D&D General Thaco the angry clown... really?

[Bolares]

At the same time, it could be perceived as mixed messages by an audience who has been told that they way forward for the brand is to remove anything that might paint entire groups of people in a negative light.

Again, making fun of a game rule is not making fun of an entire group of people

 

[AtomicPope]

That the Warlord has finally been slotted into a specific level in the hierarchy of noble titles?
Count yourselves lucky he didn't get named a Warmarquis.

It was rough in the beginning when he was 1st level.

Warpeasant doesn't strike fear into the hearts of... well anyone.

 

[Aldarc]

I would play him as bad at simple math, especially subtracting negatives.

No, he would insist that kids have it easy today, and his experiences have made him superior to all others in mathematics and carnival games.

 

[Willie the Duck]

This book is full of references to the old skool. Elkhorn, for instance, is an old dwarf who deals bonus damage to bigger creatures. In his write up is this: "Having been trained in his youth to fight ogres and trolls, he's much more dangerous against creatures that are significantly bigger than he is."

That's totally a reference to early edition dwarf bonuses against giants and the like! I love it.

Now if only he could automatically detect when sloping passages take you to a lower dungeon level without you realizing it...

If there were two mimes named Guisarme and Bec deCorbin, now that would be asking for trouble.

Personally, I'd rather see Bohemian Earspoon and Glaive-guisarme-glaive.

Are old gamers known for vaping? I feel like that’s usually a crack aimed at younger folks.

Tim Kask seems to vape in a lot of his video. Perhaps that's it--since Mike Mornard dropped off the face of the Earthonline foruming, Tim and Rob K seem to be the primary 'old timers associated with the D&D inner circle' still making the public rounds.
Regardless, we perhaps isereth can just explain what he means and darjr can explain the bubbles?

Exactly. It’s an easy 3rd-grade math problem, guys. Don’t break your arms patting yourselves on the back.

Oh, are we at the accusing various sub-groups of gamerdom of thinking highly of themselves portion of the discussion already? Seems too soon.

Again, making fun of a game rule is not making fun of an entire group of people

That is where I keep landing on this. You like or remember a thing, and someone makes fun of the thing, and therefore that is a dig at you (and potentially some demographic group with which you identify)? Is that a thing?

I remember early on in my time at another forum, I opined that Holmes basic was perfectly good as a ramp into oD&D or AD&D or Moldvay-Cook Expert (if you already had bought Holmes basic and didn't want to buy the Level 1-3 book again), but as a standalone I didn't like it because I didn't think that a D&D game that capped out at level 3 was all that grand. Someone grabbed that and said something like, 'me and my group played that game for years with no thought that there needed to be levels over and above that, are you accusing me and my group were wrong?!?!' -- and I (I think pretty reasonably) treated that like a unhinged-person-approaches-you-on-the-bus type situation.

Or as a non-gaming example, I remember sitcoms from the late 80s and 90s regularly making fun of the music (and fashion) of the 70s -- was that ageism towards people that came of age* in that decade?
*who would have been like 40-50 at the time.

I think, to me, an actual (minor) case of ageism would be the oft-references Simpsons line of 'old man yells at cloud' -- which is pretty clearly set up to indicate that old people are cantankerous and prone to being upset with things that are immutable. I will admit that I found the joke (gag? Like the Thac0 clown thing I'm not clear it's actually a joke) funny, but also kinda feel bad for doing so.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The math works out the same in the end, but the suggested procedure is more complex:
1. Roll d20.
2. Add bonuses.
3. Subtract the result from THAC0 to find the lowest AC you hit.

I mean, it's not rocket surgery or anything, but it is annoying that you operate in multiple directions. Some of that can be helped by baking permanent bonuses (stats, magic weapon, specialization) into an adjusted THAC0, but that's still annoying. And brings up "So I get +2 to hit, and that lowers my THAC0? What the heck is up with that?"

Yeah, it's not so much that it's hard, it's that it's unnecessarily complicated for what it does and uses subtraction, which humans are scientifically proven to be worse at.

It's like HERO 5e. Yeah there's a lot of annoying math, but the big problem is that the attack rules require a table to resolve. Just stop adding extra steps!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That is where I keep landing on this. You like or remember a thing, and someone makes fun of the thing, and therefore that is a dig at you (and potentially some demographic group with which you identify)? Is that a thing?

It's not very logical. If someone makes fun of a thing, that means they must also remember that thing.

Galaxy Quest makes fun of Star Trek. So does The Orville. But most Star Trek fans love them.

 

[Argyle King]

Again, making fun of a game rule is not making fun of an entire group of people

That same argument has been made concerning other topics.

 

[Bolares]

That same argument has been made concerning other topics.

Sure, but I'm not expanding the argument to other topics. I'm saying, making fun of a game rule is not the same as making fun of a group of people.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

That same argument has been made concerning other topics.

People tell jokes all the time. Some of those stem from bigotry, but most don't. So saying that some jokes are bigoted doesn't mean that this particular joke is, too.

 

[Aldarc]

That same argument has been made concerning other topics.

I have no doubt that the comparisons to these other topics that you are prepared to make regarding a game mechanic are in no way false equivalences.