The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[payn]

It's Youtube. If the stuff you're reporting on is rather banal, that's all the more incentive to sex up the title and thumbnail, otherwise your channel doesn't get the views and dies to the whims of the algorithm.

Would that be so bad?

 

[MarkB]

Would that be so bad?

The point is, it's a selection system. The ones who survive to make it into your feed are the ones who don't sacrifice visibility for integrity.

 

[overgeeked]

Which some of us call bordgame-ism and very much object to as it feels more like an absurdly detailed boardgame and less of a role-playing game. Tastes vary. 4E is forever divisive.

Which is still hilarious to me as the Paizo people did Pathfinder because they hated 4E so much. Then a decade or so later came around on the idea and copied many parts of 4E with Pathfinder 2E.

 

[payn]

The point is, it's a selection system. The ones who survive to make it into your feed are the ones who don't sacrifice visibility for integrity.

Catch-22 visibility demands you be an incidnerary chucklehead jerkhole.

 

[overgeeked]

It still baffles me that RPGs insist on doing really detailed crunchy systems for things that video games handle infinitely better. Like say combat. A 30-second fight in a video game is at least a 30-minute fight in most RPGs. I dunno. Maybe use more abstract mechanics to quicken the handling time and/or focus on things that video games can't already do better.

 

[Jahydin]

Which is still hilarious to me as the Paizo people did Pathfinder because they hated 4E so much. Then a decade or so later came around on the idea and copied many parts of 4E with Pathfinder 2E.

I think it was more they weren't allowed to participate in 4E so fell back on what they were already doing...

 

[ichabod]

Hey, people who don't play the way I do, explain to me why you play that way. I can't imagine anyone enjoying playing that way, so I need you to explain it to me.

 

[Staffan]

Which is still hilarious to me as the Paizo people did Pathfinder because they hated 4E so much. Then a decade or so later came around on the idea and copied many parts of 4E with Pathfinder 2E.

I've always said that it's not so strange that PF2 shares some things in common with 4e. 3e had certain issues that were inherited by 3.5e and PF1. Both 4e and PF2 tried solving those issues. It's not so strange that they'd come up with similar (but generally not identical) solutions for many of those problems.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It still baffles me that RPGs insist on doing really detailed crunchy systems for things that video games handle infinitely better. Like say combat. A 30-second fight in a video game is at least a 30-minute fight in most RPGs. I dunno. Maybe use more abstract mechanics to quicken the handling time and/or focus on things that video games can't already do better.

I am increasingly of the opinion that there are some stuff that predates videogames that maybe should be ceded to videogames.

Civilization already can take days or weeks or months (or sometimes, even years) to complete a game, and that's with the PC deciding everything. Adding humans into the mix makes those sorts of super-crunchy large scale games almost unplayable at the table, IMO.

At the moment, roleplaying games aren't fully in that space, since handling NPCs in particular is too much for a computer to handle. (Although I suspect generative AI will eventually get there.) But super-crunchy combat? That stuff should be handled by computers, IMO, instead of forcing a DM and player to spend 10 minutes consulting charts like astrologers trying to adjudicate something that a computer would get done in a nanosecond.

 

[overgeeked]

I am increasingly of the opinion that there are some stuff that predates videogames that maybe should be ceded to videogames.

Civilization already can take days or weeks or months (or sometimes, even years) to complete a game, and that's with the PC deciding everything. Adding humans into the mix makes those sorts of super-crunchy large scales almost unplayable at the table, IMO...

But super-crunchy combat? That stuff should be handled by computers, IMO, instead of forcing a DM and player to spend 10 minutes consulting charts like astrologers trying to adjudicate something that a computer would get done in a nanosecond.

Exactly. Can you imagine trying to do a WoW-style dungeon in D&D? Or worse, a raid? It would take a dozen or so sessions of nothing but combat to clear out a dungeon. A raid would take more time than a mega-dungeon. With the computer? The dungeon might take an hour if you're going really, really slow. The raid might take 2-3 hours depending on familiarity and people standing in fire.

At the moment, roleplaying games aren't fully in that space, since handling NPCs in particular is too much for a computer to handle. (Although I suspect generative AI will eventually get there.) But super-crunchy combat? That stuff should be handled by computers, IMO, instead of forcing a DM and player to spend 10 minutes consulting charts like astrologers trying to adjudicate something that a computer would get done in a nanosecond.

I maintain that RPGs are mostly run by supercomputers. The human brains involved at the table during the session. They can do all kinds of amazing things. They're slowed down dramatically by having to roll dozens of checks and consulting dozens of rules instead of just using the meat-computer everyone is born with. Having something like MCDM RPG's negotiation mechanic would certainly help speed things along. But that's my point. We can do those bits better than computers...and yet that's the stuff we generally avoid like the plague...so we can focus on the stuff computers have done better than we ever could for decades. It's really weird.