So what is Magical Tea Party anyway?

[JigokuBosatsu]

Kind of like how Tumblr has turned into one big "poisoning the well" fallacy?

[infected slut princess]

Looking at discussions about it, MTP seems to be applied to two different things: conflict resolutions with made-up rules, and roleplaying and make-believe itself.

Sometimes the player wants to do something not covered in the rules, so the DM will make up rules on the fly to to see if the player succeeds. This is MTP. Ok.

The DM must make decisions about the game that are not determined by rules. For example, the DM must make choices for actions of NPCs and monsters. Those decisions are based on the roles of the NPCs and monsters, rather than concretes rule. Is that Magic Tea Party?

The DM must also set up scenes, and this is in a lot of ways completely arbitrary. For example, the PCs go to meet their contact at a bar. The DM decides the bar has 14 other people in it at the time, instead of 5 peolple or 20 people or some other number. The choice to include 14 "background characters" is not something determined by rules. Is this Magic Tea Party?

[Username17]

The DM must also set up scenes, and this is in a lot of ways completely arbitrary. For example, the PCs go to meet their contact at a bar. The DM decides the bar has 14 other people in it at the time, instead of 5 peolple or 20 people or some other number. The choice to include 14 "background characters" is not something determined by rules. Is this Magic Tea Party?

Yes. That would be an example of something handled by MTP. It also shows MTP's strengths fairly well. It gives an acceptable answer to the question of how many unimportant NPCs are in the background (14 in this case) without taking up time looking up charts or rolling dice. It's fast, and in this case the output is reasonable.

You could make a system for determining how many bystanders were in a bar. If you were making a computer game, you'd have to. Because computers can't actually pull anything out of their ass and cannot engage in Magical Teaparty. And if you made a system for determining bystanders, you could make it add something to the game (determining whether the city guard was represented on the premises, or having odd rare results that could procedurally generate stories). But if your system just generates a number of meaningless background NPCs at more in-game time fucking with dice and charts than just having the MC pull a number out of his ass, your system is objectively worse than MTP.

And if any subsystem is worse than Magical Teaparty it needs to be excised from the game or fixed.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

What I'd probably want as a rule for that sort of problem is a fractallish system of procedural generation.

i.e., as the players ask questions, you roll up the answers.

[talozin]

It amuses me to see a thread where one person explains that members of the Out-Group are bad because of their sophomoric sexual insults, while a member of the In-Group is on the same page using "wanking" derogatorily.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I noticed that too but couldn't be arsed to log in.

[Kaelik]

Or where they whine that MTP is our way of saying that they aren't playing the one true way, and then their fucking board owner/whatever shows up to say X isn't really D&D/isn't really playing an RPG, where X is anything besides what he plays.

[hyzmarca]

Magical Tea Party can be really fun and awesome. For an example of people having fun playing MTP, I suggest watching Whose Line Is It Anyway? probably the British version but the American one has mostly the same people so it's okay too.

The key issue with MTP is that your conflict resolution system is literally "make up anything" so it isn't good for competitive play (and the points don't matter) and it isn't good for really long campaigns unless you have a bunch of friends who really want to write a series of epic fantasy novels together.

The challenge is making things fun and interesting and perhaps funny rather than simply have boring invincible hero win everything forever.

MTP is great fun. It really is. And its easy to do. But if you've got a group of people who approach it even half seriously and want to "win" it's totally fucked up. It doesn't work at all in that situation. Because in that situation you need rules that tell you who wins.

[downzorz]

So... aside from like three guys, is therpgsite just a giant intellectual circlejerk? I haven't seen that much back-patting over stupid ideas since the last time I put two republicans in the room together.

[talozin]

So... aside from like three guys, is therpgsite just a giant intellectual circlejerk?

It doesn't strike me as particularly intellectual. There's, mostly, a lot of chest-thumping primate behavior meant to reinforce the self-images of the people who post there. So in that sense, it's a pretty good microcosm of "the internet."

There are a couple of guys who you can learn something about their favored style of play by reading, but almost all of the more talkative ones seem to be having some sort of contest over who can be the biggest asshole for basically no reason at all. And I hang out here, so I don't think I'm being a hothouse flower about this. Maybe it's just their way of being friendly, in the same way telling someone on the Den to suck a barrel of cocks is regarded as a mild and somewhat humorous reproof, but it certainly doesn't come off that way; it comes off like a bunch of grognards* who are genuinely being dismissive assholes.

*: Disclaimer: By most post-SPI definitions of the term, I am also a grognard.

[downzorz]

So... aside from like three guys, is therpgsite just a giant intellectual circlejerk?

It doesn't strike me as particularly intellectual. There's, mostly, a lot of chest-thumping primate behavior meant to reinforce the self-images of the people who post there.

I meant "intellectual" as "having to do with ideas, as opposed to a literal group of people sitting in a circle and masturbating."

[Cheiromancer]

*: Disclaimer: By most post-SPI definitions of the term, I am also a grognard.

post-SPI? I don't recognize the acronym.

[AndreiChekov]

So I noticed somewhere in this thread a mention of kaelik pissing people off that therpg with a cleric archer thing. I dug around for it, but I can't find it. Does anyone have a link to it?

[nockermensch]

So I noticed somewhere in this thread a mention of kaelik pissing people off that therpg with a cleric archer thing. I dug around for it, but I can't find it. Does anyone have a link to it?

Would this be the time somebody said they would actually punch a player that dared to play a cleric that outshone a fighter in combat? I read something about this here, a while ago.

[AndreiChekov]

So I noticed somewhere in this thread a mention of kaelik pissing people off that therpg with a cleric archer thing. I dug around for it, but I can't find it. Does anyone have a link to it?

Would this be the time somebody said they would actually punch a player that dared to play a cleric that outshone a fighter in combat? I read something about this here, a while ago.

I'm not sure. It was just a brief comment that sounded like it would be a good read. therpgsite makes for some hilarious and mind boggling stuff.

[Kaelik]

So I noticed somewhere in this thread a mention of kaelik pissing people off that therpg with a cleric archer thing. I dug around for it, but I can't find it. Does anyone have a link to it?

So yeah, that was fun. It occurs somewhere in this 400 page monstrosity of a thread.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.ph ... mon+Kaelik

Good fucking luck. But I will give my TL:DR version of the relevant parts to give you extra possible search terms.

1) They say Fighter vs Wizard balance isn't a problem for some stupid reason.
2) Frank points out that the real problem is Clerics who are better fighters and also cast spells.
3) They say that Clerics shouldn't be allowed to fight well.
4) Frank points out that Clerics of fucking Ares, the God of War, exist, and so you damn fucking well have Clerics who buff themselves and face bound.
5) They claim that it is impossible to make a Cleric better than a Fighter at combat.
6) I trot out a Cleric Archer I once played who worships Boccob (but mechanically, could just as easily worship Vecna) and describe what he does:
a) DMM Persist a bunch of spells.
b) Including but not limited to, Draconic Polymorph into an Arrow Demon.
c) Fire, at level 13, 20 arrows at approximately +28 to hit for 3d6+27 damage. Do this all day because Persist Spell, and still have spells left over to cast Commune and True Seeing and Banishment and other kickass shit.
7) They claim this character is not legal.
8) I show them it is.
9) They throw a shit fit, explaining that they will punch in the face any player who dares to play a Cleric who fights well, because your job is to sit in the back and be a heal bitch or else physical violence.
10) They also whine about how they would have the Clerics god take away his spellcasting for "consorting with Demons" for casting Polymorph, because they would make up a rule that polymorphing into a Demon actually summons a Demon and gives him power over you, because fuck the player.
11) I point out that even if Polymorphing was in any way Consorting with Demons, neither Boccob nor Vecna is going to take away your powers.
12) They claim that Boccob and Vecna would never grants some of these spells, because they sound too much like Wizard spells.
13) I point out that Boccob and Vecna are gods of fucking magic, and totally grant all the spells, because fuck you.
14) They say that Clerics shouldn't be allowed to fight well.

Special later fun: I, in a different thread, point out that the MM entries played intelligently would wipe the floor with Core parties. They all call me a hypocrit because I just said this Cleric wold wipe the floor with any level appropriate monster. They are apparently incapable of understanding the concept of core vs non core sources, because I then explain to them that I said core, and Draconomicon, MMIV, Spell Compendium, and Complete Divine, those books I told them I was using for the Cleric, are not Core. They continue to make the exact same attack because they are intellectually bankrupt assholes.

For added fun, when I said a monster could beat a core party, and started arguing about it, they posted a challenge thread, but didn't say the posted the challenge thread in the thread I was in, and then they declared victory by forfeit when I didn't show up. Then when they did post about it later in the thread I was actually playing, I showed up, played a Monster, completely trapped the party, and then the guy gave up when it was clear he had lost. All the exact same assholes who had just finished claiming that my failure to show up in a thread I didn't know about proved me wrong claim that there is no way we could possibly know if the party would have lost, because the one guy gave up.

[talozin]

*: Disclaimer: By most post-SPI definitions of the term, I am also a grognard.

post-SPI? I don't recognize the acronym.

SPI stands for Simulations Publications Inc., a paleolithic wargame publisher. To the best of my knowledge, they were the first game company to refer to their hardcore customers as 'grognards', and presumably they were the only company whose hardcore customers would all immediately understand the reference. The use of it to describe AD&D deadenders is a more recent adaptation -- an AD&D grognard is essentially someone who was into D&D when "grognard" was a term used to describe oldschool tabletop wargamers.

[fectin]

That thread is also the genesis of Mistborn's idiosyncratic insults.

It's also the root of TGD's last major flamewar, where GC posted huge walls of banal images to irritate everyone, and Zherog spoilered them, because his kung fu is best.

[shadzar]

MTP is what happens when D&D leaves the WotC printers, PF leaves Paizo, etc and gets into the hands of people that actually play their own way rather than live by the same ideas the designers had. in essence it is playing ANY game itself that was made by someone else. so in a sense MTP is what WotC and Paizo has been doing with D&D as well as anyone else post Gygax/Arenson.