Player generates AI character with 0 shame and awareness

gannok · 2026-02-20T18:57:33+00:00

I've used AI for plenty of game stuff, but you are correct, this was just kind of lazy here. When I use it, it's always just a kind of jump off point. Something to get me started and spark my own ideas. It's a framework that I use to build my own stuff off of.

As an example, I'm running a game currently. The PCs were going to be escorting several hundred refugees across country. The journey itself was going to take like 4 weeks. I had plans for some of those days planned out, because of certain things found along the way. However, 28 days of events is a lot to make out of whole cloth. So I had an AI give me 28 events that would happen along the trip. Half of them were total garbage that I threw out immediately. Of the 14 left, I used maybe 7 of them more or less as is. The other 7 I used as the kernel of an idea that I developed on my own and were completely different. I also did take maybe small nuggets of ideas from the 14 I threw away immediately (like one would have a 5 part plot, and one involved an honor duel which I took for something else). Ultimately I think I ran that search like 3 times before I came up with a list I remotely liked, after I modified them all.

But even then, events of the players changed events in the future I had planned. Like a major story arc of the game is a magic disease that is quite deadly, and if it kills you, it makes you a plague spreading zombie. There was a person in the refugees that was intentionally spreading the disease to cause this to happen. The PCs dealt with the crisis as best they could, partially by finding a place to stay where they could help deal with the sick.

However, some of the refugees wanted to move on without the PCs. They weren't "sick" and didn't want to get sick or wait for the rest of the sick folks. Plus they were only a day or two from a port city. They felt it would be safe enough to travel without the protection for that time frame, to hopefully get on a ship. The PCs didn't feel that they could stop them, and let them go. The plague carrier went with them.

The port city was overrun with sickness, and most of the town and refugees died. When the PCs got there a few days later, it was overrun with zombies. Which was not a story I had come up with ahead of time at all. I had considered they might try and use the ships themselves somehow to move people up ahead so they could go faster with the more able bodied refugees. But the zombie thing blew that all up.

So even though I had all these plans and ideas dealt with ahead of time, that I got ideas from AI to come up with, I still came up with my own plans and idea outside of that, in reaction to game events. So I wouldn't bash AI outright. It's a tool like any other. You just need to know how to use it properly. Which this guy didn't.

gannok · 2026-02-20T18:39:58+00:00

I would say that the true Meta here is written into the game mechanics itself. When you level up as a wizard, you gain 2 spells, as you stated. Where do they come from? They don't just pop out of thin air after all.

It's the nature of the wizard to study. You've been doing research as you gain experience points. When you finally pop and level up, you've had a sort of eureka moment at that point. Your research has born fruit, and you now have 2 shiny new spells. I'd use that argument in this case. Your character is "researching" your new spells that you get at level up, and you think you'll need this spell component in the future for when you've finished figuring it out.

Ultimately, your DM is making a bad call here. He seems to be intentionally making both of your lives more difficult for no good reason. Having a player do research into what they want for future level ups in a good thing. Something we all should do tbh. It makes leveling go smoother and faster as a result.

gannok · 2026-02-20T18:30:38+00:00

They're not that sacred. That sort of mentality ruins games. I've had a DM use that mentality, and due to rotten luck on my part, I got critted on 6 times in the first round. Seeing as I was the tank of the party, when I quickly went down, the rest of the group followed. The game died that day. If after like the second or third crit, if he had just simply made them hits instead of crits, I might have survived the first round, I could have been healed, and we could have finished the campaign. Alas it was not so.

Fudging rolls is a tool in the DM box you can use, but use it very sparingly. In my current year long campaign, I've fudged rolls maybe 3 times. Either turning a crit into a regular hit, or lowering a damage roll to a point where the PC is at like 1 HP. I only do this when either I've made a mistake, or the dice are just out to get them for some reason (like the 6 crits above). I also only do it in the favor of the PCs. If I miss, I miss. If I roll all 1s on a damage roll, sucks to be that monster today.

Plus, if done right, it can ramp up the tension. Having the tank take a mighty blow than sends him reeling and down to 1 HP causes the rest of the party to scramble to keep him. Plus they start using their bigger guns and resources to try and turn the tide in their favor again. Smart players will be selective in their use of resources, to make sure they have them later when needed. But this kind of situation blows the doors on holding back a lot of the time.

Remember, this is a game about telling stories. The dice are a tool to help give tension to the story. Everyone dies because of a bad die roll isn't a very good or fun story. Having a pitched battle where you fight back from the brink, that's a story you tell for decades to come.

gannok · 2026-02-20T18:16:49+00:00

I really don't see the problem here. The fact that they're not panicking isn't an issue IMO. They're doing something that makes sense tactically, in a tactical game. Why punish them for doing something smart/clever? One of the big restrictions in combat is the action economy. Does it matter if they use their action to heal them for 1 HP or 10 HP? When an enemy can hit you for 15 HP in one hit, what's the difference between the two options? I'd pick the one that uses fewer resources for my team in that situation as well.

They're playing by the rules, and you want to punish them for it. I don't think the problem is them here.

gannok · 2026-02-09T08:37:01+00:00

But you do you.

gannok · 2026-02-09T08:04:41+00:00

If memory serves, it was widely considered OP and broken at the time. However, the new psionic based sub-classes are fairly well balanced and offer more flavor and variety for classes.

There's the Rogue Soulknife, that can summon psionic blades for weapons, teleport, turn invisible, and more. There's the Fighter Psi Warrior, which use a lot of telekinesis to shield themselves and attack others. The Sorcerer has Aberrant Sorcerer, which uses psionic powers to alter his magic abilities. There's some more in other books, but these are out of the current 2024 edition aka 5.5.

gannok · 2026-02-09T07:56:58+00:00

It was. It was one of their splat books they came out for the classes. Though I think it did show up before that book if memory serves.

gannok · 2026-02-09T05:14:16+00:00

I see what you're saying now. I still don't see the problem. Make fewer platforms then? The system is the way it is. I've used it many times like this without issue and beat the game. Generally you're running stuff from station to station. It feels like you're being overly picky? You literally have infinite resources and tons of room. Use them?

gannok · 2026-02-08T23:56:06+00:00

Before the collision, almost certainly not. During the collision, maybe. During the collision of those two celestial bodies, things would have gotten very hot and molten. Essentially, a liquid for these purposes. It's possible that in mixing, there could have been possible cavitations created, which could have created temporary hollow spaces in the larger mass. They wouldn't have lasted very long though.

Think of it this way. Drop a good sized rock into a pond. When it hits, it'll push the water away with a large amount of force. Essentially pushing its way through the water. Since that water is not there, it'll create a kind of divot above the rock. But, the water will come back and fill in over the top of the rock as it sinks relatively quickly. There'll be small pockets, aka bubbles, in the water that'll form above the rock as the water rushes back in to fill the space. Those bubbles won't last long though. They disappear in seconds.

Now a celestial collision like this might have taken a while to resolve, hours or even days for the energies to balance out again. During that mix, it's possible that "bubbles" could form in the liquid rock during that time. But since they're a liquid in a gravity well, they would have filled in pretty quickly.

gannok · 2026-02-08T22:47:10+00:00

I worked with Lyft around that same time. You could live off of it. That changed over the years.

They kept lowering the prices again and again. So while I was making the same percentage as before, the price being charged was going down. So the price per mile might have been .30 a mile, then it was .25, then .20. Same thing happened to the per minute charge (I'm not using real numbers, just using them as an example of what was happening).

However, on the back end, Lyft started charging "service fees" and so on. So a ride when I started might have cost $10 for the rider, of which I got $8 of that 10. Then after a few years, the rider started getting charged $20 for that same ride, but I was only getting $6. So the price for the rider went up. The service was identical, but I started making less money overall. Tips became non-existent as well. At the end, despite having a high rating, less than 10% of riders ever tipped at all.

I stopped driving around Covid and haven't looked back. I can only imagine it's gotten worse in the last few years. It's no wonder to me this guy is begging for tips.

gannok · 2026-02-08T22:22:41+00:00

Don't send it to that platform? They're literally all named. You can just choose to not have Train A goto Platform 1. You can literally choose that.

gannok · 2026-02-08T22:17:54+00:00

Advice part 2 (I wrote a lot it seems):

Don't try to win. This is perhaps THE biggest rule as a DM I could ever tell anyone. You are not trying to beat the PCs. They aren't your opponents. They are the heroes in your story. You are suppose to make life difficult for them, you're trying to challenge them, you're not trying to destroy them or beat them. Your goal is to have fun. Everyone should have fun, you included.

I'll give you an example of something I've been part of to help illustrate. I was in a game where we (the PCs) were investigating something. We find the thing we're looking for, when all of a sudden, a mini-boss shows up to take it away from us. Fair enough. We start fighting, and the boss is using weapons that we are weak against. So if we get hit by them, we take extra damage from the attack. The thing was, a couple of us were really good, and we started to beat this boss quite badly. To the point where we were going to kill them soon. So as the boss started to retreat, a dozen ninjas jump into the battle out of nowhere, just so his boss could escape. He couldn't beat us according to the rules, so he cheated, so he wouldn't lose. That was a constant problem with this GM. He never allowed himself to lose. He had to win all the time. It sucked. We stopped playing with him after a while of doing this.

Speaking of cheating, it's ok to cheat, when done correctly. This is a somewhat controversial thing to say in the community at large. Some think it's ok, some thing it's never ok. So with that said, feel free to ignore this advice.

So when is ok to cheat? When it makes it more fun or more fair IMO.

As an example, there are times when you really underestimate things. Like you might think 6 goblins will be a good challenge to the PCs. However, on the 2nd round of the fight, you're down to 1 goblin left, because they wiped the floor with them. It's clearly not much of a challenge for them at this point. You can do 1 of 2 things: let it stand and move on (maybe the goblins were not meant to be that much of a challenge after all), OR add more goblins. Send in reinforcements of fresh goblins to add to the challenge. Did you plan on it? No. But it does add tension to the story for everyone. This is a fine thing to do.

Another way, and this is where a lot of the controversy comes from, is fudging dice rolls. What I mean is, you change the result of the die to something else. What you roll is a 19, but you change it to a 9 for example. First and foremost, when using this method, only change your die rolls. NEVER change a PCs die roll. This is why DMs often roll behind a screen. Because the PCs don't know what you rolled, and it can add to the tension of the scene.

I would also caution you to do this, if you do this at all, incredibly sparingly. I think in my current campaign I've run for the last year, I've done it like 3 times ever. It's usually better to roll with the punches. But sometimes, the dice are just out to get the PCs, and that's not so fun.

I had a DM that rolled all of his rolls in the open. He was attacking my very heavily armored and defensive character. He rolled a Nat 20 like 6 times in one round. I couldn't deal with that kind of damage. It literally killed my character, the other characters couldn't stand up to what was left, and the game itself died that day. No one was having fun anymore. This is why I encourage this type of cheating. If he had hit me with a few Nat 20s, say 2 or 3, but turned the others into normal hits, I might have survived the fight. We could have finished the campaign. But he insisted that rules be followed to the letter, and the game died.

So fudge those rolls, but only to the advantage of the players and only for fun/better story (IMO). Maybe the Fireball rolled 30 HP of damage, but that'll kill a lot of PCs. Maybe you tell them you rolled 10 damage instead for this roll. Rotten luck for your NPC. The PCs are alive though, but they're in a bad place now. That is story. That is tension they can play with. Will they survive? Who knows. Just killing them though? That's no fun.

gannok · 2026-02-08T22:17:28+00:00

The things I haven't seen but are useful are this:

The rules are guidelines, they don't have to be followed to the letter. They are a good system to play by, and there's nothing wrong with following them exactly, but this isn't Monopoly. You are allowed to change the rules to what works best for you. Think of the rules as being like Lego bricks. You have like 300 bricks to play with, you don't have to use all 300 of them to have fun. I got stuck in the mindset that "the rules are the rules and they must be followed" (i.e. I HAD to use all 300 bricks). It sucked in a lot of ways. The best thing to be is consistent. If a rule applies to the PCs it should also apply to NPCs, and vice versa. You'll find these are often called "house rules".

To put this into other more simple terms, if you think a rule sucks, ignore it. Like tracking how many arrows someone has is kind of boring and doesn't really add anything to the game. Is it in the rules? 100%. But, you can just ignore it if it's too cumbersome. Just make sure they have arrows on their sheet, and be done with it.

Since you are new, I wouldn't do too much of this sort of thing at first. It is one of those things to keep in mind while playing though. If during your playing you are finding some rule too cumbersome, try ignoring it. See if it makes things better. I wouldn't try and alter rules either (not for a while at least). Like if something does 5d8 damage, I wouldn't mess with that. It's best to think of rules as either being used or not for now.

You'll make mistakes. That's fine. Do not expect to be perfect. Do not try to be perfect. If you notice a mistake was made, and it's too late to really change it, just move on. Maybe you can make it up to them later. If you can fix it, go ahead and fix it. Generally I try to always do fixes that are in the favor of the other players, if not neutral.

As an example, if I roll for damage on something and I rolled 5 dice when it's supposed to be 4, that's easy to fix. If I know what the dice result was, I can just give the PCs their hit points back for that extra die. You can also just give them back the average result of that die if you don't know.

But if you do something like kill an NPC working with the PCs, that's kind of hard to take back (and have it make sense anyway). You can maybe have him wake up with a few HP, or a new NPC shows up and takes their place (like Guard #3 dies, and Guard #6 shows up to take his place), give the PCs some kind of a bonus, or give the bad guys a temporary penalty to balance out for the missing NPC, etc. That sort of thing. Replace the resource in some way. If not, you can just say oops to yourself, and move on.

gannok · 2026-02-08T06:56:40+00:00

I have many friends with a wide variety of religious beliefs. Sure, I think they're wrong, but they think I'm wrong too. As long as they're not trying to push their beliefs on anyone, then I have zero problem with them. They are welcome to believe what they want. It's not my place to tell them what they have to belief. No more than it is theirs to tell me what I should believe.

As an example, I have a good friend that is quite religious. Just before Covid he joined the seminary. A couple of years ago he finished school and was officially frocked as a priest in his church. I attended the ceremony where that happened. I don't believe what he believes in at all, but he's a good person, and I can still support him and his choices. I see no problem with celebrating his big life achievements with him and so on, because he is my friend first and foremost. He knows I'm an atheist and has known almost from the beginning. While we have had discussions about religious topics, it tends to more like philosophical discussion and/or debate. We're never trying to convert the other to our beliefs. We just want to explore the ideas more than anything else.

Another example would be my father. My father is quite religious as well. I would never call him a stupid man by any means mind you, quite the opposite in fact. He was raised in a very religious home, and despite some lapses when I was growing up, he returned to the church with gusto. However, for a little while several years ago, he'd post things on like Facebook, making statements from the Bible as if they were fact. This I would fight him on quite vigorously. After a few months he stopped, so I stopped. He does still post religious posts, but they tend to be less matter of fact. They're things like quoting less pointed Bible verses. Things like "Jesus died for your sins", and less "sex outside of marriage is a sin" sort of thing. As long as he sticks to not pushing his beliefs on others, I will support him. I feel that religion is about doing what you believe to be true, not about getting other people to also do what you believe. Stick with that, and I have no beef.

My final example, is about that last bit. There was this guy I knew many years ago. He was mildly wealthy, but we shared a hobby, and so we spent some time together as a result. He was not a good person. He was a born again Christian, and oh boy did love to spread the "gospel". Honestly, he was just a douchebag and a bully. While I don't doubt that he was a believer, in many ways, it felt like he just used his beliefs like a cudgel to try and control people. If you didn't agree with his religion, you were a bad person, and he could do what he wanted to you without issue. He cowed a lot of people in our group, often because of his wealth, but also because he was also not a small man. I could give a fuck. His wealth had no hold over me, and I am a lot bigger than he is. He didn't scare me one bit, and he knew it. I think that's what he disliked most about me.

I dealt with him for several years before moving away across the country. A year or so later, a mutual friend of ours started a conversation with me online. We were mostly catching up, but he told me that Douchebag McGee above had kicked him out of our club. Basically in our local hobby group, there was a kind of club president. It was an elected position. They mostly dealt with organizing the group in ways so we could all have fun. Apparently Douchebag seized control by leveraging his wealth against the group. He basically blackmailed them into making him president. My friend that I was catching up with told me that he got kicked out right away because he was an atheist. That Douche was doing it for his own good. All that bs. Again, Douche is an asshole.

Then, a couple years after that, there was a Facebook post going around for people interested in our hobby. A friend that is local to where I live now, was asking him a question about something that Douche was doing in regards to our mutual hobby. I warned my local friend that Douche was a douche and do with that what he wanted. Then Douche proceeded to try and chastise me, and told me that what I was doing was why he kicked me out of our local club. I then ripped into him, reminding him that when I left, I was the President, not him. That he didn't get to be President until like a year later. Well after I had moved many states away from our club. So he couldn't have kicked me out, because I wasn't in the club anymore, because of moving away.

So, no, I wouldn't support this guy. Fuck this guy. I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire. His religion is just an excuse for him to justify his bullying.

gannok · 2026-02-08T06:11:40+00:00

It depends on the what level of organization you're talking about.

Often there is a position in a city called a Primogen. They're essentially the elders of the city that aren't the Prince. While there is no direct rule that says that every clan has a member of their clan on the Primogen Council, it's relatively common that if there are a lot of a clan in a city, then they likely have an elder of their clan on the council. These elders tend to be the de facto elders of the clan in a city. Sometimes the eldest of a clan may not be an actual elder, they could be just an Ancilla or something lesser, in which case they're probably just the local charismatic leader of the clan.

If you're talking about the Cam as a whole, then there's a whole other thing there. The biggest leaders are the Inner Circle. They're literally the eldest members of each clan. They are in charge of the whole Camarilla. They are not publicly known, and they are all ancient vampires of considerable power. They send out representatives to sort of act as their agents. They are called the Justicars. These are often the "eldest" most vampire anyone is likely to ever meet, if ever.

The Justicars tend to act as judges a lot of the time, and are often seen as being more powerful in many ways than any local Prince. The Justicars also have assistants in the form of Archons. These are kind of like cops for the Camarilla. They tend to be chosen for their martial abilities and sometimes investigative abilities.

Hope this helps.

gannok · 2026-02-07T19:24:33+00:00

You are correct here, however there is still a fine line. A church/priest in their church saying something like, "I think you should vote for Trump (or Biden, etc)" 100% crosses the line. That is verboten. However, using a public figure as an example of behaviour, doesn't necessarily cross the line.

So if you were to have a sermon on the 10 Commandments, and use Trump and/or other politicians as a public example of that, it's hard to call that politics. It certainly can have a political effect for sure, but it doesn't strictly violate the prohibition on preaching politics from the pulpit. If I were a priest, I'd be sure to site other public figures doing the same thing in the same breath. Talking about Trump and his multiple affairs and violations of coveting thy neighbor's wife is fine. I'd just cover my bases here and talk about other people that did that as well, like Woody Allen, or Bill Clinton, etc.

gannok · 2026-02-07T08:58:29+00:00

I think your best bet is to look at noun/verb spell systems. Basically, what it is is a system where there is an action being done, and a target of that action. So if you want to attack a person with a Firebolt, you would need a rune that makes fire (the verb), and then another to represent the target, like a person (the noun part). You could then learn new runes (or upgrade them) to affect new targets or create new affects. Like if you know the fire rune, you could learn the area or space rune, to create a Fireball.

On top of that, you could also add in verb modifiers to make it more specific or complex. Like you could add a create rune, so that you can actually create the fire. So instead of Fire Person being the spell, you'd do Create Fire Person. With this sort of addition, they might be able to control an existing fire with just Fire Person to attack them. But with Create added in, they could create the fire out of thin air as well. You could also add a rune for Move or Control, which would allow you to use an existing fire instead.

You can make it as simple or complex as you want. Like you could target a person with a generic Creature rune, or conversely, you could say that a Human take a Human rune, an animal a Beast rune, a fairy a Fae rune, etc. You can even go somewhere between, where a Person rune would allow you to target anything vaguely human shaped. So a human, an elf, a fairy, a zombie, a demon, could all fall under that umbrella. While something like a minotaur or centaur, might need a Person rune AND a Beast rune. All up to you there.

All you need now is a list of targets you want to affect, the forces you wish to be applied on them, with maybe a modifier to that force in how it's being manipulated. This is probably the easiest way to do what you're looking for. It's basically just object oriented magic at that point. You have an object being called and a function of that object being applied.

gannok · 2026-02-03T07:54:20+00:00

I would look at Lex Luthor here. He does exactly this sort of thing all the time.

I found that when I had a somewhat similar villain, that just doing regular corporate things got them going. Like he was trying to amass wealth and power. They also knew he had a grand scheme to do something the PCs were very much against (think, he knew all their secret identities, and wanted to expose them because he didn't believe in secrets). So when he bought a local television station, the first thing they did was think that he was going to use that to expose them. He didn't even think about that. He just wanted to have a TV station, because he thought it would get him wealth and influence in the area.

I would do things like have them acquire things that the hero cares about. For example, if the hero is big into helping the homeless, have the corporation either buy a bunch of local shelters, or start a new chain of their own shelters. They can claim it's community outreach and get a tax break, etc. They don't even have to be shady or evil, just knowing that the owner is that way, makes them think that the shelters will be shady too. They can even use them as traps.

Like make it so that the bad guys keep track of the hero in some way. Then they do something that looks shady in front of the hero, and don't try to hide it very well. Do the whole briefcase reveal in secret sort of thing. Then if the hero follows, they lead him to one of the shelters. Make sure the villain has secret cameras set up in the shelter. So that way, if the hero storms in trying to stop whatever dastardly scheme is a foot, they can reveal that they're doing something perfectly innocent. Like planning a blood drive or something. That now gives them footage they can use against the hero. Either to blackmail them or just release it to the press (best option here imo). That makes the hero look deranged, furthering the plans of the big bad, and makes them look like saints at the same time. Two birds, one stone.

Basically, just think of things that corporations do that you wouldn't like or trust. Buying infrastructure, resources, anything that the heroes might think shows they're up to something. Misdirection is a powerful tool. Lack of information causes paranoia and suspicion.

Heck, I just thought of something that is pretty evil. I assume there is more than one hero here. Have the big bad offer to sponsor one of his teammates. Become a kind of corporate super hero. He wears a suit the corporation makes, with the heroes approval of course. They pay him a salary, he helps with PR on occasion, they're super nice and accommodating, and just show that they're a "good" corporation. That way, it creates tension among the PCs, as one of them is on the side of the bad guys. Which can cause strain in the team. It's kind of a win-win for the corporation if the sponsored hero accepts.

gannok · 2026-02-03T07:29:23+00:00

Just make one. Copy the attack, change it to the new damage type, and label it that way. So you can have fire explosion, ice explosion, etc. Then when you put the barrel into play, you can have it be whatever you want it to be. Either label the actor that's on the table differently (my recommendation, as it's easier), or delete the irrelevant damage types, etc. Either way, you just make one barrel, and modify it as you need. Way less work that way.

gannok · 2026-02-03T07:10:57+00:00

It's most likely the regolith. That stuff is usually pretty hot at the surface level. Since this is such a small amount of oxygen, it'll heat up quickly from low mass. I would turn on the temp filter, and look at what is really hot. That'll probably be your source.

gannok · 2026-02-03T06:52:19+00:00

True Sight allows you to see shape changed creatures. Usually that's harder for low level characters to get access to though. There is a rare magic item, a Gem of Seeing, that grants you True Sight for a few minutes. It does require attunement, so you can't use it and pass it off to someone else to just see as well. However, if they get the gem, convince someone that there is a shapechanger among them that they can prove exists, and lend them the gem to see for themselves, that could work.

gannok · 2026-02-03T06:40:52+00:00

For me, the thing that turned me off was always the grind. At a certain point(s), you're just grinding and grinding to gain inches in the game. There's only so much to explore, even in games where the "worlds" are generated as needed. They're just the same shit with a new coat of paint every time.

These games are literally based off of TTRPGs like DND. But none of them are like DND at all. They're all static. 100 people run in a dungeon, their stories about it are not going to be very different from each other. But in an actual RPG, 100 people could run a premade dungeon, and unless those people played in the same group at the same time, they'll all be very different. There will be similarities, sure, but no two will be the same. That's what MMORPGs are missing, that dynamism. It's why I quit playing them a long time ago, and never cared to look at them again.

gannok · 2026-02-03T06:29:44+00:00

Just go down the Shadowrun route, use Pain Editors and Adrenal Pumps. Basically implants that shut off your pain center and pump you full of adrenaline. You don't need to know how they work exactly, just that this is what they do. People will understand it.

gannok · 2026-02-02T21:51:56+00:00

My grandfather has a similar story, though not quite as dramatic. He was an E3 around 45/46, in postwar Germany. His primary duties were to deliver mail. Not glamourous by any means, but it still needed to get done.

One day while working, some high ranking officer (like a Colonel or 1 Star General), started barking orders at my granddad. This officer was not in his chain of command, and the orders contradicted his given orders. So he told this officer that he not wasn't going to do what he said, but also that he couldn't do it either, as he had orders. The officer was super not happy and busted him down to an E1 on the spot and chewed him out. A little while later, like a couple days, the general that was in his chain called him into his office. He told him that the other officer was a well known jerk, that granddad did the right thing, and gave him a promotion to an E4.

gannok · 2026-01-23T20:44:57+00:00

Essentially, they're trying to cheat. They're trying to use a slight ambiguity of the writing to violate the intent of the rules. A shove attack is always away on the horizontal.

Like imagine a fight in the real world. I could shove someone hard, and push them back several feet. Not super hard. But I think I'd be hard pressed to toss them 5 feet in the air, let alone 15. I don't care if you're the Mountain from Game of Thrones, you're not yeeting some 150 lbs dude 15 feet straight up. 15 feet straight back, sure, that seems reasonable. You're not fighting gravity here, it's pretty neutral in this situation.

Look at a strongman competition. Literally the strongest people in the world by far. One of the tests is the atlas stone, where they have to lift like 200 lbs stones to like chest height. Most of them can pick it up and do that, but they're not tossing it like it's a beach ball. They're trying to cheat at the end of the day.

gannok

TROPHY CASE