MarkB
Member

MarkB hits it on the head. SF is not fantasy. Creating worlds is not generally speaking, the goal of SF. It's part of the process, maybe, of reflecting on the real world, but, it's not a goal in and of itself. SF is inherently political, moreso than fantasy.

MarkB: Yes, George likened the dark side to a cancer and balance meant getting rid of it, not making it even with the “light side”. That was an EU concept which, unfortunately, seems to have become the official stance under Disney. The Rebels cartoon hinted at that a number of times. And in the new movies, we got Leia in TFA telling Han she could sense that there was still “light” in their son rather than “good”. That irked me. And then Luke in TLJ tells Rey that the Force was comprised of both light and dark, and Snoke talks about how the light side has raised a champion (Rey) to counter his dark side champion (Kylo). Sigh ...

They just passed their second-to-last stretch goal ($7.5M), which means MarkB is now in the winning position! Let's see how long he can hold it.

...09 chrisrtld: $13,635,019 pogre: $13,500,000 Aebir-Toril: $13,224,376.89 Satyrn: $13,000,000 Yardiff: $12,456,145 -----------Highest-Funded Game Project on Kickstarter (Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5) $12,393,139-------- Radaceus: $12,345,678.91 FarBeyondC: $12,345,678.90 Morrus: $12,000,000 Mistwell: $11,800,000 Mort: $11,620,000 Zardnaar: $11,354,883 <--- The Winner! Sadras: $11,120,000 SkidAce: $11,000,000 Tazawa: $10,700,000 togashi_joe: $10,250,000 DM Dave1: $10,101,010 MichaelSomething: $10,000,000 Lazybones: $9,750,000 PabloM: $9,500,000 akr71: $9,250,000 rczarnec: $9,250,000 Azzy: $9,000,000 Henry: $8,900,000 mortwatcher: $8,666,000 Lidgar: $8,423,976.73 vincegetorix: $8,360,000 SmokeyCriminal: $8,008,135 AriochQ: $7,777,777 robus: $7,750,000 MarkB: $7,500,000 phantomK9: $6,969,696 TarionzCousin: $6,160,000 ClaytonCross: $6,000,000 ---------Highest-Funded Film Project on Kickstarter (MST3K Kickstarter) $5,764,229----------- MaximusArael020: $5,685,000 Prakriti: $1

I like MarkB 's suggestion of the Otyugh handler. So much that I think I'm gonna steal the idea

You beat me to it! Thanks, I also like the ecological impact of MarkB it could be something like a fusion rocket. Depending upon the setting and the society, you could go for an ecological angle. The shuttle is designed with atmospheric flight in mind, and has a propulsion system that works well for that context. But the ship's engines produce waste products including radioactive particles, dangerous carcinogens etc. ...

A social interaction challenge (because combat and exploration are roleplay!) might be the ghost of a miner who died in a cave-in who isn't aware of it. If the PCs can figure out what happened and explain it to the ghost, he or she can move on to the afterlife. If the PCs are successful, the miner shares with them a tunnel that serves as a useful shortcut around a dangerous area (perhaps a cave filled with odorless, explosive gas) and/or leads to a cave that contains a treasure. Edit: Dang! MarkB upstaged me!

...r less entirely subjective. Mmmmm..... I give you all the points for "Paladin issues marinated[.]" It's like the worst steak ever. "Why does our kobold fillet taste so bad? It has to be the Paladin marinade!" Anyway, a quick point- OD&D- Paladin lost status by chaotic act; could not regain status. EVER, MAN! See Greyhawk supplement. 1e- If they perform a chaotic act, must confess and do penance. If evil act, cannot regain status. EVER. 2e- Same as 1e. Although it helpfully creates a rule because 1e had "knowingly commit" evil act, so 2e includes the whole, "You got charmed, yo, and now you have to atone!" So ... part of the problem, as it is with most things, is that weird translation from OD&D to 1e. "Chaotic" in OD&D meant, um, evil. Moorcockian. But by dragging out the whole different penalties in 1e/2e, it confused a lot of people, and (IME), most people just conflated the rules and made it, "If Evil, must atone." But contra what you are writing, and what MarkB is positing, these weren't the parts of the code that got people in trouble. There might have been some bad DMs out there, but as a general rule, the DM wasn't looking to strip you of your powers. Instead, and again IME, it was the rules about who the Paladin could party with ... um, who could be in the Paladin's party, that led to the whole "Jerky McJerkface telling the party what to do" reputation. That, and the fact that we all know Paladins suck and need to be excised from the game.

I came to that conclusion maybe ten pages ago. These peeps need this show to be the best, actual show be damned! Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app Who says it needs to be best? I like it. I am not seeing the issues that you are pointing to, or, rather, the issues that are being pointed to are very much not issues for me. IOW, MarkB hits it square on the head. Like I said earlier, I get that people don't like the show. And that's groovy. There's stuff I haven't liked too. Fair enough. The difference is, I'm not jumping through hoop after hoop in order to justify my feelings. I'm not misinterpreting tropes in order to "prove" how bad Disco is. I'm not playing silly buggers cherry picking games to "prove" that they don't care about canon. I'm not trying to prove anything. I like the show. That's the end of that conversation.

...yle mystery scenario, getting the GM to read you bits of his/her notes is the whole point of play: get the clue from here, find the tome there, find the cultists' ritual headquaters, etc. This is all about learning what is in the GM's notes. It's not (or need not be) the GM reading a story: the sequence may not correspond to any particular pre-planned sequence, and there may not be any particular structure of rising action, complication, climax, etc. You also continually use examples of bad GMing to make your point that option 1 is a bad thing.Well, I make do with the examples I have. I don't believe that you've posted any actual play examples. (If you have, and I've missed them, I apologise - can you point me back to them?) The example of the map came (I think) from Lanefan - at least, it has been established in lengthy back-and-forth with him. The example of the plot on the Duke came from Lanefan. The example of the attempt to find bribeable officials came from MarkB. Are you saying that these are all examples of bad GMing? So what does good GMing look like, in this context? What is a good use of secretly-established fictional positioning being used by a GM to establish that a player's action declaration fails, without regard to the action resolution mechanics? A good GM will not send his players on a wild goose chase through the mansion for a map macguffin.So what would the pre-authorship be used for? Even the fiction that I've "pre-authored" can be impacted (or changed entirely if the situation calls for it) at any time by the players' actions - they are the heroes after all.Can you give an example of what you mean? For instance - and I am going to give an example I am familiar with, as I don't have much to go on from your game - I have a PC in my 4e game whose goal is to reconstruct the Rod of Seven Parts. He got the first part at the start of 2nd level. The campaign is now 30th level and he and his friends are in a fight that will de...

...shing a story of an orc. If the person asserts (as I think Emerikol does) that "As a player I only want to add those embellishments that correspond to causal powers exercised by my PC in the gameworld, so I will embellish deaths caused by my PC, but not maps discovered by my PC" that's his/her prerogative. It's a type of aesthetic preference. (As well as Emerikol, Lanefan has advocated it strongly in this thread.) My claims about it are two. (1) It is not more "realistic", or less "Schroedinger-y" than embellishing other parts of the fiction. (2) It means that a reasonable amount of your play experience will involve the GM telling you stuff that s/he made up (either in advance in his/her notes, or stuff that s/he makes up as needed but that is to be treated the same by the game participants as if it were part of his/her pre-authored notes). The reason for (2) I take to be obvious given the extensive discussion of it in this thread, and the example provided by Lanefan, MarkB and others. And the more the game involves "exploration" - that is, the players declaring actions which have, as an outcome, their PCs learning about the gameworld (eg opening doors, finding bribeable officials, searching for maps, etc) rather than their PCs changing the gameworld (eg by killing orcs or befriending strangers) - then the more that (2) will obtain. Furthermore, given that a PC's success in changing the gameworld often depends (in the imaginary causal processes) upon unknown but relevant factors (eg the armour of the orc; the temperament of the stranger) then even changing the gameworld through action declarations can become hostage to a resolution process that does not permit the player to embellish other elements of the shared fiction. For instance, if we go from player action declaration through resolution mechanics through embellishment that reflects outcome, then it is possible to have combat systems like D&D (AC, roll to hit, determine outcome from that) and h...

...GM, that's not counterindicative at all of having trust issues about the GM being unfair.The last sentence is not something I intend to reply to. I'm not interested in analysing my own conjectured self-doubts in this thread. As I've said, a more prosaic explanation for my preferences is available - my pleasure in RPGing does not come from telling my friends stuff that I wrote in response to them making moves for their PCs that oblige me to engage in such tellings. As for the first bit, you are correct that I "seem to couch [my] arguments from a position where the DM is uses secret knowledge and fiat in ways that benefit the DM's ideas over the players". The reason it seems like that is because it is like that. (I didn't clarify that in my first reply because I assumed it was obvious.) And the reason I couch my arguments (I would prefer to say "analysis", but that's orthogonal) from that position is because that position is correct. Which is what I said was evident in the post from MarkB: inherent in the use of secret backstory as a factor in adjudication is that the GM's ideas are given priority in establishing the content of the shared fiction. I'll respond to the following bit too, though, if you like, though I think it's repetition: a GM may be fair or unfair in saying (on the basis not of action resolution, but of secretly established fictional content) that the map is not in the study where the players have declared that the PCs are searching the study for it. If every other bit of information points to the map being in the study, it's probably unfair. If the PCs have a potion of map detecing with a range that will encompass the whole house (kitchen as well as study) but are not using it, then what the GM is doing is probably fair. I don't care whether it's fair or not. The reason I don't like it is because I find it uninteresting. When I RPG, I don't want to engage in an activity in which my friends are spending most of their time trying to establish - by ...

...layer agency in a GM setting-driven game, as it was completely orthogonal from the GM's setting. (Eg we had fragments of a prophecy, and we spent a lot of time debating them, imagining how we could read various PCs into various roles outlined in the prophecy, etc. I assume that the GM had some conception, in his mind, of what the prophecy meant and how the events of play related to it, but they were absolutely irrelevant to what we players were talking about. We could have done our stuff just as easily if the GM had simply handed us three random prophecies downloaded from a Google search.) Clearly, you don't trust that players have any form of agency in any game that has substantive GM backstory and adjudication. You're denying that they do all over the place here and in your response to Lanefan. And you don't really seem to trust us when we say that player do have agency in the games we're running in which we do make use of substantial backstory and adjudication. Your response to MarkB here is fairly dripping with it. "you think it is" makes it very clear that you don't believe him or think it's true. It's like you're calling him out but acknowledge he's not technically lying because he seems to believe it's true.We're doing analysis here. Trying to dig down into the processes of play is not "calling someone out". I don't think MarkB is lying. I do think that the suggestion that I don't trust GMs is (i) false, and (ii) irrelevant - as if the only reason someone would play DungeonWorld rather than 2nd ed AD&D is because they don't trust GMs! But anyway, on to the issue of agency: Here is one of my assertions - if the GM is entitled, at any point in the process of resolution to (i) secretly author backstory, or (ii) secrety rewrite backstory, and (iii) to use that secret backstory as if it was part of the fictional positioning so as to (iv) automatically declare an action declaration unsuccessful ("No, the map's not in the study") - then I assert that every acti...

In many ways, they do the same thing, it’s just the puzzle is a little different, less constrictive, and possibly more complex. Instead of a relatively simple puzzle of doping out the best way to maximize treasure within a single dungeon, they might be working on visiting all of the adventuring sites in the region, foiling the impending invasion of the orcsish legion, stopping the predation of a wicked dragon, or just visiting interesting places.The last of these doesn't sound like a puzzle at all. As for the others, as I posted not far upthread (in response to Sadras and MarkB), I'm curious about how the puzzle-solving works, when there are so many (imaginary) elements in play which can introduce parameters to the puzzle to which the players have no access (in practical terms). I don’t see those as unsolvable, but then I don’t really buy into describing RPG gaming, even limited to dungeon crawls, as puzzles to solve. Unless the puzzle is figuring out how to have fun pretending to be a halfling Paladin or half-orc summoner.Right. As the OP said, I think puzzle-solving play is not so common in contemporary RPGing. Given that it's not, then, what is worldbuilding for?

...e notes on any of it. Having it pre-designed even if just in broad strokes makes the describing so much easier. Particularly at the start of the campaign when the players in theory know much less about the game world than their PCs do (canon lawyers for pre-fab settings notwithstanding) the DM has a lot of describing to do and as a side effect of that description is going to drop the PCs into a particular setting be it a steamy jungle, a city based on ancient Athens, a snowy Viking camp, or a pleasant sunny farm village. You'd probably call this railroading, but how else can it work? Of course, that's just the start; if the PCs in the Viking camp immediately decide to go someplace warmer then the DM has to react to that. (one hopes she has a broad-strokes regional or continental map showing areas beyond a short radius around the camp!) Are you able to say more about how you see the GM's work on the setting in advance of play feeding through to give the players that sense? MarkB might see it differently, but for my part it's much easier to figure out a character's motivations, beliefs, goals, etc. when there's a culture (or cultures) and common history to fit into. If, say, the setting history shows that our starting town was devastated by a war ten years ago and since rebuilt, that's going to influence my character and what she thinks; and probably influence other characters as well. But if the starting history shows no such war it's not our place as players to just add it in. We have no right to, as world design is not in our purview. And if there's no pre-designed history then what's the point? What happened before our PCs became PCs? What major events shaped their lives? (it should be obvious but I'd better mention: the DM sets the event but the player chooses what influence it had on her character, if any). Lanefan

MarkB I thought Force Awakens: Incredible Cross Sections was canon due to being written and published after Disney acquired Star Wars?

MarkB Maybe. But if so, that's a retcon of the Falcon's history. It was originally a freight pusher for orbit; that's why it had the cockpit to the side instead of the YT-standard central cockpit.

Yeah, I gotta go with MarkB on this one. What's the point of trying to draw boxes around whether something is a "game" or not. Like any genre discussion, it's ultimately a deep, deep dive down a dark rabbit hole. And, I would also point out that I don't think anyone has advocated completely taking death off the table either. Just making it a bit more rare.

I usually forget that one even can roll for hit points on leveling up. I doubt it's something the designers give much thought to as well. Agree with MarkB, incentivizing rolling for hp would be counterproductive — average hp should be the preferred option. Easier to keep track of, doesn't lead to pointless power differential between characters, takes nothing away from the RP. If rolling for hp, on average, gave you better results, we'd have players groaning and complaining when I said, "and we'll all just take average hp on level up." With the average being statistically better, nobody even notices that rolling for it is gone after a level or two. (If they ever noticed at all.) Roll dice for PC actions. Live with the consequences. But why randomize the squishiness of a character?

...the questions I'm trying to determine. How high up do you have to climb a building for there to be noticeable change in gravity. I think it would affect how high-rise type buildings were constructed, since the shearing forces (might be using the wrong term) between regular G and lower-G would require stronger building materials. Plus it might suggest activities happening at the upper levels of high-rise buildings would be substantially different...for example moving construction activities to the lower-G zones for increased efficiency. RangerWickett Really helpful on how to visualize entering at the zero-G "fixed" axis and seeing the entire station spin around you. I suspected some kind of shuttle or elevator would be necessary, but hadn't conceived of exactly why... I plugged a 500 m radius in and got a Tangential Velocity (or "rim speed") of 156 mph, which would be "splat your dead" for anyone moving or falling from the zero-G axis to the ground...in scientific terms :) MarkB That's another one of my questions. I mean, nothing we throw on Earth actually travels straight, technically. But in the rotational artificial G environment I'm wondering if it would be more obvious...or would it basically be a case of "throwing a baseball while in a moving car"? In other words, if everything/everyone is rotating at the same rate in relation to each other, there doesn't appear to be any change from Earth-standard gravity (assuming 1 g centripetal acceleration). But what happens if I punt a football down a field or fire a railgun at the elevator/shuttle tube along the central axis when the station is rotating at 1.3 rpms and the rim is spinning at 156 mph?

It's a lot easier to predict a particular technology than it is to consider and explore all the secondary ramifications of that technology. Plus, in many cases, that isn't even the goal. For many science fiction works, the objective is to examine the modern condition through the lens of a different setting, and introducing too many new factors is not merely irrelevant, it's detrimental and distracting. In a lot of stories, particularly short stories, the ideal is to introduce only one major new element, leaving everything else largely as-is, in order to focus upon how that single element would influence and change us. Not the goal, but a byproduct.

As shown in T3, combining liquid metal with a mechanical body allows you to keep some flexibility while also bringing weapons to the party. And it looks like this new model gets the best of both worlds - plus the force multiplier of being essentially two Terminators in one. Yeah that works. It's kind of what I thought saw a bit of the last 3 movies in the trailer. Pee Wee Herman was kind of from T3, the hybrid from Salvation.

And these days people have genre expectations based upon tropes established in Game of Thrones. I wonder whether he considers that a success or an irony. Did he break the wheel, or merely forge some new spokes? Maybe he broke the "childhood wheel" and forged "adolescent spokes." But yeah, it is a new wheel of sorts. I think this is true of "grimdark" (and GRRMdark) stuff in general: it isn't as edgy or rebellious as it thinks it is, or perhaps as it once was when it was rebellious against "father conventions."

Hmm. That is not a counter argument. It is a sound.

The first thing I can think of is that they're going to be going through every e-mail and memo involved in the ordering, production and distribution of this product, just in case there's anything in there which could be interpreted as Bethesda being aware of (or even just having cause to be suspicious of) the malfeasance and then going ahead with the project anyway. Also, the author may not necessarily be co-operating with the investigation. He doesn't have to, unless they bring legal charges. And before they start bringing legal charges they'll want to be sure of the facts of the situation - which is tough without the author's co-operation. So, sure, it might be something they can clear up in short order. But it might also be something that will drag on for weeks. And if Bethesda do begin legal action, there will probably still be things they don't want to commit to in public until after those proceedings have concluded. Why would Bethesda be pursuing legal action? Against their o...

And ascribing real-world consequences to their opinions about fictional people. Hello strawman.

Bear in mind that this is a work of fiction. It's not just us who aren't the ones getting murdered - literally nobody is. And yet some People are upset Dany burn some people. It is like I'm talking to them.

Hex imposes disadvantage on ability checks, not saving throws. Its combat utility is mostly in impeding Dexterity (Stealth) checks for sneaky opponents, or Strength (Athletics) checks for grabby opponents. You could also hex a spellcasting ability to futz with Counterspells

The first thing I can think of is that they're going to be going through every e-mail and memo involved in the ordering, production and distribution of this product, just in case there's anything in there which could be interpreted as Bethesda being aware of (or even just having cause to be suspicious of) the malfeasance and then going ahead with the project anyway. Also, the author may not necessarily be co-operating with the investigation. He doesn't have to, unless they bring legal charges. And before they start bringing legal charges they'll want to be sure of the facts of the situation - which is tough without the author's co-operation. So, sure, it might be something they can clear up in short order. But it might also be something that will drag on for weeks. And if Bethesda do begin legal action, there will probably still be things they don't want to commit to in public until after those proceedings have concluded. Investigation? Is WotC suing them? Why would they sue them?...

We haven't really seen it unleashed full force against a structure before now - but it's certainly no more powerful than when the Night King blew up the Wall with an undead dragon. The only thing that got to me was the sheer volume. Apparently the dragons can breathe fire forever, more or less. And we learned that the Red Keep and city walls should have been built out that rock Jon was hiding behind in episode 3.

So, basically, at some point Dany snuck into the Iron Fleet and stole all their plot armour. Suddenly the Scorpions go from being turn-on-a-dime railguns that can snipe a dragon out of the air in three high-precision shots and rapid-fire their way through an entire fleet to cumbersome things that take ten seconds to aim at anything and 30 seconds to reload. Okay, this version is more realistic, but seriously, why didn't Dany just burn Euron's fleet to cinders last episode? And then there followed around an hour of gratuitous dragonning, none of which I can bring myself to give a damn about. What fun is a battle without any good guys? Hey! We had occasional flashes to Jon running around all confused and upset, with the odd stabby stabby here and there.

Every single Scorpion crew in the bay and on the walls was ready and waiting for an attack. And while Dany was diving at any one cluster, the rest had all the time in the world to line up their shots. Barring one initial volley, the tactical situation for Dany was worse in this episode than the last one, because her targets weren't all clustered together. And yet this time she doesn't take a scratch. The walls were out of reach, and the boats were all ready, yes, but with the cloud cover, where were they aiming? Given the speed she hit them with, and the time it took for a crew to aim a scorpion, don't think they had all the time in the world by any means. So the way I saw it was that the boats were all kind of clustered, but not in a set formation....each was facing its own way, and they were unsure where she'd come from. Whereas in last episode, the boats had cliffs on either side and had a clear shot at the dragon. I think they could have maybe portrayed some of this more cl...

So, basically, at some point Dany snuck into the Iron Fleet and stole all their plot armour. Suddenly the Scorpions go from being turn-on-a-dime railguns that can snipe a dragon out of the air in three high-precision shots and rapid-fire their way through an entire fleet to cumbersome things that take ten seconds to aim at anything and 30 seconds to reload. Okay, this version is more realistic, but seriously, why didn't Dany just burn Euron's fleet to cinders last episode? And then there followed around an hour of gratuitous dragonning, none of which I can bring myself to give a damn about. What fun is a battle without any good guys? Yeah. I smirked at that as well. Suddenly the Scorpions behaved as you'd expect them to. All in all though, I was pretty happy with the way the episode went. Made for some awesome Dragoning.

So, basically, at some point Dany snuck into the Iron Fleet and stole all their plot armour. Suddenly the Scorpions go from being turn-on-a-dime railguns that can snipe a dragon out of the air in three high-precision shots and rapid-fire their way through an entire fleet to cumbersome things that take ten seconds to aim at anything and 30 seconds to reload. Okay, this version is more realistic, but seriously, why didn't Dany just burn Euron's fleet to cinders last episode? And then there followed around an hour of gratuitous dragonning, none of which I can bring myself to give a damn about. What fun is a battle without any good guys? I don't think that was portrayed perfectly....they likely could have established the situations more clearly. But I do think there's a difference between ships striking from hiding against an enemy that was unaware of them. The dragons were just floating along at that point. Then Rhaegon got hit, and thrashed a bit, and was vulnerable to more hits. Dan...

I'll put it this way. I always knew Darth Vader was a villain in the Star Wars trilogy, but I still fully bought into his redemption arc in Return of the Jedi. And then I retroactively unforgave him once I saw what he did during the invasion of the Jedi temple in Revenge of the Sith. People can accept the idea of a character with a shady past who's on a path of redemption, right up until they're confronted with the full reality of that past, in detail. Or to put it another way, a lot of us will judge someone on the basis of their worst day. But Darth Vader didn’t become a Sith because he was sterile.* I mean, really- imagine if the window into the Vader’s darkness revealed he became what he was and corrupted himself because he was infertile. But somehow, this is OK with Black Widow? * “Duh!”, as his kids might say.

Perhaps they chose to go with that precisely because it's a completely forgivable 'sin' in the eyes of the audience, whereas some of the crimes you allude to would have left many audience members convinced that she truly could not be redeemed. ...and yet we have all the other movies indicating otherwise. Questions of religious redemption and the requirements therefor notwithstanding, how many times does a shady character have to save literally millions of people (or more) before we start thinking he or she is on a path of atonement?

Well, Kylo is technically the son of a Skywalker, Leia's adoptive surname notwithstanding. And just because Luke is dead, that doesn't mean he won't be participating in this movie. It's end of the Skywalker line though with Luke being dead and having no children. Even if he technically has Skywalker blood, that still doesn't make him a Skywalker. There will never be another person with the last name Skywalker.

It seems to be more the case that any past they visit becomes an alternate universe. So alt-past-Thor loses his hammer, but also his girlfriend isn't dying of infinity-stone-poisoning anymore. "Oh, hi. Are you Jane Foster?" "Oh my god, you're Captain..." "Yes, ma'am. Would you mind bending over, I need to..um.." "Excuse me!?" "I just have to put this infinity stone back in you." "That still sounds as dirty as that rabid raccoon that attacked me a few minutes ago..." Prelude to The real reason Jane Foster and Thor broke up...

I know Sonic is a pretty one-note character, but they could do with making him more than just "the Flash, but blue and spiky". As it is, his scenes are all very "been there, seen that". The entire trailer makes it look like this was conceived in the 90's. Complete with Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise.

They were tucked round the side of the island. Which is no excuse - Dany's forces should have sent at least a fast ship or two to scout the place for occupying forces before the entire fleet dropped anchor. I recall the rock jutting up, and yeah, that is hardly an excuse. What is more, Danny then does a straight dive into these boats instead of winging around that rock to their rears and burning them out. What, are they going to aim through their own sails and rigging? They certainly aren't going to turn all of those ships around before that dragon could fly around behind them. Sigh...