Required Reading (silva keep out)

[codeGlaze]

There's also a handful of den-isms like MC instead of DM that could stand to be described. So yeah, slang, topics that have been beaten like a dead horse, and topics that summon Cthulhu might not be a bad idea.

I started that a year or two ago, out my own frustrations.

http://dndwiki.com/wiki/Canon:RPG_Terminology

wtf... I thought I had already added MC. ./facepalm

I have bad news for you: the Den dominant party has a very specific definition of what constitutes good rules based on a strong taste for D&D3e-like gamism, which is used as parameters for measuring up everything.

Apparently you haven't read the good things that get said about Munchhausen. How does your theory alter to accommodate that?

With head asplodies. O_O
Or denial.

...probably denial.

[Zaranthan]

Apparently you haven't read the good things that get said about Munchhausen. How does your theory alter to accommodate that?

It's AW, so he rolls 2d6 then rewrites reality and does whatever the fuck he wants.

[Chamomile]

That list is missing several important acronyms. SGT and MTP immediately leap to mind.

[Korwin]

The only reasonable person here is shadzar.

He cant write, you cant read? So he is agreeing with you in your mind?

[Neurosis]

I don't think that would have any particularly beneficial effect. It seems very likely to create an echo chamber.

This. Den feels a bit too much like an echo chamber anyway, most days. (With a few bat-shit crazy, distorted, brown noise echoes like Shadzar thrown in.)

[TheFlatline]

I have bad news for you: the Den dominant party has a very specific definition of what constitutes good rules based on a strong taste for D&D3e-like gamism, which is used as parameters for measuring up everything. In other words, its like Action-flick fanatics who find Citizen Kane crap cause there isnt enough car chases and boss fights. What this means is that any FAQ or article will tend to fall on the camp of "YOURE PLAYING WRONG AND ARE A STUPID HUMAN BEING !!! TONS OF GRATUITOUS SWEARING !!111!!!!.

The only reasonable person here is shadzar.

Actually, the feeling I got was that 3.x had the most wrong with it and was the most crunchy and was TEH BIGGEST for a long while and is still pretty popular so it gets the most attention.

There's only a few people who argue that SR4 style dice pools is a shitty RNG system for basing a rule set off of. Yeah, it breaks down with giant dice pools and you can still write *bad* rule sets (see the Matrix rules), but the underlying system is pretty straightforward.

Winds of Fate is also enjoyed as a good concept, but there hasn't been a consensus as to a good implementation. Yet.

Oh wait, you're saying shadzar is the only person who is reasonable? The guy who froths at the mouth at the mere mention of D&D3.x and believes that old school AD&D is the end-all be-all best game evah?

Shit I just responded to a troll.

[Neurosis]

I have bad news for you: the Den dominant party has a very specific definition of what constitutes good rules based on a strong taste for D&D3e-like gamism, which is used as parameters for measuring up everything. In other words, its like Action-flick fanatics who find Citizen Kane crap cause there isnt enough car chases and boss fights. What this means is that any FAQ or article will tend to fall on the camp of "YOURE PLAYING WRONG AND ARE A STUPID HUMAN BEING !!! TONS OF GRATUITOUS SWEARING !!111!!!!.

Silva: In Forge speak, I would say the following.

I do not believe that rules-heavy systems are inherently gamist or simulationist. Rules-lite games may or may not be inherently narrativist, I don't know, what I do know is that they don't feel like "real RPGs" to me personally, and I'm not interested in them. They're not my cup of tea, as it were. That said, I primarily GM Hero System (5E), D&D (3.5E), and Shadowrun. Much of my audience, and a good portion of myself, are primarily interested in telling and experiencing shared interactive stories (i.e. narrativism). I would describe myself, personally, as 30% Gamist, 50% Simulationist, and 20% Narrativist. Collectively, I'd describe the players I GM for as 80% Narrativist (with one individual exception who also has a strong gamist streak).

For these people that I play with, these "rules-heavy" systems scratch the "narrativist" itch in a very satisfying way. No one is trying to "win", we are playing at telling stories, and we personally find the rules and their application actually helps us to do so.

Keep in mind that what you have pejoratively labeled "action movies" can still have incredibly engaging and emotionally and thematically deep stories. Ask, and I will happily list several cinematic examples, as I am also something of a film buff.

That said, my ability to analyze rules is not limited to rules-heavy systems. I do not at all think all rules-heavy or (and I hate the pejorative connotation of this term) "trad" games have good rules. I do not think that all rules-lite games have bad rules. I think that inelegant and elegant rules and systems can exist regardless of rules weight, and I pride myself on my ability to identify and critique elegant and inelegant rules systems in any milieu, along with many others here on the den.

So in the past, if I have spoken ill of AW, I was simply expressing a personal preference. Not trying to suggest you were having wrongbadfun.

Also, um...tons of gratuitous swearing. One.

[Mistborn]

>>2014
>>responding seriously to someone useing GNS
>>ISHYGDDT

[codeGlaze]

That list is missing several important acronyms. SGT and MTP immediately leap to mind.

MTP is on there.

I'm surprised I forgot SGT, though. I'll fix that tonight.

[TiaC]

>>2014
>>responding seriously to someone useing GNS
>>ISHYGDDT

It's like talking to a child, you have to put it in terms that they understand.

[Schleiermacher]

The annoying thing is that full-blown GNS theory is demented, but the terms are attractive to use because it's useful to have vocabulary that describes what your primary priority is when evaluating a game system, viz:

- competitive balance and tactical depth
- facilitation of entertaining narratives
- consistent, verisimilar modeling of action resolution

although I suppose you could argue that this is a false trilemma.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Frank wrote a really good thing about MTP and what it's good for (The answer to which is actually not "Absolutely nothing, goodgodyall") and the reason why the prevailing wisdom around here is that MTP solutions are inferior. I don't have time to find it right now, though. I will see if I can find it when I get home from work.

[Dean]

It is possible that Mistborn already linked it. Look earlier in the thread.

Also I agree that a slang dictionary belongs in the project. I will start working on an example post. I think it will look something like

What is the Gaming Den roughly
Slang terms/Dictionary
A brief FAQ including "Why are you so mean?"
A collection of important points and statements comprising our roughly shared general beliefs about design
Then links to important and well regarded works

[Red_Rob]

Also I agree that a slang dictionary belongs in the project

Didn't we already do one of those?

[Josh_Kablack]

The annoying thing is that full-blown GNS theory is demented, but the terms are attractive to use because it's useful to have vocabulary that describes what your primary priority is when evaluating a game system.

Well it would be if GNS theory provided useful definitions of each of the three key terms. But it doesn't actually provide any differentiation and instead relies on false initial impressions to get buy-in.

[darkmaster]

Frank wrote a really good thing about MTP and what it's good for (The answer to which is actually not "Absolutely nothing, goodgodyall") and the reason why the prevailing wisdom around here is that MTP solutions are inferior. I don't have time to find it right now, though. I will see if I can find it when I get home from work.

The upshot is that MTP is inferior by nature because you're asking for people to pay you real money for your game so it had better fucking be better than sitting around closing your eyes and playing pretend because you can get that for free.

[Chamomile]

Frank wrote a really good thing about MTP and what it's good for

The gist is that MTP requires no effort to learn and costs no money to buy. Everyone is already familiar with it. So anyone who's trying to claim they are enhancing your gaming experience by giving you MTP is basically selling ice to a polar bear.

[RadiantPhoenix]

selling ice to a polar bear.

Well, with global warming...

[Chamomile]

Hm. It had not occurred to me that the phrase is going a bit out of date.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Hm. It had not occurred to me that the phrase is going a bit out of date.

Selling water to whales?

[Dean]

Radiant get back to posting hentai

Alright so the list I have right now for just the terms section is as follows, presented in roughly the order I expect new people to see them.

Suck a barrel of cocks: A generic insult employed on the Gaming Den when a generic denigration of problems in behaviour, assumptions or design is required, and the specifics should be obvious.
Example 1: The PF fighter sucks a barrel of cocks.
Example 2: Your writing sucks a barrel of cocks. Try using actual grammar, punctuation and spelling next time.
Example 3: Bruce Cordell's takes on psionics suck a barrel of cocks no matter what edition they're from.
Magical Tea Party: MTP for short. A term for describing the "make it up" advice in RPG texts when some event or action is not covered by the rules.
Mister Cavern: MC for short, Mister Cavern's a term for the gamemaster in the RPG Draci Doupe Plus. DD+ was first published in the Czech Republic during the days of the old Soviet Union. Adopted by the Gaming Den as an alternative to the Dungeon Master label.
Wish Economy: Referring to characters in Dungeons and Dragons who can have unlimited wishes and therefore only value things wishes cannot grant.
Rocket Launcher Tag: Refers to combat that is so offense heavy that the first person to attack will likely immediately win.
Padded Sumo: The opposite of Rocket Launcher Tag. Where combat is grindingly slow and each attack is a tiny drop in a massive bucket.
Paizil: A portmanteu of "Paizo" and "Fail". It is a mildly derogatory name for die hard Pathfinder fans.
Vanilla Action Hero: A character common to action movies who has no reliable access to or unilateral control of phlebtonium and has to rely on plot armor and mundane if preternatural human abilities to accomplish things. VAHs are allowed to use their plot armor to bend probability--such as being shot at by twenty bad guys and having them all miss--but can't use it to do something that's impossible to a layman's WSoD--such as surviving a harpoon to the heart. Has a lot of overlap with Dumbass Melee Fighter,
Dumb-ass melee fighter: DMF for short, refers to a character who exclusively depends on melee weaponry and lacks the capacity to handle threats that are airborne, highly mobile, or otherwise difficult/impossible to reach in hand-to-hand.
Fighters can't have nice things: Refers to the philosophy that fighters have no abilities beyond hitting people with swords, and thus cannot fly, mind-control people, leap tall buildings in a single bound
WoF/Winds of Fate: Describes a system where a player chooses their attack from a small list every round, the small list is generated randomly from a larger list.
RNG: Random number generator, like a d20 for D&D
Off the RNG: When bonuses or negatives accrue to make it so that no number a character can roll will impact their success or failure.
Tekken Juggling/Stunlocking: These are the terms used to describe when a character can attack in such a way as to prevent his opponent from ever being able to take an action.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Radiant get back to posting hentai

Here's part of "Frozen Fast": (basically SFW, but huge)

(The tavern scene is from a different chapter from the fight, but that one doesn't have a flying dragon)

EDIT: added context.

[PhoneLobster]

Phonelobsters "The DM is Not God"

I'm assuming you mean my Being A Good GM the FAQ. One of the main things it was for was to provide some simple practical "you aren't god, you don't have god like powers, so don't act like it" advice for new GMs.

I'm not going to wikki that. But if you want to do that or link to it anywhere go mad, it needs more exposure, we get all too many chumps who after losing every other argument under the sun resort to wierd combination motherhood statements/ad hominem attacks like "well clearly you don't ever change bad rules!" and so on basically directly covered in that advice among other things.

Still I don't think you'll get the agreement you think.

Hillariously we are still waiting, four years later, for FatR to man up and tell us precisely which pieces of simple "don't be a total dick" advice he vehemently hated for being "player entitlement" that was "taking away the GM's rights/fun".

In a mostly unrelated side note, I find the MC term to be wanky, parochial and just plain cliquish and think the Den should stop using it as it's pretty much pure exclusionary bullshit jargon that helps no one and nothing. GM is a simple generic term people already recognize and isn't tied specifically to D&D, and when it comes to titles within gaming groups it really shouldn't be encouraged to actively refer to ANY player by any special title outside of gimmicky board games and you should just damn well call your GM by their actual personal name.

[OgreBattle]

'DM Fellatio'

'apple stacking'

'Gygaxian fuckery'


mister cavern sounds funny and I smile whenever I read/say it. It should spread as a term for the game master.

[RadiantPhoenix]

DM Fellatio: Mister Cavern favors you personally (supposedly because you give him fellatio). Generally used in the context of things whose availability and/or power level varies tremendously depending on how much Mister Cavern is willing to go along with your shenanigans or not.

Apple Stacking: This is sort of the social currency equivalent of greyhawking. Basically, it's a common phenomenon in social currency systems where you can perform small favors that add up to very, very big favors in return, e.g.: "I give the king an apple a day for a year, then I ask for the kingdom."