D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Micah Sweet]

What gets me about THAC0 was it was fiddly enough that even if you did have math-intelligence, you sometimes doubted yourself and had to redo the calculation, or more rarely, actually got it wrong. Like, I got As in maths at a school that was frequently the #1 school for maths in the UK, and I was being slowed by it!

Just absolutely needed to be replaced, and it was trivial to replace it as it turned out!

Thaco was most definitely not perfect, and I understand not liking it, but that doesn't excuse mockery and ridicule IMO.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I think a lot was done to sanitize medieval Europe as well. Serfs come from slavery, the name servus in Latin, is slave, the modern word slave, comes from enslaving Slavic people, using them as galley, and plantation slaves. In turn the word for Gulag, comes from the Belarus-Russian-Ukrainian word Katorga, a transliteration of a Greek and Turkish word for galley, as in the ship. The Genonese slave-raiding colonies, Garazia, was in constant warfare with the Mongols from the 13th to 15th centuries. In one siege the Mongols used artillery to launch Black Plague infected corpses over the walls of Kaffa, likely a vector of how it entered Europe.

I would go even further. It’s not really a faux-European medieval ascetic, it’s a faux-British medieval ascetic.

Southern Europe has always been focussed on trade across the Mediterranean, so North Africans, Turks, Egyptians, Ethiopians or even Arabs wouldn’t be out of place in medieval Venice.

Ibn Battuta in the early medieval period was born in North Africa and travelled to Mecca, Tanzania, Sumatra and China.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Thaco was most definitely not perfect, and I understand not liking it, but that doesn't excuse mockery and ridicule IMO.

I mean, of people who like it? No, I agree that's mean.

Of THAC0 itself as a game rule, because it's a game rule and it thus doesn't have feelings? Absolutely that can be completely freely mocked and ridiculed, and if you're projecting yourself into so much that you're being offended by the rule being mocked that isn't the fault of the mockers. Just like I can call the F104 Starfighter a total POS aircraft which loved to murder its pilots. It's an aeroplane, it doesn't care what I think, but some people who are excessively emotionally invested in what people think of the F104 might be upset, but again that is on them.

 

[FrozenNorth]

This type of statement baffles me... there's a ton of innovation in the ttrpg sphere... D&D doesn't stifle anything and it brings more awareness to ttrpg's as a whole because of it's prominence, name recognition and it's scale of economics.

Exactly. More players in the TTRPG space means more players that branch out. There are a ton of RPGs out there that simply wouldn’t exist of the market hadn’t grown 10-fold since 2014.

 

[Mournblade94]

People not taking a stand is why the world is where it is today.

But companies that are not people really shouldn't. There's too much to lose. Disney has lost a lot of the conservative family audience. A demographic who always supported them.

It's never a good business decision to pick a culture war side unless you're product specifically caters to one particular audience.

Or be like Larian and make a product so good that the culture war doesn't matter.

 

[KYRON45]

Thaco was most definitely not perfect, and I understand not liking it, but that doesn't excuse mockery and ridicule IMO.

We all have to make our own choices when it comes to mockery and ridicule.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, of people who like it? No, I agree that's mean.

Of THAC0 itself as a game rule, because it's a game rule and it thus doesn't have feelings? Absolutely that can be completely freely mocked and ridiculed, and if you're projecting yourself into so much that you're being offended by the rule being mocked that isn't the fault of the mockers. Just like I can call the F104 Starfighter a total POS aircraft which loved to murder its pilots. It's an aeroplane, it doesn't care what I think, but some people who are excessively emotionally invested in what people think of the F104 might be upset, but again that is on them.

Hypothetical: if someone came to you and said that they liked the F104 (or thaco), believed it was associated with a particular group or style that they favored, and felt insulted by your "funny" comments, you would ignore them or tell them to just get over it, or blame them for being offended?

Actual hypothetical for discussion purposes. I'm not personally invested beyond liking debate.

 

[Micah Sweet]

We all have to make our own choices when it comes to mockery and ridicule.

I suppose so, but what people say still matters I think.

 

[AlViking]

Nor. Theres room for multiple ttrps and D&Ds stranglehold is an aberration which stifles innovation.

How? If it wasn't for DnD there would be some other game that was the largest. Considering the small number of people that play TTRPGs, there would probably be one game that dominated simply because most people are casual gamers that will play whatever is popular. That popularity then becomes self reinforcing.

With things like kickstarter fan funding and internet distribution channels it's easier than ever to create something new. There are no significant barriers to creativity just like there is no guarantee that creativity sells. If I have something that has a learning curve cost that works for me I have little incentive to try different "more creative" alternatives. Different doesn't automatically mean better.

These claims always strike me as "I don't like it so I'll create some way it's bad."

 

[Mournblade94]

You might not think it's such a big deal for a major female figure from the franchise's canon to be reduced to a prop to make a white guy look awesome and smart, and then derail her character into being both pointlessly callous and also stupid because they didn't want said white guy to have a storyline about having any real character flaws of his own.

This is the same game that has a black guy who needed to make a deal with a fiend to get his magical powers, and his plotline is about how he never conceived that this would have any sort of repercussions for him.

Wyll was a folk hero. Nobody views the relationship of Gale and Mystra this way. Plus this is IN CHARACTER for Mystra. If you're familiar with Forgotten Realms literature you'll know why.

This commentary is why people say someone will always be offended.