The Gaming Den

Alignment does a great job of importing people's stupid and contradictory personal beliefs about morality straight into the game without giving any kind of coherent rules basis for anyone else to object. It's the ultimate in mind caulk meets safe space. Just like the Lady.

...Because we wish she were real and would go to town on dumbasses like that poster?

If the Lady were real you'd wish you were dead because that would bring along a host of awful implications. God, how horrifying.

Prak wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:21 am

Now, maybe the generals aren't meeting for a pint at the Bucket of Blood.

Off topic, but fun trivia. Back in the 60s, Uptown in Chicago had a lot of bars owned by Native Americans. One was indeed named, “Bucket of Blood.” Another was named, “The War Bonnet.” I was told this by a Native American tavern owner, whose establishment I use to frequent.

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 20, 2021 4:33 pm

If the Lady were real you'd wish you were dead because that would bring along a host of awful implications. God, how horrifying.

Joke's on you! I already do

I don't think the joke's on me with that one...

Rereading old Planescape books and snarky reviews thereof makes me realize how much my teenage self loved anything that had Tony DiTerlizzi's art. I was a huge Planescape fanboy and tried to run it way more than my friends wanted me to. I got way madder than I should have at 3e going way out of its way to make Tieflings and Githzerai unplayable. (I mean, everyone should be kind of mad about intentionally bad rules like Level Adjustment but not as spittle-flickingly sperg-raged as I was back in 2001.)

Planescape in the actual books is not nearly as cool as it was in my head.

I even liked Changeling, which... I don't wanna talk about it. It really was just about DiTerlizzi.

...did anyone here every review Faction War? Because Uncaged is mostly just backstory for Faction War and goddamn Faction War sucks.

As a setting Planescape is a wonder. Maybe it could do without moral absolutism, but the logistics of travel between planes/dimensions such as "I have to bargain with the Baatezu guards for safe passage to the first layer of Hell to rescue an ally" and "I'm in Sigil, there's a Blue Slaad playing poker with a high level Modron, a fight might break out if either wins" and pretty much every D&D world is involved in its workings because, quite literally, there's trillions or more of souls from every possible Prime world coming and going.

The local physics rules, the NPC statblocks, the plothooks... a bit lacking.

WalkTheDin0saur wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 04, 2021 7:04 am

spittle-flickingly sperg-raged

Your larger point is fine and all (and I'm always down to see more OSSRs) but I'd request you not use terms like "sperg;" ableism really shouldn't have a place here.

As an autistic individual I'm not offended.
There are worse labels an autist can describe theirself by.

JonSetanta wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:07 am

As an autistic individual I'm not offended.
There are worse labels an autist can describe theirself by.

We literally had an autistic poster quit the forum because of this and multiple other people agreed with that poster.

You don't actually have to step in and try to undermine an attempt to express a reasonable request that we know would make the forum better for several posters.

JonSetanta wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:07 am

As an autistic individual I'm not offended.
There are worse labels an autist can describe theirself by.

As another autistic individual I am offended though? "There are worse things than X" doesn't mean "X is not bad."

Seconding the above two posts.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the term, either (for a lot of reasons.... like "Aspergers is the term that a nazi came up with for 'useful' autistic people"), but I hadn't said anything because I expected a reaction like Jon's to be... more representative of the Den attitude.

I'm really glad to see that it's the minority opinion

And here I was thinking all the activity was about this review...

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 05, 2021 3:13 pm

And here I was thinking all the activity was about this review...

Oh, fuck off. You didn’t care when people were trying to determine what the fuck a Reddit post complaining about mixed alignment parties had to do with the Lady of Pain, which has nothing to do with the review either. Hell, you literally contributed to that discussion.

Prak wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 05, 2021 10:32 am

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the term, either (for a lot of reasons.... like "Aspergers is the term that a nazi came up with for 'useful' autistic people"), but I hadn't said anything because I expected a reaction like Jon's to be... more representative of the Den attitude.

I'm really glad to see that it's the minority opinion

I didn't state I'm a fan of the term. I wrote that it doesn't offend me, but what I should have added was that I don't use the term.

I didn't say you were. Just that I expected "who cares" and "I'm autistic, and I don't care" to be the general responses if I did say something

I'm on the spectrum myself, if it makes a difference. *shrug*

Re: Alignment
What I determined for myself after play "Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous" videogame and engaging in discussions of it is this: people who claim that they want to play Evil characters tend to be incredibly squeamish about actually being evil and cruel. People want to be nice and supportive of their party members while inwardly cackling that they are only being the paragon of morality to get power and respect. Which is indistinguishable from the way that Good people get power and respect.

But WotR lets you mock a cleric who's grieving for his missing brother and belittle and bully a girl who's trying to bring the best in others, and people don't want to be that kind of evil.

I think it's unsurprising that very few people's villain fantasies involve that kind of petty evil. If you're inclined to be a Biff Tannen or a Dolores Umbridge, you can just do it, you don't need an elaborate fantasy game.

angelfromanotherpin wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 14, 2021 2:40 pm

I think it's unsurprising that very few people's villain fantasies involve that kind of petty evil. If you're inclined to be a Biff Tannen or a Dolores Umbridge, you can just do it, you don't need an elaborate fantasy game.

I'm not just talking about pettiness, but direct personal cruelty. People might be fine signing off a deal with Cheliax, but give them a whip and suddenly "eww I don't want the kind of evil that whips slaves".

Longes2 wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 14, 2021 2:48 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 14, 2021 2:40 pm

I think it's unsurprising that very few people's villain fantasies involve that kind of petty evil. If you're inclined to be a Biff Tannen or a Dolores Umbridge, you can just do it, you don't need an elaborate fantasy game.

I'm not just talking about pettiness, but direct personal cruelty. People might be fine signing off a deal with Cheliax, but give them a whip and suddenly "eww I don't want the kind of evil that whips slaves".

Umbridge totally does torture children so "direct personal cruelty" is covered under angel's definition. I think by petty evil he means not the larger than life variety.

In general, trying to cover edgy antiheroes (some people will argue these go under Neutral but they are sometimes put under Evil. I'd argue they go under "whichever the player writes on their character sheet."), Saturday morning cartoon villains, comic book villains, and serial killers with the same definition of evil is going to be shallow at best, and it only gets more confusing when there are characters who are evil in the sense of channeling evil power but aren't actually morally evil even in the incoherent D&D definition of the term (case in point: neutral clerics of evil deities). I've played evil characters who are edgelords who talk about being evil but don't do anything worse than the good characters and I've played evil characters who are brain eating slavers who happen to share an enemy with the good (or even just "less evil") characters, who they consider to be their slaves. I think the solution is as simple as "don't worry about it unless it's actually bothering people at the table" and just have the players and GM talk it out if it's actually bothering people. But IMX people actually don't get into long debates as to the nature of D&D evil outside of forum posts.

I still have literally zero idea what that reddit post on alignment had to do with the Lady of Pain.

Longes2 wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 14, 2021 1:43 pm

But WotR lets you mock a cleric who's grieving for his missing brother and belittle and bully a girl who's trying to bring the best in others, and people don't want to be that kind of evil.

You mean my party doesn't want to be that kind of evil. I'm really gonna have to start chopping fools up if I'm gonna be Chaotic evil instead of some kind of pansy Lawful evil, and finding the opportunity to do that is hard unless I go out of my way to just torture random civilians. Which... I am not above doing if we weren't playing 5e and 5 guards of any level could probably waste me. I'm more of an asshole to my own party than other people! This is not what I had in mind! I'm accidentally a prick more often than on purpose!
I've gotta up my game, I'm pretty sure at least half the party is evil or neutral...

I tend to play characters who would be considered evil in a game with alignment, but that just ends up meaning "as per being Good, except you don't think twice if your most practical option to stop the greater evil is to commit atrocities". Because I'm more interested in playing ruthless extremists than I am in playing petty sadists or gormless thugs, and I have an easier time getting into a headspace where the character being played still thinks they are the hero.