well as you might expect.

Those early days on the WotC boards were defined by constant miscommunication, derision, hostility, and the inevitable result of taking a lot of socially challenged folks and putting them in the same spot behind the veneer of anonymity

Eventually WotC would quarantine the issue with the creation of subforums, which helped to keep the peace by artificially separating different play styles or at least different play topics

Out of that separation came the Character Optimization (CharOp) forum, from which would emerge the cutting edge of Theoretical Optimization, as well as the concepts of Practical Optimization and the Stormwind Fallacy

Theoretical Optimization - "TO" - is 'what can I do to this system assuming a permissive GM and a strict reading of the rules'. This is where famous and silly builds such as Pun-Pun, Bear Bearington the Bearbarian, and the Dream of Metal come from

2

TO is, as the name suggests, a theory, a thought exercise. You aren't meant to do it to anyone you want to remain on speaking terms with unless the entire group has agreed that this is what the game's gonna be like

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth "socially challenged"?

Lord_Gareth

In contrast, Practical Optimization - "PO" - is about bringing a given concept to life ni a way that will contribute in your game environment

@nitsua60 I'm not sure there's an okay way to phrase this but there's a pervasive stereotype that was, in my experience, broadly true at the time and even to an extent now, which cast participants in our hobby as folks who have difficulty for Various Reasons in normal social interaction

You can still see that in the form of our collective persecution narrative & the RPG hobby's genuine issues in handling toxic players and people

Subjects @BESW has mused on before

nitsua60

Okay, whatever. You're making sweeping generalizations about players of RPGs, but it's seemingly beside the point, so let's move on. You've got different camps of optimizers. So what?

(Hmm... that was snippy.)

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 02:16

Eh, it happens

nitsua60

It's also been an hour and I'm still not sure where any of this is going.

But I'm listening.

Lord_Gareth

And I am kinda making generalizations, yes. My perspective is from the inside of communities that self-described as having socialization issues; I'm not meaning to say or imply that as a hobby we're maladjusted

I might be more confident saying that the places I participated in definitely were

But it's a bit hard for me to prove that now since WotC deleted their forums

BESW

So, again, it's easiest to keep stuff to your own experiences and perspectives. Keeps us all honest and avoids unnecessary tangents about generalisations.

Lord_Gareth

Alright, so; the distinction between TO and PO are important because of what happened during and following their development and formalization. Don't think of them as camps of optimization, think of them as two different kinds of optimization; it's not engineers and artists, it's glass sculpting vs. stone sculpting

The discourse developed several terms to cut down on at least one solvable problem, the constant miscommunication

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Fairy 'nuff. I have yet to see why the social adjustments of these people you interacted with matter... it's a bit of a Chekhov's Gun you've got there.

@Lord_Gareth okay

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 02:21

And one of the things done to help keep communication clear, or at least in an attempt to keep communication clear, was to draw back to RAW as a baseline so that you could then explain your intended deviation from it. The concept behind it is simple enough: we can't read your mind to know your table, so we start at the thing we can all verify and then you explain from there

Drawing back to RAW meant understanding RAW to begin with, which is where I fire the gun I borrowed from Chekhov

If I say to you that a reading of a game's rules say X about Y and thus this game's version of Y is X, it kinda sounds like an inherent value statement. In some ways it even is

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth (that's some good dramatic tension, there)

BESW

My, what a large gun you have.

Lord_Gareth

For instance, if I tell you that the math behind, say, grappling makes it impossible vs. a statistically average encounter past level X, and thus choosing grappling for a long-term campaign is a poor choice, I've made a value statement about grappling

Even if all I'm doing is stating facts, what comes off is 'this is bad'

Shalvenay

I'd say "this mechanic was not well-designed for use past level X"

BESW

BTW, I believe this is the context:

in RPG General Chat, 2 days ago, by Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 There's old history about RAW that gets into bad blood in the culture and highly hostile ideas on what the "correct" way to play is. For awhile, anyone looking for the exact printed rules of a system was derided as a rules lawyer or munchkin, harking back to Gygax's own derision of the same and the idea of a DM as an authoritarian

in RPG General Chat, 2 days ago, by nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth I'm vaguely aware that there's a lot of history to the term, and that my 20-year RPG hiatus very-nearly coincides with its early years.

nitsua60

May 9, 2017 02:25

@Lord_Gareth Hmm... that doesn't actually strike me as a value statement about grappling.

It strikes me much more as a statement about what you think is valuable in a game/campaign.

Lord_Gareth

And for a large part of the community learning about the game in a way we never had before, we did and/or do think things are bad. This digging in to the fundaments of the system suggested ideas like "fighters can't do the things the game says they can," and, "these settings make no sense in the light of what the things and people in them can do." Rules holes or poor math or even just blatantly bad or worse options in comparison to other, similar options suggested [cont]

That the designers of the game did not understand it

(This would later be confirmed in the form of articles WotC wrote about their own learning process in their design and how it lead to new and updated designs, some of which intentionally made earlier ones obsolete in the same niche)

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth The fact you state is "grappling is impossible under X conditions." The statement that "therefore grappling is bad for a long-term campaign" has a lot more of the person making the statement in it than it does fact, it seems to me.

BESW

In other words: the practical purpose this monograph is to better understand why RAW discussions so quickly assume people are taking sides, why the tag is considered a necessary bulwark to reduce/prevent the molestation of RAW answers on the Stack, and why the tag is also considered an aggressive territory-marking action giving undue value to the perspective.

3

Lord_Gareth

(Player's Handbook II had such an article on why Hexblade got written the way it did and why Duskblade was written, blatantly better, into its role)

nitsua60

@BESW (ty)

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 02:27

@BESW (Danke)

But with online discourse being the way it was/is and the history of antipathy towards 'rules lawyers' and 'roll players', this...it wasn't exactly the sort of thing that made people happy. Things considered central to the classic play style of the game were called into questioned or even called out as blatant, artificial creations without roots in the actual system

nitsua60

Wait a minute, I'm starting to get lost in the weeds...

Lord_Gareth

'Kay, where do I need to expand?

(Sorry if I'm rambling)

(I lived through most of this and I remember a lot of it with a hard edge of rage)

nitsua60

(This is LG's barely-contained rage...)

=D

Lord_Gareth

(This is the most cleaned-up and presentable version of my rage possible in this world)

BESW

@nitsua60 He's holding it in admirably.

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 02:31

(This is my rage going to its best friend's wedding)

Shalvenay

"The system doesn't do what it says on the tin! WHADDAYAMEAN IT DOESN'T DO THAT?!?! OF COURSE IT DOES!!!" and it all goes downhill from there, no?

nitsua60

@BESW I was going to say so, but the Fight Club reference came out, instead.

6 mins ago, by Lord_Gareth

And for a large part of the community learning about the game in a way we never had before, we did and/or do think things are bad. This digging in to the fundaments of the system suggested ideas like "fighters can't do the things the game says they can," and, "these settings make no sense in the light of what the things and people in them can do." Rules holes or poor math or even just blatantly bad or worse options in comparison to other, similar options suggested [cont]

BESW

@nitsua60 When he says "it" in "it wasn't exactly the sort of thing that made people happy," he means the analytical approach to mechanics ~~he describes above with examples like~~ you just linked to.

Lord_Gareth

Aight, what are you asking about here? Why we felt things are bad? The words and beliefs that started the fights?

(The relation of soap to human sacrifice?)

nitsua60

Yeah, maybe I just need you to connect your dots for me. Online discourse had acquired an analytical and RAW-based (out of necessity for communication among strangers) approach. But some gamers disliked such "munchkinery." <-- That's how I'm reading the first clause of your sentence "But with online discourse...." That right?

@Lord_Gareth (That's well established.)

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 02:36

@nitsua60 Well, sorta. I'm expanding on the development of the analytical part of the community but I didn't mean to imply that the entire community got that way. Remember earlier when I said that WotC fractured their forums to keep the peace?

nitsua60

Then we get to "this... it wasn't exactly...." What's the "this"?

Lord_Gareth

'This' being the digging into the fundaments of the system followed by, for lack of a better way to put it, the community "publishing" its findings which suggested that various sacred cows were either dead in the transition or false and had always been false

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Sure. There are some who communicate in an analytical/RAW-based way, and some who see that communication and play as evidence of hated munchkining. (Even if those playing the Op-game never bring one to the table!)

@Lord_Gareth What sacred cows?

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 Well, f'rinstance, you can see in settings like Forgotten Realms and Golarion that martial characters and especially Fighters and Barbarians get propped up into positions of leadership. Their descriptions in the various equivalents of the Player's Handbook even play this up

Except that fighters and their cousins are objectively poor leaders

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth You're going to unpack that one: remember that I never played 3.x or PF.

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 02:40

(To extend this: fighters are objectively poor adventurers and lack almost all of the survival, to say nothing of problem-solving, tools needed to be a contribution to a group rather than a drain)

@nitsua60 Basically of the tools needed to be a leader in the system, which range from poor (skills) to overwhelming (spells, wealth), fighters have zero of them. They lack skill points to invest into leadership abilities or knowledge about their own people and demense, protections against being manipulated either socially or magically, and have no native or easily acquired ability to so much as see through a side-market huckster

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth This, again, is starting to seem like you're conflating fact with opinion, in the manner I pointed out above and you didn't address. I say "seem" because I don't know the system, so I don't know. But it really seems hyperbolic.

Lord_Gareth

Let alone, say, a treacherous vizier or an enemy strategy

@nitsua60 There's defined tools, which they definitely lack.

BESW

@nitsua60 To put it mildly: in the d20 System, the mechanical expression of narrative leadership having a high Charisma stat and a number of points in social skills. Mechanically, however, martial classes generally consider Charisma the least useful ability and have very few skill points, which would have less effect in social skills than in physical skills because of the way the class is set up.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Additionally, they often lack native access to those skills, which means even if you have the Cha and Int to spare you're worse at them than another class

@nitsua60 To expand on the above, Fighters in particular lack things like Perception (to notice ambushes), Knowledges (to identify enemies), and other utility and survival skills that can be useful in a hostile environment such as those an adventuring party faces

And without native class features beyond feats they founder in the face of threats that become increasingly complex and demanding

TL;DR the game gets complicated, but martials don't

They just...get left behind

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Okay, so if we stipulate that fighters are poor leaders, so what?

(I'm failing to see how this is any different than our history as a race.)

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 02:46

@nitsua60 Well, you asked for an example of a sacred cow that causes fights, and that was and is one of them. Fighters used to become lords of a demense as part of their class back in 2e and I believe 1e; the idea that a fighter isn't just a poor leader, but the worst possible leader goes against the grain of both the history of the game and the fantasy sold in Fighter itself

It suggests that the game, which bills the Fighter as "the lord of the battlefield" and "mighty kings", is at best wrong and at worst lying.

It creates narrative dissonance in settings whose major figures are these martial characters

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth yeah, I'm pretty sure you are correct on that re: fighters getting a demense in 1e

Lord_Gareth

Who now cannot live up to their own legends and stories

nitsua60

Stop a sec.

I'm seeing exactly the same things you describe and interpret them very differently.

Let's take 2e for a sec, since we both know it.

Lord_Gareth

Sure thing

nitsua60

A fighter's likely to dump CHA, even though it's not as important to do so, arguably, as it is in 3.5/PF.

And the player's free to pump whatever NWP they like, so let's suppose they tend away from social ones.

So we've got a low-CHA, socially unskilled fighter.

And the rules say they just get followers at L9 (PHB 2e pp.26-27)

3d100

6d10

Dice Service

May 9, 2017 02:50

8

3

7

9

7

8

nitsua60

(In our hypothetical it's a F6 to lead the warband; 40 light infantry, 20 pole-infantry (all level 0); 30 heavy infantry (F1).)

@Lord_Gareth So we're looking at the same thing. You see a fighter who's objectively less competent to lead that warband than the average character of another class leading a warband anyway and say "the game's wrong, or even lying." Fair assessment?

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 Maybe? I'm kinda framing this in terms of the challenges of politics. Like, that the Fighter is bad at attracting followers in 3.X is not necessarily the fault of Fighter; Leadership, the feat that replaced the warband idea, is a different beast

But in terms of what a person needs to do to be a ruler/representative/king a fighter is unequal to politics

While being consistently billed as an ideal candidate for such in the narrative and the settings

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth No no no no no, though. The fighter is not bad at attracting followers. He does it! That's what the rules say!

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 you missed the "in 3.x" on his statement

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Who says he's an ideal candidate? I don't see that anywhere? It just says the fighter has followers.

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 02:57

@nitsua60 I mean, Ed Greenwood did when he established a bunch of them in FR as these mighty and cunning rulers

So...

That in mind, sure. But I'm kinda lost as to why we've drawn back to 2e when I'm talking about developments that took place solidly after the 3.X transition?

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Because I asked for an example, and you picked one that you said had roots in 1e/2e, so I asked if we could discuss it in 2e terms, and you said yes.

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 Then I've either missed something here as to the point you're seeking to make or I need more coffee

I'm going to make more coffee regardless but can you expand on what you're getting at?

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth So far what I've gotten from what you're saying is "there are things in the rules that seem not to make sense and that cause me narrative dissonance, so the game is wrong or lying."

All I know is when I see things in the game that seem not to make sense, it's a challenge to me to exercise my imagination enough to conceive the setting where those things do make sense.

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 Hoo boy. That, um. Happened. It is a thing of glory and horror, but it happened.

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Yeah, sure. The thing with the teleportation circles.

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 03:02

Ah I see you do not need the link

And sure, that's a way to play. The thing is, that's one of many reactions to the fundamental rules not selling the story they're meant to prop up. Plenty of folks, myself included, will house rule or craft settings in a way that helps support the tropes we like and eliminate or gloss the ones we don't.

Like, I don't run Tippyverse and I have my home regularly warded against evil to keep it away from me because it scares me deep in my heart

nitsua60

So I don't understand why fighters, on average, are worse at CHA and social skills than other classes + there are fighters protrayed as strong leaders necessarily implies the game is wrong or lying. That seems like one possibility, but not nearly the only one.

doppelgreener

The issue seems to be that you appear to assert the game rules are lying that the fighters are good leaders in 2e itself but evidently they are, because they just become them — like, poof!, followers, you are the king now. Bard or cleric are better natural born leaders with their fancy skills and CHA points? Well where's their army to show for it, neener neener.

nitsua60

But maybe we've gotten sidetracked because this isn't a good example to poke at too hard?

Lord_Gareth

It kinda is not. The paradigm changed a lot in the transition

nitsua60

(I mean, c'mon. It doesn't take much history-knowledge to see examples of "fighters aren't really the best-suited to lead, but man do people ever follow them!")

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 03:06

It went from "some people, and only these people, get followers of these kinds" in 2e

To "NPCs get whatever, players who want followers can take this feat and may God preserve you if you aren't Cha-based, a caster, or both"

BESW

So, I think what LG's trying to get at it is, as D&D passed into Wizard's hands the disconnect between narrative and mechanics widened; different gamers reacted to this differently, and friction developed between people as it was implied, assumed, or said outright that one approach could or should invalidate another.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Yes, this.

nitsua60

@BESW I think I'm following you up until "as it was implied, assumed...."

BESW

brb phone

nitsua60

Was it one "camp" or another saying those things? Wizards?

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 03:09

@nitsua60 It was kinda everybody. Those days were really, really knife-fight-y. Different communities were different about it, of course.

Giantitp's forum rules encourage passive-aggressive sniping, Enworld's a bit more direct, 4chan is the End Boss of the Internet, etc

On the WotC boards themselves things devolved into flame wars on a regular basis

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth Just out of curiosity, is this all internet-community stuff? Or were you seeing things IRL?

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 Primarily online. My gaming group at the time was pretty self-contained (as many groups seem to be?)

But it spilled elsewhere

An infamous article would get released by Monte Cooke suggesting that 3.X was deliberately designed with "trap" options for the same reason as a trading card game: rewarding system mastery

Opinions are somewhat split as to if he actually did this on purpose or if he was trying to look better in hindsight

And the thing is, in these online communities you'd see cases of the moderation taking sides and being seen as unfair or authoritarian

nitsua60

(I'm'a hafta go in about ten, btw.)

Lord_Gareth

Which is where, at long last, we reach why things got to the point they did here on RPG Stack

nitsua60

@Lord_Gareth (ahh... the gorilla in the room)

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 03:13

I've aged eighty years since I started this lecture T_T

Several users, myself included, came from forums or background where people in positions of power abused that power to silence dissenting play styles. In some cases these were just forum moderators

In other cases, these were designers; the early days of Pathfinder's beta and release were defined by SKR and Buhlman doing this to their own poster base

BESW

I saw this kind of thing IRL within my tiny largely-not-connected-to-the-Internet-RPG-community college group.

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth overcompensating for their own failure to communicate their intent through game design and authorship I reckon

Lord_Gareth

Certain words, including and especially words like 'rollplayer', have become sensitive because they aren't just inherent insults, but connected to long and drawn-out fights in which people like myself or KRyan are framed as a cancerous corruption of the hobby

@Shalvenay I'm going to leave out my value judgements here because to be honest I hate both of those men too much to be able to speak on them in a manner consistent with Stack rules

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth understood.

BESW

Heck, I had trouble resolving the 3.5 DMG's statements about what worked and how mechanics influenced play with the actual mechanics they were talking about, even without a community fighting over it.

And I did see places where developers said nasty things about the kinds of play I or my friends were interested in, and I saw my friends picking up some of that language and attitude--especially the more time they spent on Internet forums for RPGs.

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 03:17

Amidst all of this on the open forums there would emerge figures like RPGPundit, who spends his time talking about a conspiracy of "swine" out to destroy the hobby by corrupting it with story gaming. I wish I was exaggerating and I'm not; that's his word for the idea which he posts on his open forums and in other places

And while my home and native land more or less crystallized as the premier inheritor of the WotC CharOp culture and thus became more relaxed, give or take certain members and events, the scars and grudges remained. When I came to the Stack I saw its fact-based approach as a valuable way to learn more about games and techniques when I needed to

It looked on first blush like exactly why RAW became prevalent to begin with: an established baseline from which you may then deviate in a competent and informed fashion

And at this point I may want to ask @BESW to pick it up, both because he was there for everything and because I spent a rather long time in personal conflict with both Myx and later D7 and I don't want to be seen as either taking this as a chance to insult them or as digging up the dead

BESW

I did not see everything LG experienced on this Stack, and my interpretations of the things we did both observe are often very different.

nitsua60

Well, this is actually a good stopping point for me, though.

Lord_Gareth

I hope this was at least somewhat helpful in providing context for why this is still raw

BESW

Let's just say that the Stack community (not limited to any particular individuals) has struggled and continues to struggle with importing assumptions, biases, loaded language, and turf wars, from other parts of the RPG community.

Shalvenay

@BESW very, very much so. the online RPG community is a mess to put it lightly, which is a sharp contrast of surroundings from the Stack that served as my other formative SE experience (largely, Aviation)

BESW

May 9, 2017 03:23

And the "RPG community" is more a fractured collection of loosely related independent communities, and the Stack is one of the few places very different small communities interact directly in ways which explicitly detail their play assumptions.

3

Shalvenay

@BESW extremely true -- I recently likened RPG.SE chat to an online TTRPG convention

BESW

So one person's neutral term is another person's insult; one community's default normal is another community's toxic practice.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW And it doesn't help that some places tried to cut down on flame wars with policies that ultimately led to the creation and exacerbation of passive-aggressive insults and digs. Giantitp was and is like that

doppelgreener

@BESW Having been a moderator for just a week I can confirm this already

Lord_Gareth

And it being my formative internet home sorta did things to me

BESW

May 9, 2017 03:26

@nitsua60 For an example largely unrelated to the topic at hand, a year or two ago somebody got a LOT of pushback for comparing D&D 4e to Magic: the Gathering. It was a completely neutral statement that made a lot of sense and would have helped further the explanation at hand... except that "4e is like Magic" has been used as an epithet so often, so thoughtlessly, and with so much vitriol that nobody else could look past their negative experiences with the comparison.

Lord_Gareth

Part of the reason I tend to be so direct and knives-out is because of how much I hate their extended jousting matches of trying to get the other guy to do something reportable first

nitsua60

@BESW So I'd be really interested in where people see that at play here. What are terms I'm using, thinking they're neutral, that I should know might be taken as insulting? What are our norms which those from other communities might think are toxic?

(But I really do need to head to bed.)

Shalvenay

@BESW whereas say for the aviation world, everyone more or less deals with similar issues, has the same concrete goals, and shares a mostly-common language -- the gaps between subcommunities in aviation are far smaller than they are in the world we inhabit, or at least that's the best I can tell from being around aviation.SE for a while

BESW

(See also fatesplaining, where a user is so used to questions about Fate mechanics coming from a rules-first misunderstanding that they just give the rules-first lecture to ALL questions about Fate mechanics.)

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 Well, like, just here, the 2e Fighter Thing sorta came off to me in a dismissive fashion. I know you didn't mean it that way but it echoed earlier and extended arguments about how if I think 'the rules' say something that isn't how 'real games' are played, then I'm wrong

Or 'ruining the game'

Or 'a rollplayer'

(Cue flashback scene)

nitsua60

May 9, 2017 03:29

@Lord_Gareth But help me out by being really clear: which words/phrases/sentences came off that way?

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 <-This is probably the biggest one, because it echoes arguments where if a thing is technically possible at all, it doesn't matter to what degree it's possible or even if it's necessarily relevant to the issue at hand. It doesn't help that at the time I didn't understand what you were getting at, mind

So it seemed at the time that I was talking politics and you were talking something else entirely

nitsua60

???

BESW

That's a MAJOR issue I've seen around here: using common but vaguely defined terms as if they're precise jargon everyone understands, and then getting upset because nobody is making any sense and they're accusing you of being the irrational one.

nitsua60

I was literally just trying to lay out what I was hearing you say and asking if I'd understood correctly....

Did it seem like a rhetorical stunt or something?

BESW

Elided references are a significant factor.

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 03:33

@nitsua60 When I brought up Fighters as Kings I was talking about them dealing with the realities of politics and diplomacy, including the literal skill Diplomacy (to negotiate), Sense Motive (to detect bluffs), Knowledges (to know your domain), etc

And then you went to 'but they can attract followers, why is this a lie?'

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth which is why clarity about one-time or temporary rulings vs persistent/standing houserules (and what their intent is: bugfix vs setting-specific mod vs ...) vs published rules is important in helping people build an accurate game model (I know it's helpful for me)

Lord_Gareth

And those two things do not seem at all related to me except insofar as a king needs subjects

So it felt like you took the thing I was talking about and brought up something else entirely to dismiss it

And then I went 'I'm pretty sure he's not actually doing that, I should ask'

doppelgreener

It sounds like a major part of the issue is there's a lot of invisible baggage attached to this stuff then. You mention they're not suited to being leaders (because skills), Nitsua60 brings up "but... they are??" (because followers), and that brings up a whole world of arguments you've had to manage for a very long time. And that's just one thing.

nitsua60

I think there's a missing bit, here. It seems (now) that you're talking about whether (in this example) fighters can be/are good leaders. But before it seemed to me that you were talking about whether fighters can be/are leaders at all.

BESW

I'm out, guys. ttfn

doppelgreener

May 9, 2017 03:36

Ttfn!

Lord_Gareth

See ya, thanks for the assist in translating Gareth to English

nitsua60

@doppelgreener But there's a bit more, I think: LG mentions they're not suited to being leaders but they are and therefore the game is wrong or lying. That's where I was getting hung up.

@BESW Thanks!

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 perhaps that's better said as "the game is contradicting itself?"

forcing square pegs into round holes?

telling them to go fix a busted drawbar with their bare hands? :P

Lord_Gareth

@nitsua60 The problem with drawing back to 2e fighters is 2e is a fundamentally different game to 3.X not just culturally but mechanically. WotC realizing this was in part why 3.5 happened

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 Right. So they are, but have none of the skills that should be involved, which we can at least ascribe as narrative dissonance. "This guy's a great king!" "He is chewing on the battle plans and howling." "So great!"

Shalvenay

May 9, 2017 03:39

@Lord_Gareth very, very much so

Lord_Gareth

They genuinely thought in 3.0 that all they did was point all the math in the same direction

nitsua60

To my mind it's "it could be bad game design, could be unintended consequences, could be making an absolute hack of trying to balance things, could be making a hack at historical simulationism, could be a hackneyed expression of wish fulfillment, could be there are lots of unspoken assumptions about the setting."

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth heck freaking no (based on what 3.0 material I've read and my 1e/2e experience)

Lord_Gareth

@Shalvenay Are you disagreeing with the notion that they thought that at the time or agreeing with the idea that they did not in fact just point all the math one way

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth the latter, bigtime

Lord_Gareth

May 9, 2017 03:41

@nitsua60 I mean, balance is one of the things that became a point of contention; the game's math (both the XP tables and the CR system) made a statement that any given group of characters at level X are equivalent challenges

Shalvenay

in fact, I'm not really sure how they thought they were doing that haha. I suspect it might have been a mindset change issue in terms of their game design vs TSRs?

Lord_Gareth

Which is fundamentally untrue

@Shalvenay BAB is THAC0 without the math pre-done, f'rinstance

Saving throws likewise

Etc so forth

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth yeah -- on the surface, it seems somewhat that way

nitsua60

Seriously gotta hit the sack. Thanks for the time and patience, everyone.

Shalvenay

but it falls apart rather fast actually -- all my 1e/2e play was done with the 5-save-vs system (Death Magic, Poison, Petrification, etal)

vs 3.x with Fort/Ref/Will

doppelgreener

May 9, 2017 03:43

Me too. Goodnight!

Lord_Gareth

Sleep well y'all

Shalvenay

@Lord_Gareth and yeah -- thanks a ton for this, I was somewhat confused by the RAW vitriol myself

Lord_Gareth

@Shalvenay No worries. And I'm not about to say that I or anyone I know has always or even ever been the sainted innocents in the story here.

I nurse grudges like they're my precious offspring

I'm a bitter, hateful person and I will probably die bitter and hateful, but I'd like to see our hobby be more inclusive and/or move past this ancient-ass crap so we can at least develop new and interesting problems

This one is kinda played out

Shalvenay

yeah -- I've had some past fallout in communities (part of the reason I came here -- to try to gain more understanding of what was going on, which RPG.SE has been quite helpful with, much to their credit)

@Lord_Gareth no kidding. this stuff makes the arguments I've seen on most of the other Stacks I'm on look like cakewalks in comparison

Adeptus

May 9, 2017 04:20

@doppelgreener So, it's exactly like the real world? :P

BESW

May 9, 2017 04:56

As you may remember, we're chicken-training one of our sled dogs, Flame. https://t.co/q4HbW3lO2Z

Tweeted by BlairBraverman on May 8, 2017 at 3:35 PM

doppelgreener

May 9, 2017 12:49

@Adeptus Uncomfortably so, now that you mention it.

Not a bar, but plays one on TV

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