Minor game stuff from around the web for commentary...

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 6:42 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I never would've pegged Spoony for a grognard. That's like finding out that Tim Allen was a drug snitch.

Also, in the second video Spoony cries about everyone wanting balance, people wanting to do point-buy instead of rolling, and everyone being a coddled baby.

schpeelah · Post by **schpeelah** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 7:13 pm

The other Spoony grognard moment I found memorable was when he joined the "complaining the Fighter has options in combat" crowd when 4e came out.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 7:30 pm

Spoony says in the review that he has ran, currently runs, and doesn't hate, 4e or Pathfinder. That's pretty mild as far as grognards go. Killer GM, sure, but half my friends love murdering players and they were in diapers during 2e's heyday.

Wanting random generation to work, and playing with inferior characters on purpose, is not necessarily the sole domain of oldbies either. I take the popularity of games like Rogue Legacy, clearing Nethack with difficult conducts, clearing Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup with bad race/class combos. If D&D had explicit breakpoints/diminishing returns on ability scores, they'd probably be down with random gen there too.

schpeelah · Post by **schpeelah** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 11:46 pm

Oh, Spoony was pretty ecstatic about 4e overall (there is one video of him fanboying over the Assasin class in particular). But fighters not just declaring "I cut 'im" every round is something he did complain about, because "Fighter was never that complicated of a guy". A 4e character too complicated because they have too many Powers, wrap your head around it.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 4:04 am

Re: The Zoe Quinn thing.

Weirdest part is that I keep seeing Anita Sarkeesian's name getting thrown around by people on both sides of the Quinn brouhaha. I mean, I can understand why Quinn's defenders would bring up Sarkeesian. I can even grok that some people would like to tar all so-called SJW media personalities with the same brush if they could. But at some point I would hope even the dimmest corners of the internet would figure out that "Tropes vs Women" was an incredibly stupid hill to die on.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 4:52 am

Whipstitch wrote:But at some point I would hope even the dimmest corners of the internet would figure out that "Tropes vs Women" was an incredibly stupid hill to die on.

Explain? Tropes vs Women was, last time I checked, an extremely shallow and manipulative series of videos. Now, granted, I never watched past the first episode because that is what you do when the first episode is awful, but assuming the quality is the same, pretending that something being poorly constructed somehow translates to it having a morally wrong message is a perfectly effective tactic. Dishonest as all Hell, but it still works.

But since I haven't really paid attention to that nonsense since the first episode came out, it was of terribly poor quality, and all the criticism of it was coming from people with a disgusting agenda rather than people who were hoping for a more competent examination of the problem, it's possible that I missed something in the meantime.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 5:17 am

I've been wanting to rant about the Zoe Quinn thing, and I'm not one to miss an excuse.

I don't know why I'm supposed to care that some woman cheated on her boyfriend. That's obviously pretty scummy, but it is also an entirely personal matter and the sort of people who would launch a crusade on that basis can be earnestly counted amongst the shittiest people on the planet.

It is hard to buy the sex for favor story, because neither Zoe Quinn nor Depression Quest have had significant positive coverage by anyone. Coworkers bang for a lot of reasons, and while that almost always has uncomfortable implications, it still happens and is not universally nefarious or sinister. As far as corruption in the industry, this is so trivial it is seriously not even worth mentioning. There is no integrity to be threatened by a sex for favors scandals - mainstream games journalism is already nothing but a bunch of metaphorical whores. A sex scandal involving the indie dev of a game no one cares or knows about is fucking nothing compared to the fact that virtually every review of a major title is actually a bought and paid for ad.

But a bunch of articles (and youtube videos) on this topic just up and disappeared because someone sent false copyright takedown requests to the hosts of their website (and in the case of the youtube videos, youtube). And a lot of that was done by someone claiming to be Zoe Quinn, something she has not bothered to deny in the least, and something other industry figures in her circle have implicitly defended her for doing (mostly by attacking people critical of such behavior).

There's really no reason to talk about who Zoe Quinn did or did not fuck and why anymore. There is nothing you can do with your vagina that is worse than attempting to censor speech critical of you by maliciously abusing copyright laws.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 11:52 am

re: Zoe Quinn

These are from a YTuber name InternetAristocrat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-51PfwI3M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKmy5OKg6lo

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:56 pm

Sometimes "dishonest as hell" tactics aren't a great idea, particularly if many people ostensibly on your side have already doubled down on every underhanded tactic in the book before the work was even released. If anything, the fact that Sarkeesian's work is hardly unique or mind-blowing contributed to the perception that many gamers are reactionary mouth breathers. Taking the nuclear option when much of society is already predisposed to dismiss your opponent out of hand is hardly smart politics.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:59 pm

I really feel like you two are talking past each other, and I can't figure out for sure what either of your actual points are supposed to be.

Communicate more clearly.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 1:15 pm

I don't have any real overarching point I was trying to make in my original post. I just thought it was kinda funny that a couple random yahoos of no concern have mentioned Sarkeesian in the same breath as Quinn. It hit me as a silly thing to do because the situations aren't equivalent and because I believe the people who flipped out over the Tropes vs Women kickstarter mostly succeeded in embarrassing themselves.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 1:27 pm

Honestly, I've never watched any of the Tropes vs. Women videos. The Kickstarter did not strike me as promising, and I haven't heard anything particularly great about it since. The response, however, was wildly out of proportion to any possible provocation.

I can't particularly support infidelity, and really hate suppression of free speech.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 1:35 pm

Whipstitch wrote:I believe the people who flipped out over the Tropes vs Women kickstarter mostly succeeded in embarrassing themselves.

For what it is worth, almost by definition, anyone who "flips out" about almost anything is limited to embarrassing themselves. As opposed to people who criticize something, who could embarrass themselves, or could provide relevant commentary.

Like, anyone who "flips out" about Roger Ebert thinking games cannot be art is embarrassing themself, because it isn't worth flipping out about. But it would still be an incredibly pathetic and dishonest attempt to make a point if you only talked about people who flipped out, and not about the people who had actual criticisms, but then implied that you were talking about all the people who disagreed with him.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 1:47 pm

Fair enough. I guess I just felt that the harassment stuff overshadowed the videos to such an extent that even bringing up Sarkeesian is probably a bad rhetorical move if you're currently criticizing a prominent female industry figure. Which, you know, is probably why I haven't seen anyone smart or even prominent actually do so. It really was an off-hand comment about some dinguses I've seen on forums. In retrospect it wasn't really worth mentioning.

For the record, my overall reaction to the Quinn thing is in alignment with what DSMatticus said. I as long ago trained by Nintendo Power to think of gaming media as one prolonged advertisement anyway.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 5:13 pm

TiaC wrote:Does anyone know anything about Howard Tayler's book XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery?

I have a copy, and like it. It's nothing groundbreaking, but is mostly solid.

One of his coauthors is a professional magician, and the book spends some time on how to present a game like a show. I think that probably works really well for him, but likely would translate well.

XDM's breakdown of "the three types of players" is as flawed as such things always are, but is actually useful in a way that e.g. GNS is not.

Was there anything in particular you wanted to know? Things have been hectic recently, so I'm not likely to do a general review immediately, but I can probably answer specific questions next time I'm home.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 3:32 am

fectin wrote:
TiaC wrote:Does anyone know anything about Howard Tayler's book XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery?
I have a copy, and like it. It's nothing groundbreaking, but is mostly solid.

One of his coauthors is a professional magician, and the book spends some time on how to present a game like a show. I think that probably works really well for him, but likely would translate well.

XDM's breakdown of "the three types of players" is as flawed as such things always are, but is actually useful in a way that e.g. GNS is not.

Was there anything in particular you wanted to know? Things have been hectic recently, so I'm not likely to do a general review immediately, but I can probably answer specific questions next time I'm home.

There are very few examples of MC advice done right. I had heard that XDM actually knew what it was talking about and I like Tayler's other work, so I wanted to know if he kept it up.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 3:37 am

Why is every personality in the tabletop RPG industry a bad person.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 4:28 am

OgreBattle wrote:Why is every personality in the tabletop RPG industry a bad person.

I don't accept your premise.

I traded some emails with Jeff Combos (Hollow Earth Expedition/Ubiquity System) and he seemed quite personable and decent.

If this is in response to Tayler, I don't see why you thought that either.

There's plenty of decent folk.

[edit: expanded]

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 6:46 am

I'd make a distinction between "person" and "personality".

I've had a couple of e-mail with Joseph Goodman, and he was nice and cool with me posting steampower stuff in Dragonmech. Likewise, one of the co-writers was pretty interested and approving of fan made stuff, even after I figured out a way to go "Fuck you" to having to carry around coal and lots of water.

Neither of them are really widely known.

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 4:45 pm

So apparently Zak hates being reminded all this happened.

Someone posted a magazine article about fawning over him on reddit, and someone asked why people didn't like him. So I told them why I didn't like him, and now the following appears at the top of the post beginning this thread, with a similar preamble atop the Mark Carroll piece:

Note: If you're here because of "stubbazubba" on Reddit, you should know stubbazubba's just angry because he is or is like one of the offended min/maxers in the comments below. You can read and judge whether I'm being unfair.

What sutbbazubba calls a "tantrum" is me enforcing the rules you have to enforce in order to have
a blog that gets thousands of comments per day: 1) Don't suffer fools who didn't read the post 2) If someone asks a question, you answer it and don't dodge it. If you don't do that, the
comments become meaningless spam.

It is worth pointing out that there is an overt lie in stubbazubba's Reddit comment: I never claim to want a " a volatile board full of insults and intense arguments" I want a smart board full of people who answer questions about their argument when asked and never ever make personal attacks. Once someone fails to answer a question, however, they're demonstrating bad faith and they become a chewtoy. People who evade questions destroy all rational debate, and you can go ahead and call them whatever.

If you agree in any way with stubbazubba, feel free to leave a comment below and I will,
as always, address it and answer any questions you have.

Now, on to the blog entry that has poor stubbazubba so exercised:

Touchy much, Zak?

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 6:14 pm

That preface seems .... mind-boggling self-unaware on his part.
Out of morbid curiosity, I took the time to read the comments section on the 2 blog posts you linked. And he does the same thing there as he does/did here.

The guy is a first-rate idiot, and deserves to be given zero credibility. Fuck that guy - how is it he still has any traction anywhere with anybody?

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 7:14 pm

ACOS wrote:The guy is a first-rate idiot, and deserves to be given zero credibility. Fuck that guy - how is it he still has any traction anywhere with anybody?

Boobs.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 9:22 pm

He didn't evade my questions, he just plain didn't answer them.

Count Arioch the 28th · Fri Oct 10, 2014 9:42 pm

codeGlaze wrote:
ACOS wrote:The guy is a first-rate idiot, and deserves to be given zero credibility. Fuck that guy - how is it he still has any traction anywhere with anybody?
Boobs.

I don't think Zak's boobs are nice enough to distract me from his points...

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 9:56 pm

ACOS wrote:That preface seems .... mind-boggling self-unaware on his part.
Out of morbid curiosity, I took the time to read the comments section on the 2 blog posts you linked. And he does the same thing there as he does/did here.

The guy is a first-rate idiot, and deserves to be given zero credibility. Fuck that guy - how is it he still has any traction anywhere with anybody?

I don't know how you couldn't imagine that. People follow and support stupid things all the time.