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5e: Stat the Lady of Pain...so we can overthrow her
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8775572" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>I think the main change has maybe been the abandonment of metaplots, which were a constant in the '90s. World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Dark Sun (thanks to Troy Denning/The Prism Pentad), Planescape (sadly, thanks to Monte Cook) and many others had metaplots, and these often dragged the characters people got mad about into the spotlight and often shoved the PCs out of the spotlight.</p><p></p><p>I do think more people are able to talk a bit more intelligently about the writing and why stuff is a bad idea beyond "it makes me mad!!!", at least now, but on the flipside, a lot of inarticulate people start ranting about "woke" and so on, often when it doesn't even make sense.</p><p></p><p>The trouble is, in the very late '80s and '90s, it was about 50/50 as to whether stuff was just specific to a setting, to achieve a real goal, or just was hamfisted and clumsy. WW's own writers have discussed this. Justin Achilli for example said they had a continual and he felt unsuccessful battle with the people writing the campaign books/adventures to prevent them just turning into stories about NPCs where the PCs were involved more as witnesses than protagonists.</p><p></p><p>I do get what you're saying. My reaction to Castle Falkenstein was exactly as you describe "I want to burn this place and these entitled aristocratic jerk-offs to the ground" (something the game was not at all set up to allow, and that it was clear hadn't been expected). I was 16 or 17 though. As I got older I realized that it was essentially two issues:</p><p></p><p>1) The setting was "not for me" as you suggest.</p><p></p><p>2) The setting doesn't actually make sense (this is an issue with several RTG games) - the designers expect you to play PCs with a narrow set of goals and behaviours, which I'm sure were true to the playtesters, but<em> don't actually flow naturally from the setting</em>, and if you make a PC who does flow naturally from the setting, there's a very good chance they won't fit with the game.</p><p></p><p>In the end that's just another reason to not play it, of course. Cyberpunk 2020 and Cybergeneration, if "played as intended" (which they rarely were) had similar issues, as did SLA Industries (for example), though I note the recent edition of SLA makes a lot more sense, ironically and horrifyingly the world has kind of caught up with where it was already.</p><p></p><p>With the LoP, she's obviously needed to make the setting work, and they went extremely far out of their way to make it hard for people to take her personally, by depersonalizing her, making her into a faceless, nameless inhuman entity who doesn't intervene in day-to-day affairs, so that was the opposite of a screw-up. Nonetheless a lot of people had a weird adversarial attitude to her, which again to me, is like getting mad with a piece of street furniture.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8775572, member: 18"] I think the main change has maybe been the abandonment of metaplots, which were a constant in the '90s. World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Dark Sun (thanks to Troy Denning/The Prism Pentad), Planescape (sadly, thanks to Monte Cook) and many others had metaplots, and these often dragged the characters people got mad about into the spotlight and often shoved the PCs out of the spotlight. I do think more people are able to talk a bit more intelligently about the writing and why stuff is a bad idea beyond "it makes me mad!!!", at least now, but on the flipside, a lot of inarticulate people start ranting about "woke" and so on, often when it doesn't even make sense. The trouble is, in the very late '80s and '90s, it was about 50/50 as to whether stuff was just specific to a setting, to achieve a real goal, or just was hamfisted and clumsy. WW's own writers have discussed this. Justin Achilli for example said they had a continual and he felt unsuccessful battle with the people writing the campaign books/adventures to prevent them just turning into stories about NPCs where the PCs were involved more as witnesses than protagonists. I do get what you're saying. My reaction to Castle Falkenstein was exactly as you describe "I want to burn this place and these entitled aristocratic jerk-offs to the ground" (something the game was not at all set up to allow, and that it was clear hadn't been expected). I was 16 or 17 though. As I got older I realized that it was essentially two issues: 1) The setting was "not for me" as you suggest. 2) The setting doesn't actually make sense (this is an issue with several RTG games) - the designers expect you to play PCs with a narrow set of goals and behaviours, which I'm sure were true to the playtesters, but[I] don't actually flow naturally from the setting[/I], and if you make a PC who does flow naturally from the setting, there's a very good chance they won't fit with the game. In the end that's just another reason to not play it, of course. Cyberpunk 2020 and Cybergeneration, if "played as intended" (which they rarely were) had similar issues, as did SLA Industries (for example), though I note the recent edition of SLA makes a lot more sense, ironically and horrifyingly the world has kind of caught up with where it was already. With the LoP, she's obviously needed to make the setting work, and they went extremely far out of their way to make it hard for people to take her personally, by depersonalizing her, making her into a faceless, nameless inhuman entity who doesn't intervene in day-to-day affairs, so that was the opposite of a screw-up. Nonetheless a lot of people had a weird adversarial attitude to her, which again to me, is like getting mad with a piece of street furniture. [/QUOTE]
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