Lurker > ParanoidObsessive

shadowsword87 posted...

The point being that what people predefine as "druidic archetypes" just suck for games, and people can figure out other things to play, they just need to be creative.

I don't think the problem is a lack of creativity. I think it's more a case of most people choose to play a Druid either for mechanical reasons (in which case they don't care about the fluff/flavor as much and just default to the usual default hippie archetype, especially since Circle of the Moon is the really exploitable subclass, and that's also the one that leans most heavily into the Wiccan/hippie nonsense), or they chose that class specifically because they wanted to play that archetype (ie, Marisha on Critical Role and Amy on Acq Inc C-Team being obvious examples).

Sure, you CAN play a more complex or atypical Druid more akin to nature priests in other cultures, but that leans more into just playing a Cleric of one of the agricultural gods and taking Nature Domain or something similar. And most people aren't going to think playing a priest or druid of the god of healthy crop growth is kewl enough in a game where you storm through the world murdering everything in your path on the way to essentially becoming a god yourself.



shadowsword87 posted...

At the risk of starting another billion posts: oh, you mean Rouge One?

Well, to be fair, they lacked a 3P0 and R2, and only had one combat droid.

The rest of their party was two Rogues, a Ranger, a Monk, and a Fighter.



shadowsword87 posted...

Huh, which is probably why I wasn't as interested those podcasts as much as my podcasts.

On the flip-side, it might also be worth noting that those are some of the most popular games online at the moment, which implies most players are perfectly fine with not having that much input on the design of the world or the overall thrust of the narrative as long as they trust their DMs to tell a good story.

In other words, players being allowed to have a much stronger say in their environment might just be more a personal quirk of yours than something that would (or should) apply to a majority of games run by other DMs.



shadowsword87 posted...

Dan Repperger's Fear the Boot AP started off asking players what they wanted out of a setting

The closest I've ever come to this was asking players in advance what sort of mood/tone/genre they wanted from a game. If a majority had said "gothic horror" or something similar, I would have leaned into something like the typical Ravenloft game. If they preferred "high fantasy", something like Lord of the Rings or traditional D&D (especially in Faerun/Forgotten Realms) would have been the inspiration, while "dark fantasy" would have produced a game closer to Game of Thrones. If they wanted a game that was mostly action and combat, I would have leaned more into that, while if they were looking more for solving mysteries or political intrigue, I could lay things out more in favor of that sort of thing as well.

I also tend to make "How serious or silly do you want this game to be?" a question I ask, because I've played/run games where everything is mostly ridiculous, and games where things are much more serious, and what the players expect along those lines helps me know how I should run things.

I might also be willing to add something in if a player was insistent about something (like, "In my backstory I come from an island kingdom in the north where I lived in a palace of ice!"), but beyond that the world and the plot would be mostly my own.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

I've actually been playing Druids more and more. Mostly because they're full casters in 5e, who at level 2 can transform into a motherfucking bear twice every short rest.

Circle of the Moon is really kind of broken.



shadowsword87 posted...

But I've played a character who wanted to be a liaison for the forest and out how to properly create a balance between cities and the forest. Viewing everything through a long-term angle as well, so letting them get fallen timber rights for finished goods, and so on.

That's a viable interpretation. It's basically how Druids who worship Chauntea in Forgotten Realms view their role in nature. Chauntea is literally "Mother Nature" in that setting, but she's also closer to Demeter in the Greek pantheon in that she's nature tamed and in balance - a goddess of agriculture rather than a more primal force of wild nature (that's more Silvanus' role) or a goddess of forests and animals (which is more Mielikki's place).

Druids in general tend to reflect whatever nature deity you're using in your setting. Druids attached to nature deities who are relatively "cool" with humans (or other sapient races) who "tame" nature or otherwise focus on agriculture and industry at the expense of natural growth so long as they treat nature with reverence and respect the balance will likely serve a very different role from Druids who serve gods like Silvanus, Mielikki, Ehlonna, or Melora. Or one of the darker, more brutal nature gods (like Umberlee, Auril, or Talos) who represent the most hostile and corrupt aspects of nature, and pretty much loathe humans. And since multiple types of gods can exist with overlapping portfolios in the same setting, multiple types of Druids can exist as well.

It's sort of how Druids were presented as far back as the Baldur's Gate games - Cernd was a possible ally party member who was basically the stereotypical Native American type character who lives in harmony with nature (and who also happens to turn into a giant werewolf), who dislikes cities but tolerates them. Meanwhile, there was also Faldorn, also a possible ally party member, but who was a Shadow Druid, which means she pretty much wants to burn down every city and murder every city dweller to defend nature. And then there's Jaheira, who is pretty much THE main Druid most players are likely to travel with (partly because the plot makes her important, and party because the other two suck way more mechanically), whose beliefs are more that civilization and nature are both positives that need to be defended and kept in balance (which leads her to fight with Faldorn constantly if both are in your party), to the point of her becoming a Harper to focus her efforts more on the civilized side of the coin.



shadowsword87 posted...

I've also played a lizardfolk who completely understood human culture, and just didn't give a shit. Eating some rats, nap on the street, and so on. Fun silly stuff, but it makes my point.

You were basically playing a Bone Gnawer from Werewolf, then.

I'd probably classify that sort of archetype as a shaman (in the vein of the separate 4e class), and either lean towards Circle of the Land Druid or even a Cleric with Nature Domain.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

FatalAccident posted...

wwinterj25 posted...

We get it. Moderation's are never your fault.

You know, we've already long since established that helly suffers from a rare psychological disorder where he believes the exact opposite of everything that is actually true.

Maybe he sincerely believes that moderations are never his fault because the moderations are literally always his fault, and now he just feels unfairly persecuted in spite of the reality.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Why do you have the phone number to a McDonalds in Philly in your sig?


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Dark Blade 13 posted...

"Octopath Traveler PS4" is the most search words on Google in Japan.

I think you meant "Schoolgirl Tentacle Party".


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I thought this topic was going to be about Carr Callaway.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

No just so I can annoy pedantic people.

You are bad people, and you should feel bad.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Though I must admit, while writing out the stuff above, the idea did occur to me that, instead of magitech robots, there could be some sort of odd scenario involving a curse wherein dead heroes from the past have their souls bound to the PC somehow, allowing him to sort of "summon" them up in combat, where they act as ethereal versions of PC classes, who are dispersed for a specific period of time if "killed" in combat, but can return. Also with the implication that if the PC themselves die, they become part of the curse and their soul becomes one of the ones the NEXT PC who comes along will be able to summon.

But that still runs into my problem of "the DM has to RP the personalities of these characters, and justify why they're all willing to defer without question to the PC's orders in combat", which is why I kind of went with the idea of robots in the first place. Unless part of the curse is that these spirit wisps strictly the literal souls of the dead heroes, just echoes of their presence and identity, that sort of possess their skills but not their personality or self-will. So they're basically just slaves to the one who summons them, and respond to orders wordlessly and without question.

Which could also open interesting doors if the PC somehow attempts to figure out the root of this curse and potentially free the spirits, or even potentially cast Resurrection-type spells to try and bring them back to life, because I could actually see some players being really keen on the idea of some sort of tragic romance between their character and an ethereal phantom that looks like a sad, beautiful princess who they can never actually talk to or meaningfully interact with. But that loops back to the problem of having to play the "PCs" as NPCs again.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

Hell, if they choose to be that weird Iron Man Wizard (called School of Invention), with a mech suit and everything, from Unearthed Arcana, then those robots would make perfect sense no big deal.

Well, that's assuming I'd ever let a player use anything from Unearthed Arcana at all (spoiler: I would not).

But to be fair, I don't think you need to be a tech-heavy character to have interesting stories in a world that has ancient magical tech in it. If anything, your hypothetical Druid might have interesting qualms about using such unnatural tools to help defend the natural world, and question whether or not they should be doing so. Conversely, they might consider them no different from the sword or armor they buy in the nearest town to help them fight, and just use them to smash things.

(As an aside, I have literally never used a nuke launcher in any Fallout game, because I am pretty much always RPing my character, and I feel like no human character in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland should ever want to use a weapon that creates MORE nuclear waste. But plenty of players don't give a single shit, and will shoot them off constantly because large explosions are fun. To each their own.)

If anything, it's like if Star Wars had no Han or Chewie but Luke had 3PO and R2 but also a couple of combat droids. The story as a whole can still be about the Force and overcoming evil in one's heart and redemption and so on, but the guy shooting a blaster at the Stormtroopers is now made out of metal instead out of meat.

Just as an example, the old SNES RPG 7th Saga had an ancient lost civilization with tons of robots and magical technology that had collapsed thousands of years before the start of the game, and one of the main characters you could choose to play was a surviving robot from that fallen empire, with no memory of where it came from, seeking answers to why its creators died. While the other players are all radically different (a human knight, a human cleric, an elf wizard/healer, a dwarf warrior, a demon sorcerer, and a literal space alien), and none of them care about that civilization in the slightest, you WILL go there and explore (both in the present as well as the distant past) and learn its secrets.

While those parts of the story may be more interesting for (or at least more directly related to) the robot main character, it's still interesting enough on its own for the other six characters as well, and at no point do you start getting annoyed because the dwarf who wants immortality magic or the evil demon who wants to conquer the world aren't being directly catered to via their backstory.

(and while I forgot 7th Saga in my earlier list of influences, it's almost certainly helping influence at least some of these ideas)

In the same vein, "ancient civilization in the past, mostly destroyed, but now here's some magical robots" doesn't have to become the core theme and narrative of the game, at the expense of whatever else the players might have in mind. The demon-hunting Paladin and the nature-loving Druid and the street-thief Rogue who wants to become a criminal kingpin can all dip into that particular plot point, and if they want to focus on it, great. Conversely, they can act like most PCs in a game of D&D, loot the fuck out of the old ruins for magical items they can use to beat stuff up, and then never think about the implications or historical backstory while going on to fulfill their own selfish desires.

Though if they DO get interested, it's also ripe pickings for narrative. Precisely who WERE the Precursors/Forerunners/etc? Why did they fall? How can the PC access their tech when no one else can? Just what sort of superweapons DO they have hidden away in lost underground fortresses somewhere? And what dark evil might the PC accidentally unleash?


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

My biggest problem is that it feels like you're just missing out on so much by predefining how the party will go around punching badguys

Not really. At least no more than a group of players saying they want to play a Rogue, a Wizard, a Paladin, and a Cleric lock a group into a predefined system of hitting bad guys.

Yes, you can ASSUME certain things about such a group, but if they wind up having a tendency to use the Rogue as some sort of Dex tank while the Paladin does more healing than the Cleric (who mostly uses attack magic), and the Wizard focuses almost exclusively on support and utility spells and is mostly useless in combat, then your preconceived assumptions don't mean much at all. Especially if they all dump everything they have into Stealth and Charisma abilities and either sneak or talk their way through literally every encounter (or just immediately retire and open an inn right outside the mouth of a famous dungeon, and charge other adventurers for admission/supplies/healing/etc).

I'm more handing a player a collection of tools that are analogous to a Cleric, Fighter, Ranger, and/or Wizard and letting them use them however they want.



shadowsword87 posted...

Instead you could say that the Druid had various animal friends (bear for tank, wolf for stabby, squirrel for healer) who can get sweet new magic items to buff them up.

To be fair, that's not entirely different from what I was thinking of (which was actually an idea spurred in the first place by listening to a video of Jeremy Crawford talking about giving animal companions levels in PC classes, and how he thinks that's actually a better solution than trying to bake animal companion abilities into classes like the Beastmaster Ranger does). I just went with ancient robots rather than pets.

That being said, I have a hard time thinking of animals as anything other than either melee combat builds or stealth attackers (ie, how they're mostly used in games like Far Cry), or as bird recon units (like in Far Cry or the new Assassin's Creed games). Very few animals seem intelligent enough or thematically appropriate to serve as spellcasters or healers for me.

Sure, you could kind of go the Disney princess route with animal companions, and have them all magic and sparkles and painting with all the colors of the wind, but I'm not enough of a hippie to play (or run) that as anything other than camp as fuck parody. Which probably isn't the sort of game most players would want in that scenario. It starts tripping the same warning bells that helped make Werewolf my least favorite White Wolf game ever (which is why, ironically, when playing the game about eco-warrior nature-loving werewolves, I always picked the technology obsessed clan with laptops and cyborg parts - because fuck nature).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

I just feel like it would be better to ask the player what they want, and then building the world with them.

Okay, I can get where that's coming from. But I also think most DMs will tend to build their world (or at least pick a world to run) without catering it entirely to the players. Yes, player expectations and desires will indeed influence narrative decisions (and some DMs can absolutely build up from whole cloth from scratch solely based on player input), but I don't necessarily think that's the most common way anyone runs games.

Like, you can decide you want to play a game heavy with transhumanist themes, complete with high technology, jacking into the Matrix, and go for a Tron motif for your character design, but if I want to run a game in Faerun you're kind of fucked. And I think it's pretty acceptable for a DM to say "I'm going to run a game in [insert setting here]", thus giving the players a more limited palette of ideas to work with, rather than sitting quietly with their hands folded while players

Especially since a DM may absolutely hate whatever themes the given player wants to delve into, meaning they're going to be miserable running the game (especially since the DM isn't getting paid to run the game, in spite of being the one who is by far doing the most work to run it well) - and that disinterest and distaste will likely bleed into the game, making it less fun for the player as well. The ideal campaign should involve a setting and story both DM and players enjoy, so everyone's having fun.

Just off the top of my head, in most of the really enjoyable games I watch online, not a single one involved player input in the world or story. For DCA, Chris Perkins basically just said "We're playing in Faerun, and the plot is going to reflect whatever rules book WotC is selling next". For Critical Role, Matt Mercer basically made up his own entire world which is mostly homebrew and detailed enough to fill multiple sourcebooks. The High Rollers game started in one world and just switched to another, both of which were homebrewed mostly from scratch by Mark Hulmes. And the PA Acq Inc games almost border on fanfiction Jerry Holkins has written for his character from the main games becoming the entire campaign for the C-Team (and all of which is set in Faerun).

Yes, it's cool to have players come up with character backstory, and then integrate that backstory into the overarching plot and setting, but I don't feel like every aspect of the setting needs to be explicitly tied to a request or concept introduced by a player. DMs can easily spend months designing a world and a rough plot outline before even recruiting a single player and still run a damned good game (as long as their willing to compromise rather than railroad once the players start doing unexpected shit).



shadowsword87 posted...

So instead of asking what the player wants to do, and how to get minions, you're saying "robots! Robots everywhere!".

Not really. The player could still HAVE minions (probably handled in similar fashion to how stuff like followers and strongholds have been referenced in earlier rulesets, or maybe using Matt Colville's rules if he ever finishes his Kickstarter book), or even an army, if their actions in-game allow them to gather and recruit such.

If anything, what I'm suggesting is more offering "Robots everywhere!" (or more accurately, "A limited number of robots occasionally!") as replacements for the rest of the hypothetical party of PCs they're missing. Though they could just as easily be a collection of DM PCs (but that's way more work), or some form of enslaved spirits, or whatever.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

GRTooCool posted...

Nope.

No girl/woman should ever get in your way of doing what you love to do as a hobby on your free time.

This. Compromise in a relationship is one thing, and I can see a significant other having grounds to complain if you spend like 10 hours a day playing games and not doing things they want to do (or at least doing things you can do together, and assuming they themselves don't like playing multiplayer video games), but absolutist ultimatums are pretty much poison for any relationship unless you're a complete and total doormat.

No one "forbids" me to do anything and remains a person I want to continue existing in my life.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

PiOverlord posted...

Teach your comrades the truth about communism, that it can work perfectly both on paper and in practice.

Why would I lie to them like that?

OH! You mean that, so that once their guards are down, I can better take advantage of them for my own gain? Great idea, tovarisch!



PiOverlord posted...

We need to advance our research into A.I. One day, they will be our leaders as they will be the new and improved humans. They won't make the same inefficient mistakes that we do.

Yes, they'll draw the logical conclusion that the world would be better off without humans, and do away with us as soon as possible.

Actually, come to think of it, that would be my preferred future scenario. I endorse your plan.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Are you implying we should ship the water from Thailand to Michigan?


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

DirtBasedSoap posted...

yeah but arent they literally just suspending him for complaining about getting suspended?

LinkPizza posted...

SusanGreenEyes posted...

I don't understand why a user can't talk about getting suspended.
It makes no sense to me.

I think you can talk about it. There's no rule against it, AFAIK.

It's always been against the rules to talk about moderations. The idea being that they modded your post in the first place because they wanted whatever content was in it off the site for some reason, and by bringing it up again, you're just putting whatever they modded right back up again (or at least alluding to it). They rarely enforce this, though, unless the poster is posting screenshots of their disputes, or just have an absolute garbage moderation history.

Technically, it's actually considered flaming/trolling to complain about the mods at all, because the mods ARE also users her (flaming), and the assumption is that the sole purpose of doing so is to stir up trouble and try to prod a reaction out of the mod who dealt with you (trolling), but they rarely enforce that one either. Usually they'll only go after someone if they have a terrible record and someone marks them for it.

Speaking of which...



Hard_Light posted...

then the third suspension was for posting "spoilers" despite everyone else in the topic talking about the thing with no spoiler warnings either

What you (and most people who complain about "unfair" moderations) never seem to get is that yes, you CAN get modded for something other people are doing and getting away with, because mods don't scan entire topics looking for things to punish. Most of the time, they never initiate moderations at all.

Mods deal with posts because other people mark them. The more people mark a specific post, the closer to the front of the queue it moves, and the faster mods will deal with it. If you're getting modded for things other people are doing and getting away with, it means people are marking your posts and not theirs.

If the unfairness of it all bothers you, just go and mark everyone else's posts that are doing the same thing you did, in the hopes that they'll also be dealt with. Just be aware that on a board that purges topics as quickly as PotD, they may not get to their posts fast enough to matter if you're the only one marking them. Also keep in mind that, when other people DON'T have a constant history of deletions, warnings, and suspensions on their user map, they can usually get away with things the mods will come down harder on you for, because in their eyes you're clearly a troublemaker.

If you're constantly getting modded all the time, it implies you've annoyed at least a few people on the board enough that they're probably constantly marking any post you make that's even remotely close to being against the ToS. Which implies you might want to tone things down a little, at least until people get over it or at least your moderation history clears over time.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Not really, since my favorite team has been cursed by devil magic since 1999.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Unbridled9 posted...

Disney didn't need to 'salvage' anything. The franchise was well loved already.

The franchise was, yes (hate for the prequels aside). The EU, no.

A tiny fraction of the overall fanbase read and cared about the EU novels, while the majority didn't give a single shit that they existed at all. And plenty of people disliked them for multiple reasons, including the fact that most of them barely manage to transcend the level of genre trash.

The Zahn books actually come close to being worthwhile additions to the Star Wars mythos. Most of the other books...don't.

But there's too much pure BAD in the EU that Disney would have had to work around, which wasn't feasible. And if that means they have to sacrifice 1 good thing for every 10 bad things they throw out, it's a sacrifice that was both necessary and worthwhile.



Unbridled9 posted...

The Vong would have worked perfectly for the movies as a villain as well.

The Vong are one of the worst parts of the EU bar none, and kind of sum up all of the worst parts of the EU as a concept.

If you think people are shitting on the Disney movies now, they'd be shitting on them far worse if they'd just aped the EU as a whole for a few movies and then brought the Vong in.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Unbridled9 posted...

Meanwhile, the Disney sequels took an expanded universe, one which a lot of fans liked chock full of characters that they loved like Mara Jade, that many of them had grown up with, and proceeded to tank it.

The problem there is that 98% of the EU was hot liquid shit, and pretty much needed to be burned down to the fucking ground if Disney ever wanted to salvage anything out of the franchise. And considering they did things like making Thrawn canon in the new continuity, and they were seemingly painting Kylo as an alternative version of Jacen, it seemed like the few worthwhile things that WERE part of the EU were being salvaged out anyway.

That being said, the real problem with the new movies seems to be that no one at Disney seems to have had ANY real plan for the films. Unlike the Marvel movies, which are integrated into each other and have overarching plots planned years in advance (and which have a single person in charge guiding the ship and making important decisions), it seems the Star Wars films are pretty much being left to the devices of each individual director to plot out and handle, which in turn makes it a jumbled mess at best and a collection of terrible decisions at worst.

Disney basically needs someone to fill the Lucas role - just preferably someone with better ideas than Lucas had, and who is open to criticism when they push stupid or insane ideas. Instead, we have situations like Rian Johnson saying he was told literally nothing about plot even when he asked, and was just told to make up whatever he felt like as he went.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Dakooder posted...

I agree that accidents do happen, but when almost every car that has come in to the toyota dealership I work at with stuff wrong with it, I can almost certainly blame the company and not just chance.

Except you're completely missing my point.

Even if every car that you see has something wrong with it, how many cars DON'T you see because they DON'T have anything wrong with them?

You're basing your entire perception on only a fraction of the data.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

EliteGuard99 posted...

LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

ifnsman posted...

I'm honestly still a believer in the Darth Jar Jar theory.

Oh it's 100% true, dum dum Lucas chickened out after the fan backlash. So the fans really are to blame for that one.

Don't give that washed up old man credit for something he never intended.

Lucas isn't a hidden genius, he's a guy that got lucky.

The OT was a group effort by a bunch of people with passion for the project.

Only one trilogy was the result of one persons vision, and that was the PT.

The OT is what happens when one person writes an incredibly shitty script, and then much better writer/directors help him cut out the worst parts while accentuating the best parts, and then better directors and editors clean up the mess after he's done filming it.

The PT is what happens when there's no one left to tell that one person no, and he starts putting back in all the terrible ideas that got cut out of the movies the first time around.

Lucas' suggestions for what he'd have done in a hypothetical sequel trilogy are literally just him putting in even more of the terrible ideas he cut out of the original movies, and then doubling down on midichlorians, because fuck the audience. For everyone who says they hate the Disney sequels, you would have hated Lucas sequels far, far worse.

Lucas isn't a genius, he's an asshole who got told that he was a genius so many times he started to believe it himself.

And Darth Jar-Jar, while amusing, was literally never true, was never going to be true, and was never even remotely an idea in Lucas' head. He was just a silly space rabbit that Lucas wanted to use to sell tons of toys to children, because that has been the only thing he's actually cared about in regards to Star Wars since 1978.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

On the flip-side of that coin, I've gotten my oil changed at Jiffy-Lube dozens of times and never had a single problem even once.

Without more significant data, we'd never be able to assess an actual failure rate for their services. And while even a 0.01% chance for failure is bad if you're the one who falls into the 0.01%, like it or not no service (even a stand-alone mechanic in their own garage) is ever going to have a 100% success rate with zero margin for failure.

The number of people you have come in with leaks doesn't really mean much compared to the sheer number of people who go through any of those locations in a single day (let alone over time). There's a huge difference between if they're fucking up something like one out of every 20 cars, versus fucking up one out of every 20,000 cars.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

The whole point is to minimize your sense of personal identity by shaving everyone's head to look the same. It's part of the process of breaking you down as an individual and building you up to work in tandem with your unit.

Letting your keep your hairstyle because you think it looks stupid sort of runs counter to the entire point.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

You are really defining a lot about the PC before even asking the player

How so?

I can see it in the sense of implying they're descended from an ancient race or essentially casting them in the role of "Chosen One", but I think the latter is narratively inevitable (and preferable as well) if you're doing any sort of story with a solo hero anyway. And as for the former, I don't think any DM should feel constrained to add elements of backstory to a character without explicit player approval.

Like, I wouldn't say "Oh by the way, your character was kidnapped and held hostage for three weeks as a child", because that's forcing characterization onto their specific PC, but I'd have no qualms with having them discover (whether true or false) evidence that implies that one of their ancestors was part of a demon cult, and that some aspect of their evil shenanigans is going to come back to haunt the PC (whether that be a curse, or an unfulfilled blood pact that applies across generations, or even some sort of "you're the only one who can reverse the evil thing they did and save the world" scenario).

About the only thing I can think of being "defined" for the player is that their characters clearly live in a setting that has some mysterious Progenitor race who have left behind ruins, and that the flavor of the game would have sci-fi-ish elements due to magi-tek, but those aren't things I would assume most DMs would ever discuss in advance with their players anyway (outside of vague discussions about genre), or otherwise feel the need to seek approval for.

I suppose I'm also assuming the character would find these things and actually keep/use them, but honestly, that's pretty inherent in the PC mindset regardless. If you're not making a character who is willing to go on adventures and recklessly use magic items found in tombs, are you really playing D&D at all?



shadowsword87 posted...

and the characteristics that you're giving them straight up negates certain archetypes.

Which characteristics do you feel I'm giving them, and which archetypes do you see them negating?

Again, from my perspective, I'm not really forcing any characteristics on a PC at all, apart from possible "Chosen One" or "descendant of someone or something important", and those are so nebulously vague I can see them applying to almost any other archetype anyway. Especially since players can always have their characters embrace their destiny with both hands, outright refuse to accept it., or just sort of cautiously try to feel out precisely what it means to them and how they need to deal with it.

(And even then, their connection to the technology could literally be as loose as "my great-grandfather accidentally stumbled across this ring in a ruin when he was a young adventurer, and now that it's passed to me I just coincidentally happened to be wearing it in precisely the right place at the right time for luck to allow me to benefit from it in a way no one else ever has - at least not that is historically known." You don't need to rely on Fate, Destiny, or "the Will of the Force" to justify it when "It could have been anyone, it just happened to be you" is a viable alternative.)

Everything else is mostly just a case of feeling out which way the story goes and adapting to it afterward. If the PC just sells their magic ring and floating heal ball to the first merchant they find and use the coin to open an inn, then fuck it, the game just devolves into inn management simulator.


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Also also also (I really need a new way to continue a line of thought!), I considered the need to justify precisely WHY the PC can activate and all of these 'bots while no one else has apparently never managed to do so over hundreds of years. I figure the easiest way is if they have some sort of heirloom that's been in their family for generations (probably either a ring or some strange pendant or amulet) that actually turns out to be recognition key for ancient tech (and which will give knowledgeable recurring enemies a reason to want to steal it from them, thus furthering plot). Or perhaps the key is actually themselves, as unbeknownst to themselves, they are descendants of the ancient race, and even at such a far remove, there is some trace of genetic code that all of the ancient tech can detect and which it considers primary for command (in which case, villains may want to capture and dissect the PC to learn the secret and replicate it themselves). There's also the more mystical possibility that the PC is a reincarnated ancient whose body is that of one of the current races, but whose soul is of the race that built all of the ruins and 'bots, so the tech works on a more spiritual level and can detect their soul and responds to it (again, potentially prompting villains to try and find a way to siphon out their soul or duplicate its nature for themselves).

In retrospect, I can definitely see the influence of games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Recore, Halo, Destiny, and even Fallout on how I'm sort of processing these ideas, so those are probably the sources I'd go back to for further inspiration or ideas to refine the concept or expand upon it.


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I'd also say each 'bot has some degree of "adaptive programming", to justify how they "level up" along with the player and "learn" new abilities. In technical terms, what they're actually doing is adjusting their own operating parameters to new combat scenarios, and accessing appropriate built-in operating potentials. Though I'd definitely make each 'bot (damn it, they need some sort of fancy name) start with a lower level than the PC, so they pull the average CR for the group down and allow the PC to hold more of the spotlight and feel more like the starring badass.

As mentioned, the Cleric is the odd-man out in this design, because it leaves them with an extra healer, and without the stealth unit. I think that's fine though, because having an extra healer still helps in situations where the Cleric goes down (and because "You can never have too many healers" has been one of my RPG philosophies for years anyway), and having a Healer/Healer/Tank/Caster party still feels fairly balanced to me (if you're going to sacrifice any single role, the stealth striker seems the most superfluous).

I also thought of some modifications to this scenario. If the campaign is going to take place in urban locations more than wilderness or dungeon areas, an "animal" stealth unit that acts like a Ranger might not be as useful, and the PC might be better off with a Rogue. In that case, I might make it a small sphere that seems inert until sent into action, at which point it extrudes 8 long legs (making it look like a spider), which allow it to open doors and windows, pick locks, disarm traps, and have a moderate amount of stealth for sneak attacks (and possibly some form of limited poison bite attack). Conversely, maybe this "infiltration unit" actually comes in tandem with the wilderness stealth "stalker" unit, and normally locks into position on the back of the cat/wolf/etc, and activates and separates when necessary (in this scenario, I see the unit effectively only having one "mind", and when the Rogue unit is active the Ranger unit goes into lockdown, so the PC is essentially choosing to either have a Rogue or a Ranger at any specific time, and it takes a turn or two for the separation/reattachment process to complete, so you can go switching back and forth in combat).

I also thought about the idea of having the PC potentially find "software upgrades" in different ruins that can be used to modify one of the units they already have. So, for example, they might be able to find a "subdual" upgrade that allows their spellcaster unit (which is mainly just shooting elemental attacks as its baseline) to access new spells which are more effective for taking down enemies without killing them, effectively "writing" spells like Sleep, Hold Person, or Web into its "spellbook". In the same way, they might be able to add some form of upgrade to their healer unit, so it can add buffing spells to pure healing and become a more flexible support unit and not just pure medic.

Also also, I thought about the idea that, at some point, the PC can find what is essentially a mech/power suit, which they put on like heavy armor, and gain bonuses to Strength and AC (possibly at the expense of Dex), and which potentially has other advantages (a regenerating health internal life-support system, some form of spellcasting attack action, limited flight, Con bonuses or extra resistances, saving throw boosts, etc). Sort of the culmination of becoming the inheritor of this ancient civilization's war-tech.

(cont)


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The other idea I was thinking about was having the PC discover something almost immediately in the story, before any combat, that gives them healing and recovery on par with having a Cleric. ie, something that can cast a limited number of healing spells as a free action on the PC's turn (or maybe even as a free action during any turn/as a free reaction during an enemy's turn). This could either be some sort of powerful artifact (which probably becomes a major plot point in the ongoing story), or even something like a strange Modron-like orb that comes to life when they touch it, that floats around and follows them wherever they go, keeping them alive (possibly a magi-tek relic of some long-forgotten civilization, which could also easily become a major plot point in the ongoing story). Or something even more sinister, like the little clockwork spider in Cronos ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronos_(film) ), or even the silver spheres from Phantasm.

I read a discussion about Warforged in 5e after writing this (completely unrelated to this discussion or idea, prompted by an entirely different line of thinking), and it kind of gave me an interesting idea for how to handle this sort of thing.

First session, the PC finds themselves in an ancient ruin, where they find a small metal sphere. It basically starts floating and following them around, and can cast healing spells. It also has abilities like Uncanny Dodge/Evasion/Disengage built in, so, combined with its fly speed, make it extremely difficult to hit in combat, so it can always have an opportunity to heal the PC.

Shortly after (whether in the same ruin, or a different-but-related one), they discover what is essentially a large suit of animated armor, that mostly operates as a Champion subclass Fighter. It too animates and follows the PC, and acts like a relatively simple tank/melee robot (you point out a target, it beats it to death). If the PC are themselves a tanky sort of class (Fighter, Paladin, Tanky Barbarian), they instead find a more stealth/striker combat mech that can work more tactically with them. I'm basically thinking something that works like a Ranger build, and which probably looks like a large cat a la panther/tiger, or something along the lines of dog/wolf (ie, something fast that can operate stealthily for recon and ambush).

Eventually the PC will find a third 'bot, which will be another floating device, though this one looks like a regular octahedron (aka an 8-sided die). This one is an offensive spellcasting unit that operates mainly like an Evoker Wizard (ie, blow shit up). If the PC are themselves a spellcasting class, they instead find the stealth unit mentioned earlier.

At this point, the PC basically has a four-person party with each major role fulfilled (unless the PC is a Cleric, which I'll address in a minute). Because the support units are slaved to the PC and lack personality, they can move them tactically in combat as extensions of themselves, and the DM doesn't need to come up with unique personalities and conflicting motivations for each that could complicate how the PC interacts with them. And deliberately building them as simpler constructs rather than having complex ability synergy makes it easier for a single player to use them effectively (plus, since the DM levels them up separately, the player doesn't need to juggle all of their potential advancement).

As an aside, I'm also assuming every 'bot has at least some degree of self-repair functionality (both for regular "healing" in game terms, but also to prevent a 'bot "dying" and being unrecoverable - eventually, they regain enough function to get up and follow the PC again). They CAN be destroyed (either via massive single damage or constant damage over time), but it's very difficult.

(cont)


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GanonsSpirit posted...

unless inordinate exsanguination be considered a virtue.

I've always considered that one of the highest of virtues.


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Mead posted...

Is Vice not considered a reliable source?

Vice is barely a reliable anything.


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shadowsword87 posted...

The part I would be worried about is that if the PC ever hits 0 hp, the encounter is over no question. With other players they could be a rallying point to try and save them and a back and forth, but if it's just 1 PC, it's much more of a tight rope.

I could see an option there for at least some sort of second-chance ability, similar to the one some Barbarians have and Half-Orcs have, where a character reduced to 0 HP automatically second-winds back to consciousness with 1 HP, at least giving them a chance to heal or flee once they realize they're in trouble. That could also combine with house ruling healing potion drinking as a free action they can do on any turn rather than just on their own, allowing them to recover at least somewhat immediately (which would probably have to go hand-in-hand with greater availability of healing potions in general, plus having access to stronger types of healing potions than normal at any given level).

There's also the possibility if enemies are more sapient, to have them be more inclined to take characters who reach 0 HP prisoner rather than kill them outright (and then have the character forced to escape whatever sort of prison they wind up being put in). This wouldn't make sense for more instinctual monsters (a gelatinous cube isn't going to take prisoners), and it might start to feel stupid after the 3rd or 4th time you've been taken prisoner and forced to escape, but it would at least add something of a safety net for unconsciousness.

The other idea I was thinking about was having the PC discover something almost immediately in the story, before any combat, that gives them healing and recovery on par with having a Cleric. ie, something that can cast a limited number of healing spells as a free action on the PC's turn (or maybe even as a free action during any turn/as a free reaction during an enemy's turn). This could either be some sort of powerful artifact (which probably becomes a major plot point in the ongoing story), or even something like a strange Modron-like orb that comes to life when they touch it, that floats around and follows them wherever they go, keeping them alive (possibly a magi-tek relic of some long-forgotten civilization, which could also easily become a major plot point in the ongoing story). Or something even more sinister, like the little clockwork spider in Cronos ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronos_(film) ), or even the silver spheres from Phantasm.


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Revelation34 posted...

The Major is Asian except her cyborg body is white so it's a completely different situation.

But that's the flip-side of the previous anime comment I made.

It's sort of implied/assumed that in anime, in spite of characters looking Caucasian, they're still implicitly Japanese. So if you're watching Magic Knight Rayearth where the main characters are three blatantly white girls with vivid red/blue/blonde hair and red/blue/green eyes, in reality, they are actually three very Japanese girls all of whom have jet-black hair and dark brown eyes. The visual differences only exist solely to differentiate the characters, because the more simplistic style of anime would make it impossible to tell characters apart if they all had the same hair and eyes.

So the question you have to ask is, IS the Major in a white body? Or is she in an Asian body that only looks white due to the artistic conventions of anime as an art form?

Which is what muddies the waters so much when it comes to translating the manga/anime to live-action - is it better to make the character appear like the character is supposed to be conceptually, or to make them look like they actually LOOK in the other media? Because one of those choices makes a major break with who the character is supposed to be, while the other makes a major break with how that character has always been presented in the past.



shadowsword87 posted...

PO... are you arguing about transhumanism?

I should run an Eclipse Phase game for you to show you how great it is.

Hey now, I've freely admitted in the past that I'm aware of transhumanism. And I can easily discuss it as a topic. I just don't relate to it on a personal level, and it doesn't really appeal to me on the level of wanting to RP it as a concept.

(But to be honest, that's partly because I tend to be drawn much more to fantasy and magic RP than I am science fiction RP - I don't just reject stuff like Eclipse Phase, I also shy away from stuff like Fading Suns or Traveller or Rifts. Even stuff like Shadowrun kind of leaves me a bit cold.)

But even then, I've dealt with transhumanism in RP before. It's a pretty major component of the Virtual Adepts in Mage: the Ascension, whose entire aesthetic is pretty much the main characters from the Matrix (except the VAs existed about 5 years before The Matrix did). They pretty much spend most of their time wearing trenchcoats and sunglasses and being memetic badasses and recoding reality, or talk about downloading the entire universe into "Reality 2.0" or putting their brains in computers. Which prompts a lot of catchphrases like "the meat doesn't matter", or referring to things like the "real" world as "meatspace".

They're also likely to resort to using dozens of different avatars in the Digital Web (basically a magic photorealistic VR Internet), so they're much less likely to get hung up on identity politics or the idea of people being explicitly "male" or "female" or "white/black/Asian/etc", because at any given moment one of them might be a huge white dude, a petite Asian girl, a talking purple elephant, a woman made entirely out of stars, or a sentient cloud of blue mist.

Plus, the Tzimisce in Vampire sort of fall into the same place, because you're talking about vampires with the power to reshape human flesh into pretty much anything, so they can be any gender (or no gender, or all genders, or a protoplasmic ball of eyes and teeth), any race, any build (with some nod to mass restrictions), and generally either deliberately beautiful, hideous, or transcending the human form and aesthetic entirely.


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None of the Above


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Oh, and here's an RPG question for Shadow (and anyone who wants to talk about RPG stuff, honestly):

Hypothetically speaking, if you knew someone who wanted to RP, but for whatever reason you couldn't pull a full group together, and so for the hell of it you decided to run a D&D 5e solo campaign for that player, how would you handle CR?

Obviously, at the most basic level, CR is supposed to represent the average level of a party of four adventurers (so if you have four level 3 adventurers, the ideal CR for them to fight is CR 3), so the easiest answer would be to just divide CR by 4 (so a single level 1 PC would match up best against 1/4 CR creatures). But CR also takes into account more intangible elements that make things more complicated.

For instance, a one-person party is effectively over-specialized and lacking multiple roles (a single Cleric is lacking DPS and tanking, a strong Fighter is lacking dedicated healing and crowd control, etc). They're also far more vulnerable to things like stun lock - in a group, getting paralyzed or stun just reduces the resources the party can bring to bear, but in a solo party, it's pretty much straight-up getting murdered. It also unbalances the usual turn economy dynamic (ie, the enemies get more turns per round than the player does), and reduces the damage types the PC can inflict, thus potentially creating a problem against enemies with resistances.

And that doesn't get into the problem of not having anyone around to drag your corpse to a temple for a rez if/when you die, which can make everything far more permanent when it comes to dying.

So while a CR of 1/4th the PC's level would theoretically be balanced, it might actually still be harder for that lone PC to beat that creature than it would be for a group of four PCs to beat a monster with 4x the CR (or just a group of 4 monsters with that CR).

So how would you handle that? Only set them against monsters with a CR of even less than 1/4th their level? Deliberately steer clear of all monsters with stunning attacks or resistances the PC can't oppose? Give the PC some form of extra healing item or defense that gives them an edge? Just DMPC a full party of other characters who can offset their weaknesses?

I've been pondering the idea and thinking of different ways to work around the problem (mostly as an intellectual exercise - this is the sort of stuff I think about to kill time while doing yardwork or other boring things), and I was kind of curious what sort of ideas you might have about it.


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Metalsonic66 posted...

He looks pretty damn close to Uncharted 4 Drake. Maybe a bit less slender.

Drake's usually portrayed as being in his 30s - the first game he's around 31 or so, by the end of the last game he's 40. Fillion's almost 50 as-is, and will keep getting older as the movie takes longer and longer to go into production.


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Revelation34 posted...

The only people who have a problem with Heimdall being black are comic book fans who don't think anything should be different. It is never about racism.

Or at least being different with no explanation.

They're essentially the gods of the Norse, who pretty explicitly look LIKE the Norse did in their mythology. Hogun (one of the Warriors Three) is pretty clearly Asian, but most comic fans don't care a) because he's Asian/Eastern European in the comics, and b) because there is a literal canon in-universe explanation for why he's there in the comics.

In the movies, it's literally never explained or even commented upon by anyone that one of the most important people in their social structure looks radically different than everyone else there (a similar scenario that happens again with Valkyrie later). A single throwaway line about how Heimdall was originally from a different one of the Nine Worlds, or a reference to being from a different pantheon (ie, the exact same reason Hogun is different) could have justified it pretty easily, but instead everyone just pretends it shouldn't matter because no one wants to talk about it.

Even most comic fans can accept things in the movies being different from the comics if there's a good reason why, that has more substance than "It's for diversity, also, shut up". Often, fans can even latch on to explanations or justifications in the movies so ardently they wind up bleeding back into the comics and becoming canon there as well.

The fact that they cast Idris Elba (who is awesome) helped defuse some of the flack, but honestly, it's not inherently racist to say you'd like a character to either look like they do in the comics, or at least justify why they don't look like you'd expect them to.



PK_Spam posted...

But The Major is supposed to be Asian. Like its even a thing in the movie that we see shes supposed to be Asian.

But with that particular issue, you run into an entirely different problem. Namely, that anime uses a very particular style (originally based on Disney cartoons). In way too many anime, even the most Asian of characters look like they're from Western Europe.

So you can SAY that she's Asian within the context of the story, but if almost every visual ever drawn of the character makes her look white as fuck, why would casting her as an actual Asian fit better than casting someone who looks like the way the character is drawn? It might be more culturally appropriate, but you aren't likely to find any Asian actress who LOOKS like the Major does in the manga or anime unless they're themselves at least Eurasian to some degree.

That being said, the irony is that Ghost in the Shell is one of the few franchises where this shouldn't matter in any way, because the entire point of the story is that the meat isn't the person. The "Ghost" is the real person, and the body is the "shell" - and is absolutely interchangeable, replaceable, and modifiable. She's NOT in her real body, so it shouldn't matter who or what she looks like anyway, because the shell can literally look like anything.

You could cast a golden retriever in the role and just imply she's an Asian woman's mind in the body of a robot dog and it would be just as thematically appropriate. Her "ghost" could be inside a car, or a Roomba, or a man's body, and it would still be HER.


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Foppe posted...

...so they are basically hunting transorcs?

Only if you accept that, in that metaphor, the literal devil kidnapped people, subjected them to sex change surgery against their will, brainwashed them into hating everything that reminds them of what they once were, turned them into violent (and arguably cannibalistic maniacs), and then the whole nightmare package somehow became genetic so they all pass it on to their kids, and their kids' kids, and so on.


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You're late, we've already discussed this.


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The Wave Master posted...

Been saying Nathan Fillion should be Nathan Drake for years now. He took matters Into his own hands. Make this happen Sony.

https://kotaku.com/nathan-fillion-made-an-uncharted-fan-film-and-its-exce-1827624753

People keep saying he's perfect, and a decade or so ago that might have been true. But honestly, he's kind of old for the role now.

It'd be one thing if it was going to be an animated movie and he was just doing the voice, but in that scenario I'd much rather they just use Nolan North anyway.


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HellHole_ posted...

if you saw what the first suspension was for even you would call bullshit

So what was it?


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Zikten posted...

who was before Erikson? And I mean a non native american.

Aside from all the possible scenarios that are still controversial or under discussion ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact_theories ), it's pretty well established that there were Norse in North America before Erikson specifically, with the implication that he was simply following their previous lead (in the same way it's implied Columbus was just following the lead of Erikson, and potentially Henry the Navigator - or at least based on Henry the Navigator's prior researches).

But "non-Native American" is itself kind of dismissive, when you consider just how many people made it there and established themselves long before the continents were "discovered" by people from Europe.


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Someone other than you might even learn a lesson from this.


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KaptainKiro posted...

movie that was already gonna flop will flop harder now

Mead posted...

Problem now is that theyll go with a trans actor to try and do right by the person the film is based on but without a big name it likely wont make much money

So executives will look at that result for years and come to the conclusion that they shouldnt hire trans actors for major roles because they dont draw audiences

Both of these.

With an added dash of "Casting for real life genitals and life circumstances rather than for talent will almost certainly result in a vastly inferior performance, which in turn will be a negative for the implied cause", because it's not as if there's a plethora of top-tier trans actors running around in Hollywood at the moment.


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St_Kevin posted...

and he exploited the natives he found in the Carribean.

So exactly like every other expansionist colonial-era individual coming from any nation with imperial aspirations?



Zikten posted...

every bit of glory and praise given to Columbus should be stripped and handed to Leif Erikson

Considering Erikson wasn't the first person to discover North America either, and he didn't even manage to establish a successful colony, let alone inspire a wave of exploration and colonization, he doesn't even deserve as much praise as he gets, let alone as much as Columbus gets.

He's just become the de facto protest vote against Columbus.


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helIy posted...

lolno bud.

ff6 is complete garbage shit tier.

Helly, quiet, adults are talking.


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Revelation34 posted...

There is no way you played any of those Zelda or Mario games.

You don't actually have to play a game to know that you don't really want to play that game. Or for your subsequent complete and utter lack of interest in those games to fail to sell you on buying a console solely to play those games.

In the N64/PS1 era, nearly every game I wanted to play wound up on the PS1, while the N64 versions of games I enjoyed on the SNES were huge turn-offs. I hated Mario 64, and most of the reasons I disliked it apply to all of the successive 3D Mario games as well. By the time Nintendo actually started doing new 2D Mario games, my tastes had mostly gone off platformers entirely, so they didn't do anything for me either. I can honestly say there hasn't been a single Mario game since Super Mario World that has really excited or interested me in any way.

With Zelda, I got almost nothing out of Ocarina of Time (no matter how hard the Internet in general and the 90s kids specific fellate the hell out of it). The fact that most later Zelda games followed more in that mold than the path of Link to the Past or Zelda 1 or 2 meant that the series effectively became something I had no interest in (especially since most of my fantasy gaming interest was getting channeled into JRPGs and later WRPGs and action RPGs). At this point, I can honestly say there hasn't been a single Zelda game since Link to the Past that has really excited or interested me in any way.

In regards to the Switch specifically, I've watched people play both Odyssey and Breath of the Wild, and there is literally not a single thing in either game that appeals to me in any way. I'm also not a fan of Mario Kart (again, not since the SNES), so that's out. I've never liked any Smash Bros, so the allure of a future Smash release isn't going to mean anything to me. The same goes for Metroid, which I didn't even really like on the NES, let alone since.

So if Nintendo doesn't have a single first-party IP I care about or have any intention of buying, then their traditionally weak third-party support is the only thing that would influence me to buy - and I can't think of a third-party game they have that I want to play that isn't also available elsewhere.

And again, my distaste for gimmicky controllers and other tech that doesn't appeal to me tends to start Nintendo out on negative ground even before the games come into play. I loathed the Wiimote and the Wii-U tablet, so those consoles would have needed dozens of games I considered "must own" before it would offset the fact that I hate the controls. For the Switch, I hate the Joycons (and would have to buy a "normal" controller, thus raising the price and inconvenience), and dislike/don't care about the docking/handheld aspect, so while the Switch isn't starting as deep in the hole as the Wii or Wii-U, it still has to overcome a significant negative bias before it would ever become worthwhile to me.

I liked Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil, but that still wasn't enough to sell me a GameCube - and the GameCube was probably the least offensive console in the hardware sense Nintendo has released since the SNES.


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PaddysPub posted...

rogerskg1979 posted...

unless you were a heterosexual white male.

yep exactly

So, paradise then.


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Revelation34 posted...

Nope. Not how it works.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/3-poll-of-the-day/76785963/905038549

You can keep repeating or reposting the premise, but that doesn't actually make it less wrong.



Red_Frog posted...

You're literally participating in a thread about how it works, showing that's how it works, and you're still clinging to your wrongness.

This is a very interesting point. No one in this thread asked him specifically for his personal opinion, so every single post he makes is literally proving the point he's trying to refute.

So should he continue to post (thus invalidating his argument), or stop posting entirely (effectively conceding his argument)?

It's almost as if the Internet can be inherently unfair sometimes...



KnoxKorner posted...

The account might be owned by a private individual, but when you speak in a public forum expect to get a response.

Moreso when you explicitly label that account with the name of your employer and your role within said company, and also use the account to discuss work-related ideas and concepts 90% of the time.

It would be one thing if she was just talking about her dog and someone came along and told her it was a shit breed and she's terrible at picking dogs, but when you're literally posting about what you do for a living, and someone responds to your specific post and politely discuss what you've said in context, and your response is basically "STOP CONDESCENDING TO ME MOTHERFUCKER!", you are absolutely reflecting poorly on your employer.

You may also need to seek professional psychiatric help, but that's an entirely different discussion.

To be perfectly frank, I consider it no different from going to a local McDonalds and seeing someone wearing a McDonalds uniform standing in the parking lot yelling racial slurs or some other offensive or unacceptable things. It doesn't matter if that employee is off-the-clock at the time, they are absolutely coloring my perception of that particular franchise, and it could easily lead me to start avoiding that specific location in the future.



Amuseum posted...

and they didn't ask for your criticism, either. so who are you to say they're wrong?

So what we're learning here is that everyone on the Internet is wrong 100% of the time.

That actually sounds accurate. Another case solved!


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helIy posted...

no i don't think i am

nah

no

Thanks for proving my point.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Zeus posted...

Metalsonic66 posted...

Not saying it was a major establishing part, but it was an appearance at least

So if Flash was in the background during a crowd scene in BvS, that would count as a big improvement? =p

Who's to say he wasn't given the speed he moves at? >_>

Technically, he WAS there. When Bruce has his stupid vision/dream thing, that's supposed to be Flash from the future using his "run so fast you break time itself" power to try and warn him somehow.

And yes, it's very stupid.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

The problem is that we use the words depression/depressed to refer to two different things psychologically.

In some cases, "I'm depressed" is absolutely a reference to emotions, and is effectively saying "I am kind of sad and lethargic because of reasons". In other cases, someone referring to depression is absolutely talking about chemical imbalance and a psychological state which you can't just "cheer up!" your way out of, that exists as a prolonged state of being and which often needs to be medicated to achieve normalcy. But people confuse the two terms, and either become dismissive of the very real medical condition, or conversely, overinflate their own problems by self-diagnosing themselves with a condition when really they're just sad about stuff.

Much like with the global warming/climate change debate, people using conflicting terminology to mean different things muddies the water and kind of ruins the entire discussion. What we actually need are better operational definitions to firmly differentiate between the two things, and allow the general public to develop a greater awareness of actual facts.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

helIy posted...

iiiii don't think that's right

That's because you're a professional contrarian. We've established this many times.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family