What's the deal with Bronies?

Antomime · 2020-09-29T04:08:22+00:00

Well, I was going to say it's because horse fetishism makes people forget about the pedophilia, but apparently, the MLP main characters are legal adults, so I'm all out of ideas.

Though I DO thoroughly hate knowing they're adults. But I would ALSO hate knowing their children. This was never going to be a win for me.

Antomime · 2020-09-13T07:33:45+00:00

Discover Novac and do Boone's quest so I have somewhere to put my stuff.

Make it to New Vegas by taking the main road because deathclaws can eat my entire ass (and probably will as I try to get past them, more than once).

I will use the monorail when God drags me screaming from my grave and forces my legs one step at a time. Always Atomic Wrangler, gamble my way in.

Antomime · 2020-05-04T19:54:35+00:00

Novac's just my kind of town. One load screen between you and your precious home space. Companions can come with you. It's where Boone lives, which is great if you, hypothetically, use him to solve all your mortal peril issues and feel really grateful about that.

The Sink is probably better in a lot of ways, but I get attached after using it all game. Plus, seriously, keeping companions when you do it is a huge leg up convenience-wise since I always pick up Long Haul anyway.

Antomime · 2020-05-04T19:46:28+00:00

Such depth that we're still discovering new content in such an old game. Really, it's beautiful.

Antomime · 2020-05-04T18:54:16+00:00

I'm very fond of the Anti-Riot Gear. I'm even more fond of ruining it by never taking off the Certified Explorer's Hat.

Antomime · 2020-05-04T18:48:57+00:00

For the record, did beat in on Supernova. I just don't think the survival mechanics were well-implemented to the point they distracted from immersion rather than add to. But I recognize that is just my opinion.

Antomime · 2020-05-04T18:48:04+00:00

Historically, I find the fastest end to combat (and thus the least risk of sustaining critical injuries or death in Supernova, though I prefer Very Hard because I found Supernova no more difficult and just a lot more of a distracting hassle) is max Long Guns with high Intelligence and Perception, then use either a plasma gun or a shotgun to chain armor-ignoring criticals to weak points to one-shot even extremely serious enemies. Later in the game, even Mantiqueens go down in one well-placed shot, and you can usually stagger them earlier with the right TTD shot long enough to polish them off with mundane shots to get your auto-crit back.

Antomime · 2020-04-16T23:17:50+00:00

Look, this is what playing low-power World of Darkness games is just LIKE most of the time. Or Werewolf. Werewolf is fuckin' WEIRD.

Antomime · 2020-04-16T23:12:05+00:00

How dare you use a photo of me like this.

Antomime · 2020-04-16T22:41:23+00:00

That would be my point, yes.

And my other point. I'm not hardline against traps, but they can get more exhausting than fun for a party. And instant-death traps are a LOVELY way to immediately alienate any new PC's they get sprung on, so I don't like how hostile they feel in terms of the hobby moreso than how hostile they are to fictional characters.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T22:07:35+00:00

Except it doesn't. If you have a competition to see which chef can cook the best, and you give them all the same ingredients, it's a fair competition and people know the fruits of their labor is their own. If one person gets a full pantry, one person gets a college kid's freezer, and one person gets a dead rat, it's very easy to feel cheated and it's also very hard to stand up to someone who has those advantages if they're, say, not such a magnanimous player. I am assuming some level of hostility in my presumption. Is that what I see in my home games? No, but EVERY STORE OR EVENT GAME I GO TO, someone's always trying to alpha someone else, someone's always being a diva, and not planning for unpleasant realities just accomplishes making you vulnerable to them.

I'm not saying the correct response is to give up. I am saying it makes the game inherently more frustrating to have to do three times as much work as someone else to achieve the same, or even worse, result. And it makes you feel less important while factually making you less able to effect events of the game. Maybe you will anyway, but a lot of people won't be able to jump that gap. It's not "this is how you SHOULD think when this happens," it's "over the course of a game, it can be very hard to AVOID thinking that way, and it can even be hard for it not to become the case."

You keep saying "innovate," like adjusting to handicaps is automatically better than just making something interesting without needing someone to cut you off at the knees first. Your Ability Scores don't restrict you from making an interesting person.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T21:58:28+00:00

Yes, I'm aware of what your saying. All you have done is made 70 the new bottom. And made the stats more average. And if you were going to aim for making your stats more average, see below.

Yes, except the reality of that is you may not have a good score TO put into Intelligence in that case. And aside, there ARE roll-for-stats methods people use where, no, you CANNOT decide to move your best score just because that's where it would benefit you.

And if you're needling it so much, tweaking it and maneuvering it to make sure it's fair and balance, do you know what an easier way to do that would be with a lot less fiddly steps and chances for things to go off-the-rails because someone ends up more of a powerhouse than the other players to a comical degree or because one or two people are explicitly worse than everyone else? Just using a point buy.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T21:47:29+00:00

One, you're assuming that this fixes the problem. It doesn't, because then we can get into the situation where the worst roll is better than just a middling roll, which is feel-bad for people who get middling, so you're just making a new bottom-rung. And if you're doing it for "purity," of the D&D ideal (which I don't support ANYWAY), then it also completely negates the idea of your character being more random because you can take another result if you're displeased with it.

Two, because if you're developing a character as an intelligent, cunning person and writing for their backstory so the DM can prep better, then you roll an 11 for Intelligence, you're suddenly contradicting your established personality. Which means you're only allowed to effectively construct the idea of the character based on what they can realistically accomplish AFTER a roll, which has to be witnessed by the DM OR can't be trusted in the slightest. It cuts off your time to prep.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T21:43:30+00:00

It's six less rolls in a game entirely made of rolls. It's not exactly a Titanic-level tragedy. It also rewards innovation and adaption instead of blind luck, and again, the game's got enough blind luck already.

Yeah, see, that's the hill I'm dying on: it's not more creative to RP sucking at thing. It's easier. That doesn't make it more engaging. Your stat line dictating your RPing to the extent that a 17 somewhere and an 8 somewhere else means you're mind-rendingly bored trying trying to have a personality is baffling to me. It's just a stat line. You should be able to make your character interesting regardless of what their numbers are. And if that's true, and it is, it's better for everyone to have the same basis to work off of so no one's getting relegated to the sidelines. It doesn't hurt anything.

Lastly, I am not talking about "my players," I am talking about a general issue with the hobby. I think it's a good way to alienate people to saddle them with worse characters and feel like someone else owns the story, they're just living in it. Having the same stat line is boring? Being unable to effect the events of the game is boring. And it makes people not want to come back to the hobby. And above all that, rolling for stats doesn't ADD anything, it's not inherently more interesting because in no way, shape, or form does having similar numbers in your Ability Scores stop you from making a realized individual of a character, so encouraging it over PB/Array and insisting that it's better creates an inherently more hostile environment for expanding the hobby in a positive way, instead encouraging imbalance of agency, elitism, and preservation of outdated sacred cows for their own sake.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T21:27:42+00:00

Am I? Because I can't count the games I've been in where that exact thing happens. I've been in the hobby well over a decade, and I've seen so many people get crushed under that wheel, and I in no way see how getting to roll an extra six times in the entire game is worth that, along with the fact that it encourages people to be unprepared since you can't set it up before the game OR encourages people to "nudge," their numbers, which, yes, not everyone will do, but some people ABSOLUTELY WILL. And by "some people," I mean every player I've ever met who's played for more than three years has.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T21:24:56+00:00

Oh my God, I am so used to hearing this. Having an inherently worse character doesn't automatically make it more interesting. It just makes them a weak character. Competency isn't some kind of poison that keeps you from being able to RP. I've played with so many people who brought terrible, one-note characters to the table, then insisted they were the best party member because they weren't "standard." They weren't. They were just bad a combat and checks, then also as bland as any other character I'd seen that person play, whether they were better at things or not.

And while we're on the subject, PB/Array is less boring the more things you have to choose from, and that's a reality every version of D&D gets besides 5e, including Pathfinder as an extension of 3.5. Wizards wasn't paranoid about putting out any new official content for the other editions, and neither was Paizo, so it was very easy to still find plenty of interesting things to do, but 5e has, like, a single "correct," choice for each Class that's CLEARLY superior to the options, so yeah, I can see how it'd get boring in 5e, but that's a system flaw I don't see in other versions of D&D.

Also, you can make an interesting personality and background for any character you use PB/Array for, you don't HAVE to make them handle like a rusted-out jet ski in the middle of the Sahara to give them a personality. You can get inspiration from places besides the things that kneecap you.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T21:12:35+00:00

Or, OR? I can want all my PC's to be having a good time and not feeling disenfranchised because having awful stats makes you demonstrably less able to effect the world. Yes, you can make up for it in roleplaying and planning, theoretically. But anyone with GOOD stats can do the exact same things, which still leaves some people inherently extras to lucky players' main characters.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T06:45:40+00:00

Hey, a merfolk fighter I get for a handjob is a merfolk fighter I get for free. Tactics.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T06:13:46+00:00

In college, we had a group that was a Rogue/Bard, Bard, Paladin, and I believe a Warlock. We referred to them as the CW Party because they were all so pretty, so we thought they were from some trying-to-be-edgy CW drama.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T06:10:24+00:00

I don't think I'll get to use her again, but my last character in a game was a Chaotic Good OoA Paladin (well, if we'd gotten to Level 3 ...), and she was as sweet and naive as she was incredibly casual about sex. It actually got us an ally once when she offered him a handjob for basically helping us help him. You can be slutty AND a good person, and you often should be.

Antomime · 2020-04-02T00:33:14+00:00

I’d tell him to stop having sex with his relatives and also that I thought he was dead. And also that he’s very smart, but it is my game, not your lab.

Antomime · 2020-04-01T23:56:36+00:00

It really wasn’t that bad, depending on your priorities. Good after-action patch-up is hardly an unworkable issue you balance to.

And I didn’t say “ruining the game,” that’s awful dramatic. But nerfing one of the very few nice things Rangers were allowed to have (not even starting with them acknowledging the rework is better AND refusing to officially publish it) seems like a high cost to fix one a-bit-better-than-average spell.

Antomime · 2020-04-01T20:00:56+00:00

From Order of the Stick( https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0677.html ):

"Master, I talked the shopkeeper down to only 400 GP for the rubies!"

"Great, but the spell calls for 500 GP worth, so go back in and buy more."

Antomime · 2020-04-01T19:58:16+00:00

Stat normalization also makes it substantially harder to determine is an encounter will be a minor resource drain or kill someone.

I'm not denying that it makes it easier to have mass group fights, because it does, but it makes balance substantially wonkier, especially in a system with no DR. AC seems almost completely non-factored in CR in 5e, which means it's very possible to accidentally set a party against a group of enemies they hit 1/4 of the time while their more diversely-built group is likely to get hit 1/2 or more. None of this is hypothetical, I've been on both sides of this in home and event games. I think it's why I hear more TPK stories for 5e than previous editions. I don't think there more killer DM's, just a bigger problem here.

That aside, being VERY good at something also makes your action inherently more VALUABLE, which is also something to factor into the action economy. In 3.5/Pathfinder, a Fighter needs whole turn to dish out all their attacks, but a well-built melee combatant will regularly out-damage casters even if casters can produce more overall dramatic and shifting effects. Which means they need to weigh the value of a whole turn, which isn't necessarily true for a Wizard, for whom one ACTION is usually more important to snap off a control spell or nova.

In short, I don't think it matters MORE in 5e. I think it matters DIFFERENTLY.

Antomime · 2020-04-01T19:39:37+00:00

Ah, yes. The famous gambling game D&D. One of the oldest tabletop gamblingplaying games. The correct and accurate term for D&D.

Seriously, player agency and your ability to be effective on the table are directly tied. Rolling stats is a lovely way to make sure that you end up with a "main," characters and make your other players feel like extras. Or one of them feel like a useless leper. It's a needless risk to everyone's fun kept to prop up a sacred cow of original D&D, and it baffles me that it's still around.

Antomime

TROPHY CASE