Pathfinder 1E Lisa Stevens, CEO of Paizo, commenting about ENWorld

[Herremann the Wise]

...nor paint the game as some common whore giving handjobs to any loser who shows up.

It has been a long marriage from which I have derived much pleasure. Yet D&D and I have reached a point of irreconcilable differences, and we must part. It is a sad day for me, though I know D&D is a horrible trollop that does what it must to appease the masses, and thus does not care whether one long-time lover leaves as he is easily replaced by another new lover. But alas, I feel great sorrow at this parting, but the new D&D I do not like and do not think I shall ever like it.

You don't think your words are misrepresentative and over the top? Appease = handjob? Masses=loser? I believe you have taken Celtavian's metaphor several steps too far.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[The Little Raven]

You don't think your words are misrepresentative and over the top? Appease = handjob? Masses=loser? I believe you have taken Celtavian's metaphor several steps too far.

Last I checked, a trollop was a slut or a whore, and the appeasement they give comes in the form of sexual favors. Maybe I went to far in applying my own opinion of those who pay for such services and labeling them losers, but otherwise, I don't think my assessment of Celtavian's use of trollop as a description of 4e is off-base.

 

[billd91]

Again, this comes back to my complaint about people getting bent out of shape when someone calls a spade a spade.

It's because it's pejorative terminology. Terms matter when it comes to setting tone. And I've detested the implication that D&D has been "dumbed down" ever since that charge was leveled against 3e. There are some simplifications that are good game design (like armor class values increasing instead of decreasing with quality), others that are not.
Use of pejorative terminology ought not to be blithely tolerated in civil conversation.

 

[Harlekin]

Last I checked, a trollop was a slut or a whore, and the appeasement they give comes in the form of sexual favors. Maybe I went to far in applying my own opinion of those who pay for such services and labeling them losers, but otherwise, I don't think my assessment of Celtavian's use of trollop as a description of 4e is off-base.

The question is not whether you are right, the question is is if you are expressing yourself in a way that contributes to the discussion. If we assume that posts here are meant to be read and not as some sort of self-expression, then we should consider how the reader will understand our words. Given the present climate on this board it is a reasonable assumption that said reader will not give us the benefit of the doubt if he is unclear about what we have written. Hence we have a better chance to engage in a meaningful conversation if are clear and obviously not insulting. If these are our goals, we should be particularly careful with stylistic choices such as hyperbole, sarcasm and irony, es these are especially easy to misunderstand.

 

[SSquirrel]

TLR was a bit more graphic, but that is certainly one description of the basic situation put forth.

Also, Trollops are from Trollia, are typically viewed as very sexy by more human species and are typically meaner and tougher than the brutish, hairy louts that make up the men of their world.

 

[blargney the second]

So, Darrin, what's happening in your games that's really cool?
-blarg

 

[James Heard]

Man, this thread is depressing. Sometimes I wonder why I ever bother coming here anymore.

 

[Hussar]

No, you don't. I personally don't blame what has happened to the site on anything that you or the mods do, though there were a couple of posts that I reported that were clearly out of line and received no action.

The main reason I don't find myself coming around anymore is a lack of common ground. I'm not particularly interested in talking about 4E. I bought the books, I learned the system, I played some games, I gave it a fair shake, and it's so not my kind of game, it's ridiculous. Since the people who don't like it seem to be fair game around here, why put up with the abuse. There are other forums filled with other people who have also gotten fed up and left.

/snip

See, I don't understand this. If you don't play the game, then why post about it AT ALL?

I really don't get this compulsive need that some people have to declare to the world that a game they don't play is bad. Evangelize the games you DO play and ignore the ones you don't. I am not playing Pathfinder. I have no particular interest in it. So, I don't bother with any PF threads. End of story.

Same goes for Arcana Unearthed. Never played it. Don't talk about it. Microlite, Mutants and Masterminds, L5R. All games I don't play and don't talk about.

About the only time I do talk about games I don't play is when people start telling me that D&D has sold its soul and lacks any heart but ((Insert version of choice)) of D&D did it all so much better. That ((Insert version of choice)) had real role players and now everything is all about combat. That EXACT same conversation could be had about 3e for the past 8 years and now it's being said about 4e. I imagine if the internet had been around, it would have been said about 2e as well.

Could you imagine the rows that would have been had if the internet had been around in the days of AD&D vs B/E/C/M/I? That would have been fun. Not.

If you don't play the game, DON'T TALK ABOUT IT. How hard is that?

It's funny, I've had conversations on this board about saying what you mean. Don't use loaded language when you can use neutral language instead. I've been pushing that for years. Yet people still insist that any limitation on what they say, regardless of the reaction it will provoke, is valid.

It absolutely blows my mind.

 

[Orius]

As for EN World having a big part to play with 4e, I'll throw this out - before 4e officially came out, if you looked up 4e info, EN World was always the first place that popped up. Even when Wizards was throwing out their tidbits and design philosophies, it wasn't wizards and that tidbit you'd find, it was EN World linking to it. Claiming it had nothing to do with the edition launch is laughably and purposefully ignorant.

I'm not going to demonize ENWorld for that no matter how much I may end up disliking 4e (and I might like it anyway). IME, when I was looking for 4e information, I went to WotC's site, and I couldn't find much information easily. I went to their messageboards, which was where most of the stuff was supposedly found, but I found nothing in Gleemax's huge mess, unless it was buried under pages of posts. So I came here, and in less time than it took me to search WotC's site in futility, I found enough information on 4e to answer most of my questions.

So really, if enough people had trouble finding info over on WotC's site like I did, it's no wonder they came here. In my mind, ENWorld did a much better job of providing informaion that WotC did.

prior to the launch of 4e I was finding less and less of interest to me in the D&D forums - because the games I played and ran in used the core rules and psionics rules (basically what you would find in the SRD) and nothing else. Discussion and debate in the forums moved on to stuff from the Complete X books, Book of Nine Swords and so forth, which were subjects which were current and of great interest to the majority of ENworld, but which I didn't know the rules for, didn't have the rules and wasn't going to get and use the rules as either a player or DM!

It's the same with me. I have almost nothing from after the launch of 3.5, so I've been ignoring many new rules discussions for a while. I generally follow general RPing and classic D&D threads, and stuff in the Software and Media forums. So I've probably missed a lot of the heat. That and I started ignoring thread titles which even looked liked potential edition wars, cause they were feeling the same to me.

 

[Spatula]

It's the dismissive slant that is the problem. Dismissing your reader's opinion is a bad thing.

It's not slighting anyone's opinion, unless not agreeing with someone is now an insult (and from some of the threads, I do think some see it in those terms). It's a comment directed at a game system.

"MERPs is a dumbed down version of Rolemaster," is not equivalent to, "People who like MERPs are dumb."

It's funny, I've had conversations on this board about saying what you mean. Don't use loaded language when you can use neutral language instead. I've been pushing that for years. Yet people still insist that any limitation on what they say, regardless of the reaction it will provoke, is valid.

It absolutely blows my mind.

This from the guy that's calling some DMs "asshats" in another thread...