Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
[Spoilers] Arkgeist Chronicles
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 7830919" data-attributes="member: 63"><p>I dug the half of the memes that I understood, while the others I didn't get the references of.</p><p></p><p>I'll cop to changing things on the fly and not having the finest sense of how to balance 4e encounters. I'm not sure anyone really did, based on my own playthroughs with WotC's high level content. Honestly by the third act, I was worried there were only one or two groups still playing 4e, since the 5e playtest had begun, and most of the GM comments seemed to be for PF groups. My own gaming group had moved on to, I think, the Star Wars RPG, so I know I was less attentive to the mechanics of 4e, and didn't have any interested gamers to have idiot check my ideas.</p><p></p><p>My apologies for that.</p><p></p><p>But I will push back on the idea of Nicodemus and the Obscurati not having a philosophy. In a way, I set them up as a self-criticism of me and other progressives who feel like our goals are selfless and noble, and that we're just held back by people with old power bases who resist change. True, I never wrote out a full treatise like Summa Theologica or the Federalist Papers or something. But the philosophy was, at its core, that we have an obligation to impose on others our idea of how to improve the world. (<strong>Edit:</strong> And that we should change the <em>rules</em> that apply to everyone, rather than simply trying to inspire change within individuals or ourselves.) More specifically, it's the idea that reducing the total amount of suffering is the metric of 'goodness,' and that suffering is simply the result of a lack of understanding and empathy. It's a philosophy where only selflessness is moral, and if you try to help those you care about but don't care about hurting strangers, that's unacceptable.</p><p></p><p>The conspiracy accepted a much wider field of people, who shared the common belief that if not for, basically, conservative thinking, they could make the world better (though their sense of better varied wildly). It was rather 'ivory tower,' playing into tropes of how people criticize me and my friends when we get to talking about politics. And, well before the term 'cancel culture' was mainstream, the Ob implemented that pretty viciously, preferring to kill their own co-conspirators who didn't share the 'right' ideas.</p><p></p><p>The core pitch of the campaign to Morrus was, "What if you woke up one day and everyone agreed with you?" But 'you' really meant 'me,' and I really wanted to think about that, to be skeptical of my own sense of high-mindedness. And my answer was, without someone to check my power, I'd be just as tyrannical as anyone else in history who thought it was their responsibility to decide how things ought to be.</p><p></p><p>---</p><p></p><p>A few other quick ones:</p><p></p><p>Ingatan and Hewaharimau were not even an idea until we started writing adventure 8, because, like the Eurocentrics we are, we hadn't done enough planning and seeding of ideas for what Elfaivar would be like. If they feel underbaked, that's why.</p><p></p><p>Eladrin ghosts were on Ascetia because the Gyre is a cosmic swirling drain for things that are catastrophically destroyed; and also because I realized the Vekeshi/eladrin storyline had floundered for a while and needed something important and symbolic at the finale.</p><p></p><p>And generally I am content with magic - especially things tied to thoughts or belief - being hard to pin down because magic is ultimately that which we don't understand. I care about rules being sufficient to resolve a scene in a game, not serve as a physics engine. (I am reminded how, in Half-Life 2, there are special rules for gravity near balconies, so that enemies who get shot on them tended to ragdoll over railings because that was more dramatic.) Plus, what we perceive as reality is being processed by a slab of electrified fat that has a silly knack for interpreting two small dots and a line as a face. There are definitely rules in there somewhere, but I'm more a semiotics guy than a neurobiologist.</p><p></p><p>---</p><p></p><p>In the span of, what, five years, we put out something like 600,000 words, and I often served as my own editor, which was an unfortunate financial necessity. I wish we had planned better how to integrate all the bits from the setting book all the way through the AP, but I feel like I accomplished my two main goals. The first was to plan a layered mystery that would drive a long series of adventures, and make sure the reveals made the investigation feel worth it. (I loved Babylon 5 for pulling this off, and hoped to avoid the Lost/BSG/X-Files situation of not knowing how to weave revelation and conflict all the way to the climax.)</p><p></p><p>The second was to interrogate my own views and cast them as the villain. I . . . I suppose I'll accept the criticism that apparently my personal philosophy wasn't particularly compelling to you. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>Thanks for the extensive feedback, and the accompanying much-needed poke to deflate my ego. I'll do better . . . maybe not <em>next</em> time, since I'm not going to make anything so big any time soon, but eventually. And in the meanwhile, I'm making sure that "dieselpunk space exploration" is at least an option for those who want to go there.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 7830919, member: 63"] I dug the half of the memes that I understood, while the others I didn't get the references of. I'll cop to changing things on the fly and not having the finest sense of how to balance 4e encounters. I'm not sure anyone really did, based on my own playthroughs with WotC's high level content. Honestly by the third act, I was worried there were only one or two groups still playing 4e, since the 5e playtest had begun, and most of the GM comments seemed to be for PF groups. My own gaming group had moved on to, I think, the Star Wars RPG, so I know I was less attentive to the mechanics of 4e, and didn't have any interested gamers to have idiot check my ideas. My apologies for that. But I will push back on the idea of Nicodemus and the Obscurati not having a philosophy. In a way, I set them up as a self-criticism of me and other progressives who feel like our goals are selfless and noble, and that we're just held back by people with old power bases who resist change. True, I never wrote out a full treatise like Summa Theologica or the Federalist Papers or something. But the philosophy was, at its core, that we have an obligation to impose on others our idea of how to improve the world. ([b]Edit:[/b] And that we should change the [i]rules[/i] that apply to everyone, rather than simply trying to inspire change within individuals or ourselves.) More specifically, it's the idea that reducing the total amount of suffering is the metric of 'goodness,' and that suffering is simply the result of a lack of understanding and empathy. It's a philosophy where only selflessness is moral, and if you try to help those you care about but don't care about hurting strangers, that's unacceptable. The conspiracy accepted a much wider field of people, who shared the common belief that if not for, basically, conservative thinking, they could make the world better (though their sense of better varied wildly). It was rather 'ivory tower,' playing into tropes of how people criticize me and my friends when we get to talking about politics. And, well before the term 'cancel culture' was mainstream, the Ob implemented that pretty viciously, preferring to kill their own co-conspirators who didn't share the 'right' ideas. The core pitch of the campaign to Morrus was, "What if you woke up one day and everyone agreed with you?" But 'you' really meant 'me,' and I really wanted to think about that, to be skeptical of my own sense of high-mindedness. And my answer was, without someone to check my power, I'd be just as tyrannical as anyone else in history who thought it was their responsibility to decide how things ought to be. --- A few other quick ones: Ingatan and Hewaharimau were not even an idea until we started writing adventure 8, because, like the Eurocentrics we are, we hadn't done enough planning and seeding of ideas for what Elfaivar would be like. If they feel underbaked, that's why. Eladrin ghosts were on Ascetia because the Gyre is a cosmic swirling drain for things that are catastrophically destroyed; and also because I realized the Vekeshi/eladrin storyline had floundered for a while and needed something important and symbolic at the finale. And generally I am content with magic - especially things tied to thoughts or belief - being hard to pin down because magic is ultimately that which we don't understand. I care about rules being sufficient to resolve a scene in a game, not serve as a physics engine. (I am reminded how, in Half-Life 2, there are special rules for gravity near balconies, so that enemies who get shot on them tended to ragdoll over railings because that was more dramatic.) Plus, what we perceive as reality is being processed by a slab of electrified fat that has a silly knack for interpreting two small dots and a line as a face. There are definitely rules in there somewhere, but I'm more a semiotics guy than a neurobiologist. --- In the span of, what, five years, we put out something like 600,000 words, and I often served as my own editor, which was an unfortunate financial necessity. I wish we had planned better how to integrate all the bits from the setting book all the way through the AP, but I feel like I accomplished my two main goals. The first was to plan a layered mystery that would drive a long series of adventures, and make sure the reveals made the investigation feel worth it. (I loved Babylon 5 for pulling this off, and hoped to avoid the Lost/BSG/X-Files situation of not knowing how to weave revelation and conflict all the way to the climax.) The second was to interrogate my own views and cast them as the villain. I . . . I suppose I'll accept the criticism that apparently my personal philosophy wasn't particularly compelling to you. :) Thanks for the extensive feedback, and the accompanying much-needed poke to deflate my ego. I'll do better . . . maybe not [I]next[/I] time, since I'm not going to make anything so big any time soon, but eventually. And in the meanwhile, I'm making sure that "dieselpunk space exploration" is at least an option for those who want to go there. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
[Spoilers] Arkgeist Chronicles
Top