Decline Critical role ruined PnP

[udm]

There's an easy way to filter out the idiots that want to join your super serious group:

Upon auditioning to play for you (make no mistake, any good DM should be in high demand and should in turn demand much from his players), the player should be asked the following question:

"What is your favorite TSR/WotC, etc. D&D campaign boxed set?"

If they answer "Greyhawk", without hesitation, they're in.

If they answer "Forgotten Realms", you should sit there, silently, glaring at them, waiting for them to explain why, unbidden. If they hesitate, they're gone. If they say, however, "Ha ha I was just kidding it's Greyhawk," then with skeptical caution they should be let in.

Any other answer should result in a swift kick in the ass out your door.

Nigga, Dark Sun is p. cool too.

 

[Akratus]

Why stick around at that point?

Have you ever experienced loneliness ?
I mean, not finding yourself on your own between 6 & 7pm on the way back home, that's casual stuff. But talking to yourself during a moment of contemplation - that everybody finds during the day - , and being met with the most lingering & insufferable echo conveyed by your empty, deserted soul ?

It's unrelated to your question, I just wanna know.

Yes.

 

[Elex]

There's an easy way to filter out the idiots that want to join your super serious group:

Upon auditioning to play for you (make no mistake, any good DM should be in high demand and should in turn demand much from his players), the player should be asked the following question:

"What is your favorite TSR/WotC, etc. D&D campaign boxed set?"

If they answer "Greyhawk", without hesitation, they're in.

If they answer "Forgotten Realms", you should sit there, silently, glaring at them, waiting for them to explain why, unbidden. If they hesitate, they're gone. If they say, however, "Ha ha I was just kidding it's Greyhawk," then with skeptical caution they should be let in.

Any other answer should result in a swift kick in the ass out your door.

and if they say planescape?

 

[LeStryfe79]

I still game with a bunch of friends who are way more conservative(and successful) than I am.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Just started watching this VtM session on the same channel as Critical Role. Really good GMing from Jason Carl of White Wolf, and characterisation and play from Alexander Ward as the Nosferatu, and B. Dave Walters as the dad-joke Ventrue.

 

[Morblot]

yeah of course i'll spend the next three hours looking at some retards pretending to be fucking vampires

 

[Black]

Well, the problem is, what was once "nerdy" and "geeky" has left the basement where it belonged and became hip and marketable. That's why you got all sorts of degenerates in coloured hair who don't really want to play a game, they just want to fantasize about their sick fetishes while you watch and curse god.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

To give you guys an example, in my last session I was forced to witness two grown fucking men having gay dnd sex with each other.

I tried to tell them to knock it off but they wouldn't stop having weird orgies.

SO fuck CRIT ROLE

Should of showed them how to play this gem

 

[Viata]

Well, the problem is, what was once "nerdy" and "geeky" has left the basement where it belonged and became hip and marketable. That's why you got all sorts of degenerates in coloured hair who don't really want to play a game, they just want to fantasize about their sick fetishes while you watch and curse god.

@skinnyghost
Wow. I knew this guy way back in 2008 or so on twitter, found him there because I was looking for something(can't remember) and saw his tweet, we used to talk about dnd and many tabletop rpg almost everyday for 2 years or so and now he looks like this. He used to look like an average nerd. That is way too sad.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

Well, the problem is, what was once "nerdy" and "geeky" has left the basement where it belonged and became hip and marketable. That's why you got all sorts of degenerates in coloured hair who don't really want to play a game, they just want to fantasize about their sick fetishes while you watch and curse god.

@skinnyghost
Wow. I knew this guy way back in 2008 or so on twitter, found him there because I was looking for something(can't remember) and saw his tweet, we used to talk about dnd and many tabletop rpg almost everyday for 2 years or so and now he looks like this. He used to look like an average nerd. That is way too sad.

It's the sickness man. Its spread through peer presure and social consequnces but it's almost irresistable to awkward nerds who are easily manipulatable. If you're "problamatic" you're removed from the group and if that group is the only place to play PnP games then you're fucked so you just stay silent and convince yourself that dyeing your hair pink is actually brave and individual. I saw it happen in real time to a local gaming shop I used to go to.

 

[nikolokolus]

Dem storygamers man. Just when you thought GNS was the worst thing to come out of The Forge . . .

 

[Ismaul]

Dem storygamers man. Just when you thought GNS was the worst thing to come out of The Forge . . .

Pffffffffffffffff

C&C IS Storygaming. For a story to be a game there needs to be multiple paths forward, of which you choose one.

 

[nikolokolus]

Dem storygamers man. Just when you thought GNS was the worst thing to come out of The Forge . . .

Pffffffffffffffff

C&C IS Storygaming. For a story to be a game there needs to be multiple paths forward, of which you choose one.

The word has a very specific meaning in this context; Forgist "storygames" are defined by players having authorial power within the game usually reserved for a GM in traditional PnP RPGs.

 

[Raghar]

Well, the problem is, what was once "nerdy" and "geeky" has left the basement where it belonged and became hip and marketable. That's why you got all sorts of degenerates in coloured hair who don't really want to play a game, they just want to fantasize about their sick fetishes while you watch and curse god.

@skinnyghost
Wow. I knew this guy way back in 2008 or so on twitter, found him there because I was looking for something(can't remember) and saw his tweet, we used to talk about dnd and many tabletop rpg almost everyday for 2 years or so and now he looks like this. He used to look like an average nerd. That is way too sad.

I tried to look for decent PnP streamers, and seen this guy, and I felt something weird. Basically he had a session where his party should visit some club of lowlifes, and he described them as "single race ..." Normally with multiple species single race club is a norm, criminals are the exception. (As you could see on that infamous UK image where 10 Arabian lowlifes were accompanied by white young woman with similar hair as him, who was equally lowlife.)

GM should know a lot of stuff like that. He did no research.

 

[RK47]

Why stick around at that point?

Have you ever experienced loneliness ?
I mean, not finding yourself on your own between 6 & 7pm on the way back home, that's casual stuff. But talking to yourself during a moment of contemplation - that everybody finds during the day - , and being met with the most lingering & insufferable echo conveyed by your empty, deserted soul ?

It's unrelated to your question, I just wanna know.

This is normal.
Everything is fine.

 

[Ismaul]

Dem storygamers man. Just when you thought GNS was the worst thing to come out of The Forge . . .

Pffffffffffffffff

C&C IS Storygaming. For a story to be a game there needs to be multiple paths forward, of which you choose one.

The word has a very specific meaning in this context; Forgist "storygames" are defined by players having authorial power within the game usually reserved for a GM in traditional PnP RPGs.

I know that full well. I've GMed some Forge games, notably Vincent Baker's (Poison'd, In a Wicked Age, Kill Puppies for Satan).

Still, there is no C&C without player authorial power. The ability to make a choice is one way to exert authorial power. You make a choice, and the story changes to adapt to your choice, it goes in a direction determined by that choice. If I choose to ally with a dude instead of killing him, that should full well change the story, otherwise it's a railroad. And I'm not playing PnP, the most interactive medium, just to be railroaded by the GM. So in effect, if the GM isn't shit, he implicitly grants you authorial power by adapting what unfolds to fit your choice.

So what do you have against storygames? That they have some mechanics to support players making narrative choices? That players might drive where the story goes a bit more? That the GM has less "control" and must be more flexible to allow for the story to unflod in many possible directions? What, specifically? Or is it rather some type of storygamers that you dislike?

Also, I don't know about your traditional PnP RPGs, but I've played many games of D&D 2nd/3rd where players had a say in the narrative direction, through their characters and table talk both. So I don't GM the aforementioned Forge games much differently than D&D. But maybe Baker's games aren't representative of Forge games.

 

[nikolokolus]

Dem storygamers man. Just when you thought GNS was the worst thing to come out of The Forge . . .

Pffffffffffffffff

C&C IS Storygaming. For a story to be a game there needs to be multiple paths forward, of which you choose one.

The word has a very specific meaning in this context; Forgist "storygames" are defined by players having authorial power within the game usually reserved for a GM in traditional PnP RPGs.

I know that full well. I've GMed some Forge games, notably Vincent Baker's (Poison'd, In a Wicked Age, Kill Puppies for Satan).

Still, there is no C&C without player authorial power. The ability to make a choice is one way to exert authorial power. You make a choice, and the story changes to adapt to your choice, it goes in a direction determined by that choice. If I choose to ally with a dude instead of killing him, that should full well change the story, otherwise it's a railroad. And I'm not playing PnP, the most interactive medium, just to be railroaded by the GM. So in effect, if the GM isn't shit, he implicitly grants you authorial power by adapting what unfolds to fit your choice.

So what do you have against storygames? That they have some mechanics to support players making narrative choices? That players might drive where the story goes a bit more? That the GM has less "control" and must be more flexible to allow for the story to unflod in many possible directions? What, specifically? Or is it rather some type of storygamers that you dislike?

Also, I don't know about your traditional PnP RPGs, but I've played many games of D&D 2nd/3rd where players had a say in the narrative direction, through their characters and table talk both. So I don't GM the aforementioned Forge games much differently than D&D. But maybe Baker's games aren't representative of Forge games.

I'm a sandbox GM, mostly BRP/D100 type stuff. I also don't play PnP games for a "story." I play and run stuff mostly because I like the idea of "living worlds" that are indifferent to PCs, and being surprised by all of the curveballs players throw back at you with the threads they choose to follow in a sandbox, wherein I set up initial conditions, establish motivations for some key NPCs, place obstacles/seeds/interesting locales, setup one kickoff adventure that forces some action, then let the players interact with everything how they want to thereafter. In turn, I react to their choices and let things go where they may; if there's a "story", it's developed through play, not established before play, so no need for a railroad.

As for what I don't like about storygames, it's probably the editorial power given to players to avoid calamity. I don't like games with plot armor, I don't like fate points, and I don't run games where PC X or Y needs to get to the end or the whole thing collapses. If you like Storygames and they work for you then knock yourself out, but they don't work for me (at least in my limited experience with being a player briefly in a Fate Accelerated, and a Dungeon World game).

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

As for what I don't like about storygames, it's probably the editorial power given to players to avoid calamity. I don't like games with plot armor, I don't like fate points, and I don't run games where PC X or Y needs to get to the end or the whole thing collapses. If you like Storygames and they work for you then knock yourself out, but they don't work for me (at least in my limited experience with being a player briefly in a Fate Accelerated, and a Dungeon World game).

Best way to be a storygame GM. Never say no to your players. But make sure you always enact the consequences of their actions. If they want to charge Cthulu with a bowie knife and OPREHSHAN! you say "okay". It'll have predicatable consequences. Be cruely and utterly fair and you'll start seeing the Mercer Effect less and less. You can rear your RPG group very well this way. And if they keep making dumb de-railing choices you keep just piling on the consequences until they leave. It turns out that if you run into the throne room and try to assassinate a beloved king that his guards and the local pesantry might not be happy. If you're so exceptional that you survive that, well trying to break out of prison and deal with the political fallout of assasinating a monarch is a great story hook. Provided you can get out before the rioters get to you. And so on and so on until the asshole leaves or learns to respect the game as is. Not whatever SJW fantasy is being fed to them.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Best way to be a storygame GM. Never say no to your players. But make sure you always enact the consequences of their actions. If they want to charge Cthulu with a bowie knife and OPREHSHAN! you say "okay". It'll have predicatable consequences. Be cruely and utterly fair and you'll start seeing the Mercer Effect less and less. You can rear your RPG group very well this way. And if they keep making dumb de-railing choices you keep just piling on the consequences until they leave. It turns out that if you run into the throne room and try to assassinate a beloved king that his guards and the local pesantry might not be happy. If you're so exceptional that you survive that, well trying to break out of prison and deal with the political fallout of assasinating a monarch is a great story hook. Provided you can get out before the rioters get to you. And so on and so on until the asshole leaves or learns to respect the game as is. Not whatever SJW fantasy is being fed to them.

Reminds me of Carmack's id DnD campaign.

 

[Viata]

And to think Daikatana was shit.

 

[udm]

Best way to be a storygame GM. Never say no to your players. But make sure you always enact the consequences of their actions. If they want to charge Cthulu with a bowie knife and OPREHSHAN! you say "okay". It'll have predicatable consequences. Be cruely and utterly fair and you'll start seeing the Mercer Effect less and less. You can rear your RPG group very well this way. And if they keep making dumb de-railing choices you keep just piling on the consequences until they leave. It turns out that if you run into the throne room and try to assassinate a beloved king that his guards and the local pesantry might not be happy. If you're so exceptional that you survive that, well trying to break out of prison and deal with the political fallout of assasinating a monarch is a great story hook. Provided you can get out before the rioters get to you. And so on and so on until the asshole leaves or learns to respect the game as is. Not whatever SJW fantasy is being fed to them.

Reminds me of Carmack's id DnD campaign.

Where's this from? Masters of Doom?

 

[Drakron]

If they answer "Forgotten Realms", you should sit there, silently, glaring at them, waiting for them to explain why, unbidden. If they hesitate, they're gone. If they say, however, "Ha ha I was just kidding it's Greyhawk," then with skeptical caution they should be let in.

To start, when Gygax left TSR (or rather, pushed out of) Greyhawk kinda got into a weird place that got worst due to Forgotten Realms and DragonLance success, at that time TSR realized they were making money out of their novel lines and Greyhawk was pushed into getting the same treatment, however it never got the success of those two settings that should not be surprising considering TSR had no idea what the fuck they were doing.

As for Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood articles on Dragon were great but its success, especially the novel line, created problems and stuff was just dump on it, for example the Moonshae isles were just drop there despite they would likely been on Greyhawk but the worst offenders was the fucking novel line, basically they allow novels to interfere with the setting making the whole place having too many heroes all over the place that often had "chosen one" status (I am not even talking about just the Chosen of because of course everyone had to create their own Elminster) so players got the impression they werent needed because you had so many powerful people going around, granted it was NOTHING like DragonLance that became just "hey! remenber those books? wanna play DnD in there?" because they completely overshadowed the setting and it didnt help they keep having apocalyptic events on the novel line.

Forgotten Realms is a very decent setting IF you know what material to use, basically the type of stuff Ed Greenwood wrote for Dragon and ONLY that, if you start looking at the "bigger picture" then decades of having crap thrown in makes the damn place a landfill and that is the problem with players because they have access to all that crap and can annoy you because of "lore" and this is why we have a DM in the first place, playing in Forgotten Realms means you have to learn how to say NO a lot unless you manage to find players that understand they arent in a "Living Campaign" (if that is still around) and dont start acting like assholes but you get then whatever the fuck you play if its printed or you think you dont get those with Greyhawk? There is always someone that managed to read every fucking novel and moment you get out of the lore they will call on it.

And this is why your own campaigns are the best but that involves effort and you cannot just pull some printed campaign setting book and fill in the blanks, no you actually have to come up with your own shit ... Eberron was supposed to never advance and be static so I guess there is that but guess what it have? FUCKING NOVELS because of course it would ...

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

If they answer "Forgotten Realms", you should sit there, silently, glaring at them, waiting for them to explain why, unbidden. If they hesitate, they're gone. If they say, however, "Ha ha I was just kidding it's Greyhawk," then with skeptical caution they should be let in.

To start, when Gygax left TSR (or rather, pushed out of) Greyhawk kinda got into a weird place that got worst due to Forgotten Realms and DragonLance success, at that time TSR realized they were making money out of their novel lines and Greyhawk was pushed into getting the same treatment, however it never got the success of those two settings that should not be surprising considering TSR had no idea what the fuck they were doing.

As for Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood articles on Dragon were great but its success, especially the novel line, created problems and stuff was just dump on it, for example the Moonshae isles were just drop there despite they would likely been on Greyhawk but the worst offenders was the fucking novel line, basically they allow novels to interfere with the setting making the whole place having too many heroes all over the place that often had "chosen one" status (I am not even talking about just the Chosen of because of course everyone had to create their own Elminster) so players got the impression they werent needed because you had so many powerful people going around, granted it was NOTHING like DragonLance that became just "hey! remenber those books? wanna play DnD in there?" because they completely overshadowed the setting and it didnt help they keep having apocalyptic events on the novel line.

Forgotten Realms is a very decent setting IF you know what material to use, basically the type of stuff Ed Greenwood wrote for Dragon and ONLY that, if you start looking at the "bigger picture" then decades of having crap thrown in makes the damn place a landfill and that is the problem with players because they have access to all that crap and can annoy you because of "lore" and this is why we have a DM in the first place, playing in Forgotten Realms means you have to learn how to say NO a lot unless you manage to find players that understand they arent in a "Living Campaign" (if that is still around) and dont start acting like assholes but you get then whatever the fuck you play if its printed or you think you dont get those with Greyhawk? There is always someone that managed to read every fucking novel and moment you get out of the lore they will call on it.

And this is why your own campaigns are the best but that involves effort and you cannot just pull some printed campaign setting book and fill in the blanks, no you actually have to come up with your own shit ... Eberron was supposed to never advance and be static so I guess there is that but guess what it have? FUCKING NOVELS because of course it would ...

An excellent way to start off making your own campaign setting is to just rip off a bunch of sci fi shit and flip it into Fantasy. Races like Klingons, Wookies, and Time Lords all would work very well in a generic fantasy setting. Or you could spice things up and have a fantasy/sci-fi combo ie: He-Man or Heavy Metal. Don't be afraid to be a complete fucking hack as long as you're confident you can make all this work. Also take suggestions from your group as long as it isn't dumb. You'll end up creating something you all own.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

To start, when Gygax left TSR (or rather, pushed out of) Greyhawk kinda got into a weird place that got worst due to Forgotten Realms and DragonLance success, at that time TSR realized they were making money out of their novel lines and Greyhawk was pushed into getting the same treatment, however it never got the success of those two settings that should not be surprising considering TSR had no idea what the fuck they were doing.

TSR created The Forgotten Realms campaign setting in the first place as a replacement for the Greyhawk campaign setting that was inextricably connected with the personal campaign of Gary Gygax. They borrowed material from Ed Greenwood's personal campaign, and just as the published Greyhawk setting was inevitably a watered-down version of Gygax's own setting, so The Forgotten Realms was Ed Greenwood's setting made as bland and generic as possible to serve as the default campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Greyhawk was intentionally neglected for over two years after Gygax's departure, until the publication of a Greyhawk campaign setting hardcover in 1988. At that point, TSR did begin publishing new adventure modules for Greyhawk, with a substantial number released over the next five years, but the very first of these new modules was a spoof of Gygax's famous-but-never-published Castle Greyhawk, turning it into a series of bad jokes. Greyhawk never really had a place in TSR's line-up once The Forgotten Realms was established in 1987 as the more-generic replacement.

 

[nikolokolus]

Best way to be a storygame GM. Never say no to your players. But make sure you always enact the consequences of their actions. If they want to charge Cthulu with a bowie knife and OPREHSHAN! you say "okay". It'll have predicatable consequences. Be cruely and utterly fair and you'll start seeing the Mercer Effect less and less. You can rear your RPG group very well this way. And if they keep making dumb de-railing choices you keep just piling on the consequences until they leave. It turns out that if you run into the throne room and try to assassinate a beloved king that his guards and the local pesantry might not be happy. If you're so exceptional that you survive that, well trying to break out of prison and deal with the political fallout of assasinating a monarch is a great story hook. Provided you can get out before the rioters get to you. And so on and so on until the asshole leaves or learns to respect the game as is. Not whatever SJW fantasy is being fed to them.

It works almost exactly the same way in the trad games I run/play. Not every failure ends in death, but that's also probably due in part to BRP's tiered levels of success and failure (Crit, Special, Normal, Failure, Fumble) and opposed rolls, so it's pretty easy to interpret those into outcomes that are more nuanced than "You win!" or "Rocks fall. Everyone dies." I guess I'm fortunate, the guys I play with are all mature dudes that seem to get the idea that I'm not for them or against them; when their characters meet an untimely death, it's because they got careless or overextended themselves and the hazards they come up against aren't typically of the "gotcha" variety.

As for whatever the "Mercer Effect" is I'm not familiar with the term; I'm guessing it has something to do with Matt Mercer's game on Critical Roll (which I've maybe watched 5 minutes of before I turned it off out of utter boredom). Whatever "danger hair" zeitgeist seems to be sweeping through the PnP community doesn't really affect me because I'm pretty selective about who I will game with.