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[DnD 5E] You can't triple stamp a double stamp!

18990929495101

Posts

  • TynnanTynnan seldom correct, never unsure Registered User regular
    "also a bunch of randos on a message board think you're a dingus"

  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    He made bits weird too, like there only being one shower

    Its true the place only has one shower room, I tried to figure out why since I am basing this off a wizard school in a module, and I came to the conclusion that if students were concerned with modesty, they better coordinate shared usage of resources with other students or learn a simple spell of concealment

    he also focused on the dead body being nude under the sheet and made that weird: "they're really just displaying a nude body to a bunch of students some of them kids", well no they're not displaying anything there's a sheet on it, and I hadn't thought about that but you clearly are...too much

    It's a dead body, basically an inanimate object at this point and anatomy is an important subject, especially for understanding necromancy. How ya gonna build a thrull if you don't know all the right parts to staple together? It's like you've never built an eldritch abomination that stands as a mockery of life before. You gotta get in here and learn all the connecting muscle fibers right or you're never gonna build one of those *points at the big flesh golem standing in the corner everyone thought was a big stuffed statue of some kind, it waves*

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Sleep wrote: »
    He made bits weird too, like there only being one shower

    Its true the place only has one shower room, I tried to figure out why since I am basing this off a wizard school in a module, and I came to the conclusion that if students were concerned with modesty, they better coordinate shared usage of resources with other students or learn a simple spell of concealment

    he also focused on the dead body being nude under the sheet and made that weird: "they're really just displaying a nude body to a bunch of students some of them kids", well no they're not displaying anything there's a sheet on it, and I hadn't thought about that but you clearly are...too much

    It's a dead body, basically an inanimate object at this point and anatomy is an important subject, especially for understanding necromancy. How ya gonna build a thrull if you don't know all the right parts to staple together? It's like you've never built an eldritch abomination that stands as a mockery of life before. You gotta get in here and learn all the connecting muscle fibers right or you're never gonna build one of those *points at the big flesh golem standing in the corner everyone thought was a big stuffed statue of some kind, it waves*

    like, it was taken as a given, he made me clarify and raised an objection that there were children attending this school and that was inappropriate

    err yeah you're upset about that but not that they're teaching children to be able to control minds, make things invisible, and create fire from their hands? Having anatomy class be part of it is the upsetting part? When a werewolf is encountered is there sweat at the thought of the swinging wolf-junk that nobody mentions?

    override367 on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    I am kind of that guy who does really think about it which has got me fixated on shit like Don Giovanni-wannabe bards possibly indirectly murdering women through childbirth in a time that resembles medieval times even if not perfectly realistic. Also just generally being asshole deadbeats if they don’t try to help these women who I would hope their characters see as people and not objects.

    However, I also play and GM a 40k RPG where I make clear you do not play with the good guys.

    I find that giving into the absurd and laughing at dark stuff beneath the surface is the best way to go on even with someone like me who I will admit is somewhat sensitive. Hence my hate of Storm King’s Thunder’s main plot of putting a caste system back together and creating a culture to suit my sensitivities to a monster race along with playing with a GM who shares my sensibilities even if I wouldn’t make a distracting, interrupting stink in another’s game who didn’t.

    Kadoken on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    my players are absolutely going to smash the ordening, they wouldn't hold slavery together in tomb of annihilation to maintain the delicate balance of political power, Nyanzaru erupted into conflict, but when the smoked cleared the slaves were free

    They are going to do the same thing to this entire country by smashing the ordening for good

    the cleric player explained to zephyros "We want to find king hecaton because if he can bring the crazy giant rulers in check that would be good, but this upheaval is no different than when a major power leaves a colony and it collapses in the power vacuum - the answer isn't to bring the colonizers back, its to fix things even if it is difficult"

    I am 100% onboard with them flipping the script - they're going to stop all the bad actors, but in the end the ordening will remain shattered

    override367 on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    my players are absolutely going to smash the ordening, they wouldn't hold slavery together in tomb of annihilation to maintain the delicate balance of political power, Nyanzaru erupted into conflict, but when the smoked cleared the slaves were free

    They are going to do the same thing to this entire country by smashing the ordening for good

    the cleric player explained to zephyros "We want to find king hecaton because if he can bring the crazy giant rulers in check that would be good, but this upheaval is no different than when a major power leaves a colony and it collapses in the power vacuum - the answer isn't to bring the colonizers back, its to fix things even if it is difficult"

    I am 100% onboard with them flipping the script

    If my GM decided to run it I would totally want this and honestly he’s the understanding type so he would rewrite the adventure to do this.

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Absent the divine mandate - they've already nursed a hill giant back to health, convinced her she doesn't need to eat nonstop forever to be a worthwhile person, and found her a place in society

    and then they sovereign glued a headband of intellect to her because they're still D&D players that do ridiculous things and I love them for it

    override367 on
  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    my players are absolutely going to smash the ordening, they wouldn't hold slavery together in tomb of annihilation to maintain the delicate balance of political power, Nyanzaru erupted into conflict, but when the smoked cleared the slaves were free

    They are going to do the same thing to this entire country by smashing the ordening for good

    the cleric player explained to zephyros "We want to find king hecaton because if he can bring the crazy giant rulers in check that would be good, but this upheaval is no different than when a major power leaves a colony and it collapses in the power vacuum - the answer isn't to bring the colonizers back, its to fix things even if it is difficult"

    I am 100% onboard with them flipping the script - they're going to stop all the bad actors, but in the end the ordening will remain shattered

    This is an interesting idea... but for my SKT game I'm running it pretty straight. I am already developing my own fully fleshed out homebrew. I do not also have time to completely re-write how giants work as a society in D&D. :)

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Also a guy wrote once you can have good-aligned races and civilizations that have slaves.

    Like fuck off.

    Alignment applied to a collective group rather than a choice of individuals also skeezes me out in the way Kantian morality has subhumans written into his anthropology when the dude never left Koenigsburg. That’s not to say through culture, background, and upbringing you can’t have something like the drow and it not be eye-rolley shit. Just that a race ingrained with morality through apparently genetics where if you have someone who does not follow that then they are the exception that proves the rule rather than showing there is variation in that race or society is gross to me. I prefer if they are portrayed consistently without contradiction like Warhammer Orcs/Orks. Edit: that is to say I would prefer that to apply if you are going to be portraying a race as always evil, always chaotic, and/or always savage and not on every race or culture.

    Kadoken on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    my players are absolutely going to smash the ordening, they wouldn't hold slavery together in tomb of annihilation to maintain the delicate balance of political power, Nyanzaru erupted into conflict, but when the smoked cleared the slaves were free

    They are going to do the same thing to this entire country by smashing the ordening for good

    the cleric player explained to zephyros "We want to find king hecaton because if he can bring the crazy giant rulers in check that would be good, but this upheaval is no different than when a major power leaves a colony and it collapses in the power vacuum - the answer isn't to bring the colonizers back, its to fix things even if it is difficult"

    I am 100% onboard with them flipping the script - they're going to stop all the bad actors, but in the end the ordening will remain shattered

    This is an interesting idea... but for my SKT game I'm running it pretty straight. I am already developing my own fully fleshed out homebrew. I do not also have time to completely re-write how giants work as a society in D&D. :)

    Oh yeah, more power to you, but my players tend to be fairly chaotic (in the real sense not in the edgelord sense) and try to leave society more just even if its messy

    they've correctly pointed out that all the bad giants want the ordening back just with them on top, and only Serissa seems open to actually keeping things the way they are and creating a new beginning for giant kind (frost and fire giants living together, cloud giants selling weather modification services, hill giants acting as unskilled labor in exchange for a metric ton of wheat, chaos!)

    part of that of course means a lot of violence, but I'm integrating strongholds and followers AND acq inq, and streeeeeetching the number of years this campaign takes place in out so they can develop strongholds, forces, and be a real force that can effect change.

    The druid that just joined seems to want to do a lot of that but basically all at once at by himself
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Also a guy wrote once you can have good-aligned races and civilizations that have slaves.

    Like fuck off.

    Alignment applied to a collective group rather than a choice of individuals also skeezes me out in the way Kantian morality has subhumans written into his anthropology when the dude never left Koenigsburg. That’s not to say through culture, background, and upbringing you can’t have something like the drow and it not be eye-rolley shit. Just that a race ingrained with morality through apparently genetics where if you have someone who does not follow that then they are the exception that proves the rule rather than showing there is variation in that race or society is gross to me. I prefer if they are portrayed consistently without contradiction like Warhammer Orcs/Orks.

    I think it might be possible but I cant think of a reason as to why anyone would try to hammer slavery into a society people are supposed to consider good? Like you have to add so many caveats and so much nuance to accomplish that goal that it would probably just be a lot fucking easier for them to not have the social institution of slavery!

    I think you can broadly apply alignments to societies as well - probably easier than to an individual actually, but that says nothing about any individual you're likely to encounter from that place. It's fair to say nazi germany was evil and canada is good, but there's so many caveats on that to be functionally useless

    For the purposes of running a game it can be useful - Waterdeep is lawful good - does have value in game terms, because it tells you that at this place crimes probably won't be tolerated and you probably won't find chromatic dragons hanging out in the open. Menzobarenzen being neutral evil is also useful as a general description for players in the kinds of things that are reasonable to be happening there

    override367 on
  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Also a guy wrote once you can have good-aligned races and civilizations that have slaves.

    Like fuck off.

    Alignment applied to a collective group rather than a choice of individuals also skeezes me out in the way Kantian morality has subhumans written into his anthropology when the dude never left Koenigsburg. That’s not to say through culture, background, and upbringing you can’t have something like the drow and it not be eye-rolley shit. Just that a race ingrained with morality through apparently genetics where if you have someone who does not follow that then they are the exception that proves the rule rather than showing there is variation in that race or society is gross to me. I prefer if they are portrayed consistently without contradiction like Warhammer Orcs/Orks. Edit: that is to say I would prefer that to apply if you are going to be portraying a race as always evil, always chaotic, and/or always savage and not on every race or culture.

    I'm not trying to challenge you or anything because I've only read some Gaunt Ghosts novels and some Heresy stuff... but does not Imperium of Man in 40K (who I guess are the closest think to good guys in that setting?) rely on on indentured servitude as the backbone of the entire galactic society? How does that square?

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    Literally none of the societies in 40k are even remotely close to being morally okay

    The closest to the good guys are the Tau and they're space communists - which is fine as long as you don't want to challenge the status quo and be "reeducated" about t h e g r e a t e r g o o d

  • GlalGlal AiredaleRegistered User regular
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Also a guy wrote once you can have good-aligned races and civilizations that have slaves.

    Like fuck off.

    Alignment applied to a collective group rather than a choice of individuals also skeezes me out in the way Kantian morality has subhumans written into his anthropology when the dude never left Koenigsburg. That’s not to say through culture, background, and upbringing you can’t have something like the drow and it not be eye-rolley shit. Just that a race ingrained with morality through apparently genetics where if you have someone who does not follow that then they are the exception that proves the rule rather than showing there is variation in that race or society is gross to me. I prefer if they are portrayed consistently without contradiction like Warhammer Orcs/Orks. Edit: that is to say I would prefer that to apply if you are going to be portraying a race as always evil, always chaotic, and/or always savage and not on every race or culture.
    I treat D&D alignment like I treat D&D magic- try not to think too hard about it, because it falls to pieces the moment you start going "but if A -> B then wouldn't that mean that...".

    I generally treat them as mental exercises to figure out what my characters' moral stances are, what makes them tick. Why would you hold such a position? Now what does that say about their outlook on the world? Etc.

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    I'm a big fan of "What is your character's alignment under a bunch of different scenarios". For example your character's alignment might be different when nobody is watching you and you're alone than when you're in public with strangers

    just as an exercise when creating a character

    I also use worldanvil extensively and it has an obscene list of questions about a character's personality and history and if you can answer all of them you get a pretty good idea of who a character is that makes alignment irrelivent

    override367 on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Also a guy wrote once you can have good-aligned races and civilizations that have slaves.

    Like fuck off.

    Alignment applied to a collective group rather than a choice of individuals also skeezes me out in the way Kantian morality has subhumans written into his anthropology when the dude never left Koenigsburg. That’s not to say through culture, background, and upbringing you can’t have something like the drow and it not be eye-rolley shit. Just that a race ingrained with morality through apparently genetics where if you have someone who does not follow that then they are the exception that proves the rule rather than showing there is variation in that race or society is gross to me. I prefer if they are portrayed consistently without contradiction like Warhammer Orcs/Orks. Edit: that is to say I would prefer that to apply if you are going to be portraying a race as always evil, always chaotic, and/or always savage and not on every race or culture.

    I'm not trying to challenge you or anything because I've only read some Gaunt Ghosts novels and some Heresy stuff... but does not Imperium of Man in 40K (who I guess are the closest think to good guys in that setting?) rely on on indentured servitude as the backbone of the entire galactic society? How does that square?
    Kadoken wrote: »

    However, I also play and GM a 40k RPG where I make clear you do not play with the good guys.

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Also a guy wrote once you can have good-aligned races and civilizations that have slaves.

    Like fuck off.

    Alignment applied to a collective group rather than a choice of individuals also skeezes me out in the way Kantian morality has subhumans written into his anthropology when the dude never left Koenigsburg. That’s not to say through culture, background, and upbringing you can’t have something like the drow and it not be eye-rolley shit. Just that a race ingrained with morality through apparently genetics where if you have someone who does not follow that then they are the exception that proves the rule rather than showing there is variation in that race or society is gross to me. I prefer if they are portrayed consistently without contradiction like Warhammer Orcs/Orks. Edit: that is to say I would prefer that to apply if you are going to be portraying a race as always evil, always chaotic, and/or always savage and not on every race or culture.

    I'm not trying to challenge you or anything because I've only read some Gaunt Ghosts novels and some Heresy stuff... but does not Imperium of Man in 40K (who I guess are the closest think to good guys in that setting?) rely on on indentured servitude as the backbone of the entire galactic society? How does that square?
    Kadoken wrote: »

    However, I also play and GM a 40k RPG where I make clear you do not play with the good guys.

    1m1bC7_hbCjCbsOs6gNddCgwllKCaJ7QRhNsIjNpSak.jpg?width=643&auto=webp&s=8b5be74c4066e0eb9fef8eb5a7af9ba30d3d9219

    override367 on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    my players are absolutely going to smash the ordening, they wouldn't hold slavery together in tomb of annihilation to maintain the delicate balance of political power, Nyanzaru erupted into conflict, but when the smoked cleared the slaves were free

    They are going to do the same thing to this entire country by smashing the ordening for good

    the cleric player explained to zephyros "We want to find king hecaton because if he can bring the crazy giant rulers in check that would be good, but this upheaval is no different than when a major power leaves a colony and it collapses in the power vacuum - the answer isn't to bring the colonizers back, its to fix things even if it is difficult"

    I am 100% onboard with them flipping the script - they're going to stop all the bad actors, but in the end the ordening will remain shattered

    This is an interesting idea... but for my SKT game I'm running it pretty straight. I am already developing my own fully fleshed out homebrew. I do not also have time to completely re-write how giants work as a society in D&D. :)

    Oh yeah, more power to you, but my players tend to be fairly chaotic (in the real sense not in the edgelord sense) and try to leave society more just even if its messy

    they've correctly pointed out that all the bad giants want the ordening back just with them on top, and only Serissa seems open to actually keeping things the way they are and creating a new beginning for giant kind (frost and fire giants living together, cloud giants selling weather modification services, hill giants acting as unskilled labor in exchange for a metric ton of wheat, chaos!)

    part of that of course means a lot of violence, but I'm integrating strongholds and followers AND acq inq, and streeeeeetching the number of years this campaign takes place in out so they can develop strongholds, forces, and be a real force that can effect change.

    The druid that just joined seems to want to do a lot of that but basically all at once at by himself
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Also a guy wrote once you can have good-aligned races and civilizations that have slaves.

    Like fuck off.

    Alignment applied to a collective group rather than a choice of individuals also skeezes me out in the way Kantian morality has subhumans written into his anthropology when the dude never left Koenigsburg. That’s not to say through culture, background, and upbringing you can’t have something like the drow and it not be eye-rolley shit. Just that a race ingrained with morality through apparently genetics where if you have someone who does not follow that then they are the exception that proves the rule rather than showing there is variation in that race or society is gross to me. I prefer if they are portrayed consistently without contradiction like Warhammer Orcs/Orks.

    I think it might be possible but I cant think of a reason as to why anyone would try to hammer slavery into a society people are supposed to consider good? Like you have to add so many caveats and so much nuance to accomplish that goal that it would probably just be a lot fucking easier for them to not have the social institution of slavery!

    I think you can broadly apply alignments to societies as well - probably easier than to an individual actually, but that says nothing about any individual you're likely to encounter from that place. It's fair to say nazi germany was evil and canada is good, but there's so many caveats on that to be functionally useless

    For the purposes of running a game it can be useful - Waterdeep is lawful good - does have value in game terms, because it tells you that at this place crimes probably won't be tolerated and you probably won't find chromatic dragons hanging out in the open. Menzobarenzen being neutral evil is also useful as a general description for players in the kinds of things that are reasonable to be happening there

    Canada committed genocide on the first nations and tried to destroy their culture as much as America did and as the Germans did to Jewish or African culture.

    The fact that chromatic dragons are assumed to be evil and that it is apparently genetic rather than a choice is a problem for me that apparently there can’t be some that choose to be decent people that they would hang out in Waterdeep.

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    I followed up what I said about canada with "so many caveats to be functionally useless"

    chromatic dragons aren't evil because of genetics, because there's no such thing as genetics in D&D, they're evil because the dragon queen tiamat is evil (thats not to say every chromatic dragon accepts their birthright and doesn't just say fuck that I'll be what I wanna be)

    I think we have to either throw out the secular reasoning of a godless universe if we want our player characters to be able to sleep at night after a battle, good and evil are forces like gravity in dungeons and dragons (and given that there are say, frost giants like harshnag, that can nonetheless reject their god-mandated attitudes, some beings are capable of escaping those forces), or vastly change things up and honestly probably not run violent campaigns (or insist that there's no such thing as a good character)

    there are good chromatic dragons and good devils and evil angels and good gnolls in D&D, but they're the exception because they have to kind of resist the laws of their universe to be so

    override367 on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    I followed up what I said about canada with "so many caveats to be functionally useless"

    chromatic dragons aren't evil because of genetics, because there's no such thing as genetics in D&D, they're evil because the dragon queen tiamat is evil (thats not to say every chromatic dragon accepts their birthright and doesn't just say fuck that I'll be what I wanna be)

    I think we have to either throw out the secular reasoning of a godless universe if we want our player characters to be able to sleep at night after a battle, good and evil are forces like gravity in dungeons and dragons (and given that there are say, frost giants like harshnag, that can nonetheless reject their god-mandated attitudes, some beings are capable of escaping those forces), or vastly change things up and honestly probably not run violent campaigns (or insist that there's no such thing as a good character)

    This is functionally the same thing to me.

    And I don’t believe you have to throw it out even in a god-filled universe. I actively play characters in Dark Heresy that are relative ideal-following golden boys in terms of the universe similar to Cain or Gaunt. Also that reasoning makes the games more interesting to think about for me at least. I mean I like the Punisher to the point I put a knock-off in my DH game but obviously in real life he’d be a nightmare and the fact that other heroes treat him like a nightmare still in their fantastical world is really interesting to me.

    edit: Also half the adventures on my blog are based on that sort of reasoning. Why did the people go all bad and more murdery? They were treated poorly by individuals, groups, or systems. They were lied to, fucked over, and harmed. Chaos is a tool for them, even if they are being corrupted by using it.

    Kadoken on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    I followed up what I said about canada with "so many caveats to be functionally useless"

    chromatic dragons aren't evil because of genetics, because there's no such thing as genetics in D&D, they're evil because the dragon queen tiamat is evil (thats not to say every chromatic dragon accepts their birthright and doesn't just say fuck that I'll be what I wanna be)

    I think we have to either throw out the secular reasoning of a godless universe if we want our player characters to be able to sleep at night after a battle, good and evil are forces like gravity in dungeons and dragons (and given that there are say, frost giants like harshnag, that can nonetheless reject their god-mandated attitudes, some beings are capable of escaping those forces), or vastly change things up and honestly probably not run violent campaigns (or insist that there's no such thing as a good character)

    there are good chromatic dragons and good devils and evil angels and good gnolls in D&D, but they're the exception because they have to kind of resist the laws of their universe to be so

    These things are of interest to me.

  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Also a guy wrote once you can have good-aligned races and civilizations that have slaves.

    Like fuck off.

    Alignment applied to a collective group rather than a choice of individuals also skeezes me out in the way Kantian morality has subhumans written into his anthropology when the dude never left Koenigsburg. That’s not to say through culture, background, and upbringing you can’t have something like the drow and it not be eye-rolley shit. Just that a race ingrained with morality through apparently genetics where if you have someone who does not follow that then they are the exception that proves the rule rather than showing there is variation in that race or society is gross to me. I prefer if they are portrayed consistently without contradiction like Warhammer Orcs/Orks. Edit: that is to say I would prefer that to apply if you are going to be portraying a race as always evil, always chaotic, and/or always savage and not on every race or culture.

    I'm not trying to challenge you or anything because I've only read some Gaunt Ghosts novels and some Heresy stuff... but does not Imperium of Man in 40K (who I guess are the closest think to good guys in that setting?) rely on on indentured servitude as the backbone of the entire galactic society? How does that square?
    Kadoken wrote: »

    However, I also play and GM a 40k RPG where I make clear you do not play with the good guys.

    I saw that, yes. But your stance on good guys and slavery seemed like a very blanket statement, not a specific-to-my-one game statement.

    And while from an outside point of view, the Imperium is a horrible society... everyone within the Imperium views themselves as honorable heroes, the Emperor a beneficent and kindly god (unless you're a heretic or an alien) that will carry your mortal soul to his bosom and blah blah blah. That kind of internal logic doesn't square with me. To put it in D&D terms.... The reader knows the Imperium is Lawful Evil.... while they think of themselves as Lawful Good. If slavery is always Evil (and my god, please realize I'm discussing a fantasy space race here, not anything IRL. Yes, slavery is fucking evil!!!) then how does a civilization that views itself as extremely Good condone slavery as the backbone of its growth and basic functions?

    Edit: It is entirely possible that I just do not "get" how 40K is supposed to function. :)

    Steelhawk on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Also a guy wrote once you can have good-aligned races and civilizations that have slaves.

    Like fuck off.

    Alignment applied to a collective group rather than a choice of individuals also skeezes me out in the way Kantian morality has subhumans written into his anthropology when the dude never left Koenigsburg. That’s not to say through culture, background, and upbringing you can’t have something like the drow and it not be eye-rolley shit. Just that a race ingrained with morality through apparently genetics where if you have someone who does not follow that then they are the exception that proves the rule rather than showing there is variation in that race or society is gross to me. I prefer if they are portrayed consistently without contradiction like Warhammer Orcs/Orks. Edit: that is to say I would prefer that to apply if you are going to be portraying a race as always evil, always chaotic, and/or always savage and not on every race or culture.

    I'm not trying to challenge you or anything because I've only read some Gaunt Ghosts novels and some Heresy stuff... but does not Imperium of Man in 40K (who I guess are the closest think to good guys in that setting?) rely on on indentured servitude as the backbone of the entire galactic society? How does that square?
    Kadoken wrote: »

    However, I also play and GM a 40k RPG where I make clear you do not play with the good guys.

    I saw that, yes. But your stance on good guys and slavery seemed like a very blanket statement, not a specific-to-my-one game statement.

    And while from an outside point of view, the Imperium is a horrible society... everyone within the Imperium views themselves as honorable heroes, the Emperor a beneficent and kindly god (unless you're a heretic or an alien) that will carry your mortal soul to his bosom and blah blah blah. That kind of internal logic doesn't square with me. To put it in D&D terms.... The reader knows the Imperium is Lawful Evil.... while they think of themselves as Lawful Good. If slavery is always Evil (and my god, please realize I'm discussing a fantasy space race here, not anything IRL. Yes, slavery is fucking evil!!!) then how does a civilization that views itself as extremely Good condone slavery as the backbone of its growth and basic functions?

    Edit: It is entirely possible that I just do not "get" how 40K is supposed to function. :)

    I mean it's the same as real life nations and governments whose authority is based upon the threat of violence or continued violence. That's why alignments do not make sense. The Tau, the Eldar, and the Imperium are not that much different from the British Empire, the American Hegemony, or any other historical empires except in scale. The British and Americans thought that by teaching the Indians how to rule right or forcing natives to convert they were carrying out God's work, White Man's Burden, or Manifest Destiny. These people delude(d) themselves into thinking they were right as much as the Nazis thought they were doing right. Same with the Imperium. Now the difference (and the dangerous things some who are sensitive to this will say) is that Imperium kind of has a point in that there are deadly threats, but the lessons and things they take from that point is overblown and creates problems they have to deal with.

    The thing that makes the Imperium interesting is they are the culmination of human evils historical and new.

    Also, 40k was made by 80s punks with interest in military history. You are not supposed to take it on nose. You have to take it firmly with a tongue-in-cheek. They knew the society they made is fucked up.

    edit: Specifically towards slavery, the historical pre-racist pre-chattel type of slavery that the Greeks practiced has that contradiction you mentioned built into it. "Of course there are two seperate classes of Hellenics. There's clearly the master class and those that were meant to be slaves. Thus this is clearly the natural order and we can argue all about morality when we rape our slave boys at night because they're not full master class humans! This makes sense and dipshits will see this and argue it's of its time so that somehow makes it okay!"

    Kadoken on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Kadoken wrote: »
    I followed up what I said about canada with "so many caveats to be functionally useless"

    chromatic dragons aren't evil because of genetics, because there's no such thing as genetics in D&D, they're evil because the dragon queen tiamat is evil (thats not to say every chromatic dragon accepts their birthright and doesn't just say fuck that I'll be what I wanna be)

    I think we have to either throw out the secular reasoning of a godless universe if we want our player characters to be able to sleep at night after a battle, good and evil are forces like gravity in dungeons and dragons (and given that there are say, frost giants like harshnag, that can nonetheless reject their god-mandated attitudes, some beings are capable of escaping those forces), or vastly change things up and honestly probably not run violent campaigns (or insist that there's no such thing as a good character)

    This is functionally the same thing to me.

    And I don’t believe you have to throw it out even in a god-filled universe. I actively play characters in Dark Heresy that are relative ideal-following golden boys in terms of the universe similar to Cain or Gaunt. Also that reasoning makes the games more interesting to think about for me at least. I mean I like the Punisher to the point I put a knock-off in my DH game but obviously in real life he’d be a nightmare and the fact that other heroes treat him like a nightmare still in their fantastical world is really interesting to me.

    edit: Also half the adventures on my blog are based on that sort of reasoning. Why did the people go all bad and more murdery? They were treated poorly by individuals, groups, or systems. They were lied to, fucked over, and harmed. Chaos is a tool for them, even if they are being corrupted by using it.

    That's fine and all, but I feel like you should probably stay away from making moral judgements about other people's D&D games - as written, evil is an actual tangible force and your default Imp or Red Dragon are fairly evil!

    now I'm running my storm kings thunder in Exandria, so there is literally an entire nation made up mostly of dark elves, orcs, goblins, gnolls, hobgoblins, and the like who are just people - because the lot of them have rejected their evil gods and as such are products of their environment and not their heritage. Matt Mercer has created, what I think, is in many ways a more complex and interesting world than the forgotten realms - but the forgotten realms is fine, there's nothing wrong with someone for playing Lost Mines of Phandelvar and just killing the bugbears because they're the bad guys

    You're not the only person who has trouble just placing themselves in a world with gods and predestination and intelligent, inherently evil creatures - if you can't buy that premise without creating uncomfortable real world connections, it isn't going to work for you. If you're okay just hacking down orcs because it's not real life and orcs are neither real nor redeemable - that's fine too. (George RR Martin had some interesting interviews about this in regards to Tolkien, it's a very different story to tell the story of lord of the rings and then to ask "whats next, does aragorn begin a campaign of systemic genocide against the orcs?")

    override367 on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Well, I literally said I don't make an interrupting stink about it in other's people games. I'm not making a judgment on your game, I am making a judgment in what I would rather see in mine and hope the GM shares my sensibilities. If not, I will deal or just leave.

    Edit: Like I'm not judging Steelhawk for running SKT straightforwardly. I would just rather not play in that game as much as Fry said he would be uncomfortable in the group I played with. I fully understand these different views and I respect that each of us has a preference.

    Kadoken on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Kadoken wrote: »
    I followed up what I said about canada with "so many caveats to be functionally useless"

    chromatic dragons aren't evil because of genetics, because there's no such thing as genetics in D&D, they're evil because the dragon queen tiamat is evil (thats not to say every chromatic dragon accepts their birthright and doesn't just say fuck that I'll be what I wanna be)

    I think we have to either throw out the secular reasoning of a godless universe if we want our player characters to be able to sleep at night after a battle, good and evil are forces like gravity in dungeons and dragons (and given that there are say, frost giants like harshnag, that can nonetheless reject their god-mandated attitudes, some beings are capable of escaping those forces), or vastly change things up and honestly probably not run violent campaigns (or insist that there's no such thing as a good character)

    This is functionally the same thing to me.

    And I don’t believe you have to throw it out even in a god-filled universe. I actively play characters in Dark Heresy that are relative ideal-following golden boys in terms of the universe similar to Cain or Gaunt. Also that reasoning makes the games more interesting to think about for me at least. I mean I like the Punisher to the point I put a knock-off in my DH game but obviously in real life he’d be a nightmare and the fact that other heroes treat him like a nightmare still in their fantastical world is really interesting to me.

    edit: Also half the adventures on my blog are based on that sort of reasoning. Why did the people go all bad and more murdery? They were treated poorly by individuals, groups, or systems. They were lied to, fucked over, and harmed. Chaos is a tool for them, even if they are being corrupted by using it.

    That's fine and all, but I feel like you should probably stay away from making moral judgements about other people's D&D games - as written, evil is an actual tangible force and your default Imp or Red Dragon are fairly evil!

    now I'm running my storm kings thunder in Exandria, so there is literally an entire nation made up mostly of dark elves, orcs, goblins, gnolls, hobgoblins, and the like who are just people - because the lot of them have rejected their evil gods and as such are products of their environment and not their heritage. Matt Mercer has created, what I think, is in many ways a more complex and interesting world than the forgotten realms - but the forgotten realms is fine, there's nothing wrong with someone for playing Lost Mines of Phandelvar and just killing the bugbears because they're the bad guys

    You're not the only person who has trouble just placing themselves in a world with gods and predestination and intelligent, inherently evil creatures - if you can't buy that premise without creating uncomfortable real world connections, it isn't going to work for you. If you're okay just hacking down orcs because it's not real life and orcs are neither real nor redeemable - that's fine too. (George RR Martin had some interesting interviews about this in regards to Tolkien, it's a very different story to tell the story of lord of the rings and then to ask "whats next, does aragorn begin a campaign of systemic genocide against the orcs?")

    I can buy that premise it depends on how the portrayal of it is. I can also buy that premise and make uncomfortable real-world connections. I am still playing DnD and have been consistently every weekend for the past few months while doing both. If I am GMing or if the GM is of a similar mind they can also change these things and if they won't then I will just have to deal with it or leave.

    edit: Even if what you said is true and it is a world of absolute blacks and whites and predestination and total control by the gods and I am choosing to play with a GM who wants that strictly, I still would act within my framework of mind. One of my favorite mangas is Berserk which concerns itself with individuality and defying fate even if it makes no sense. I'll be your fantasy Jacobin. I'll cooperate enthusiastically, kindly, and try to make the game fun for everyone. I'm not going to get rid of that mindset. These things you mention are not mutually exclusive to me.

    Kadoken on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    Oh okay, yeah you and the cleric in my game are of a mind on that

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Oh okay, yeah you and the cleric in my game are of a mind on that

    The difference is I wouldn't go "ew gross" in-game and disrupt you for several minutes. Also I talk to the GM about the tone of the game we're playing, the expectations, and about how I am going to go with his vision and that I won't try to exclusively be main-character-chan.

    Also after all that you're really going to compare us?

    I actually do aim to be cooperative with everyone and make sure everyone is alright and wouldn't leave in the middle of a session. I have had sessions where I was absolutely bored but stuck it out for the rest. I had a game where I stuck it out for two months after getting bored because I didn't want to ruin it for everyone else.

    Kadoken on
  • SchadenfreudeSchadenfreude Mean Mister Mustard Registered User regular
    A wizard academy would only need one shower because 98% of the students would just Prestidigitate their filth away. It's probably a requirement for entry just on cleanliness grounds.

    Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    A wizard academy would only need one shower because 98% of the students would just Prestidigitate their filth away. It's probably a requirement for entry just on cleanliness grounds.

    or teleport it from their pants apparently

    See all that shit I would just laugh

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    A wizard academy would only need one shower because 98% of the students would just Prestidigitate their filth away. It's probably a requirement for entry just on cleanliness grounds.

    prestidigitation doesn't technically clean creatures by raw, it's established in at least my game that it'll work to get surface grime off but adventurers still feel pretty grungy after a few months travelling in the wilds even with it - they have basically super abilities that take a tenday of rest in an appropriate level of comfort to their character to recharge and for the rogue and sorceress that means access to swankiness including baths, fine wine, servants of some kind, and scented candles. The cleric has to have access to either a mortuary or a clinic to recharge his ability.

    (also a previous ruling that you have to *see* the thing you're using it on, because of precedent involving several of its functions in areas they can't see)

    I hadn't actually thought about it but now that it's come up, next session one of the professors will be using the shower and she'll have a small fog cloud acting like a mobile censor bar while a coterie of unseen servants do all the work - including the drying and redressing - to demonstrate how a wizard gets ready in the morning

    override367 on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Oh okay, yeah you and the cleric in my game are of a mind on that

    The difference is I wouldn't go "ew gross" in-game and disrupt you for several minutes. Also I talk to the GM about the tone of the game we're playing, the expectations, and about how I am going to go with his vision and that I won't try to exclusively be main-character-chan.

    Also after all that you're really going to compare us?

    I actually do aim to be cooperative with everyone and make sure everyone is alright and wouldn't leave in the middle of a session. I have had sessions where I was absolutely bored but stuck it out for the rest. I had a game where I stuck it out for two months after getting bored because I didn't want to ruin it for everyone else.

    you're misunderstanding, the cleric is my favorite player, hes the one that broke the slavery system in nyanzaru and is committed to breaking the ordening

    the druid is the "That guy"

    I wouldn't be running my game in Exandria if I didn't want people to question the morality of established systems :surprised:

    The cleric picked a cleric of the Cobalt Soul after watching critical role season 2 and hearing this from one of Matt Mercer's NPCs:
    Learn about injustice. Those you don’t trust, follow them, bend them. Make them tell the truth and admit their guilt. Find wherever corruption is, root it out and let the system do its job. And if the system isn’t doing its job, destroy the system.

    and it's led to a delightful character. He's also a creepy plague doctor with 8 charisma so he frequently gets mistaken for a villain and is poor at explaining his way out of situations, which is wonderful.

    override367 on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Oh okay, yeah you and the cleric in my game are of a mind on that

    The difference is I wouldn't go "ew gross" in-game and disrupt you for several minutes. Also I talk to the GM about the tone of the game we're playing, the expectations, and about how I am going to go with his vision and that I won't try to exclusively be main-character-chan.

    Also after all that you're really going to compare us?

    I actually do aim to be cooperative with everyone and make sure everyone is alright and wouldn't leave in the middle of a session. I have had sessions where I was absolutely bored but stuck it out for the rest. I had a game where I stuck it out for two months after getting bored because I didn't want to ruin it for everyone else.

    you're misunderstanding, the cleric is my favorite player, hes the one that broke the slavery system in nyanzaru and is committed to breaking the ordening

    the druid is the "That guy"

    I wouldn't be running my game in Exandria if I didn't want people to question the morality of established systems :surprised:

    I am sorry I forgot who is who. I will take that as a complement rather than an insult.

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    Thats what it was meant as, I originally misunderstood your point, as long as you aren't trying to force other players to act in the same way I'm 100% buying what you're selling

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Thats what it was meant as, I originally misunderstood your point, as long as you aren't trying to force other players to act in the same way I'm 100% buying what you're selling

    I’m not. Because it’s a related issue, my problem with my problem player, as said, isn’t that he’s isn’t playing in the same weird critical theory + critical role school as the rest of us, it’s he’s disruptive and obnoxious. If he wants to be big loud paladin of conquest and build his warband it would be great (especially with that warband helping us a couple of times) and he’s free to do that as long as it’s not annoying or harming us as players or characters that it becomes unfun or disruptive. I will bring up and joke about the things genuinely and non-passive-aggressively but not get into long winded rambling discussions ingame and I never demand my GM, my players, or my fellow players to change to my whims.

    Kadoken on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    I kind of felt morally conflicted about killing the black dragon in Mines of Phandelin.

    On one hand in character, the guy hasn’t actually done anything to me or any other sapients as far as I know. Related to above (also with my GM thinking similar to me) I wasn’t going to automatically assume he was evil based on his chromatic scale.

    On the other hand as a player, I don’t like most dragons I have seen in fantasy media and DnD streams because they’re generally extremely prideful and if you give them a hand at the table they will start thinking of themselves as ubermensch that need to patronizingly “guide” the races at best and treat them as vermin at worst. Worse than Elves and the like who can possibly think the same thing and at least elves are easier to kill.

    On the first hand, my character had to earn everything they now had from a position of weakness and disinheritance and has a decent grasp of the nature of dragons and knows about their modus operandi. She’s not a fan of the pride thing nor their privilege through birth basically in terms of their power, intelligence, and strength. Also while she has learned to be kinder and trusting to the point she is willing to hear the black spider out after talking to one of his dead lieutenants and learning the guy is scared of everyone and might be like her, a self-made-outcast, she still has her original motive of gaining more power to feel more secure and self sufficient. The dragon would be a good test of her newfound strength.

    On the third eldritch hand, the tortle player tried to suck the soul of dragon when it died with his lantern that speaks with the old ones and instead fantasy Cthulhu-Lucifer came out for a sec except we didn’t see that and now the lantern’s acting a bit weird.

    I do not know (except for the player-based stuff) how much my GM has changed the adventure so those that have played it might be on two different types of adventures in terms of tone but I think he wanted to keep to the book closely to have less work in GMing a system he doesn’t have as much mastery in.

    Edit: also he wouldn’t eat a dead fresh dragon cultist he didn’t like to whom I also attempted to Mr. T and convince them to quote, “stop being punks,” when the tortle was compelled by the lantern to crush them like it was Mario. Now in the conversation I did realize their group, but not these cultists, did human sacrifices and I was getting closer to curb stomping them when they were tied up but I wanted to give them a chance.

    Kadoken on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    I mentioned that my players created a town, I'm looking for a better way to organize this (into something I can easily show my players), but I've been using the sims of all things to create portraits for them and it seems to work pretty good. I use onenote right now as follows, so I can take notes on individual town npcs when they run into them (humans and the new race they created, the volkair)

    gvadoLB.png

    I'm wondering what the best solution would be to easily share portraits+notes the party knows about about a largish number of npcs (up to 65 at this point) as onenote doesn't work great for that, I could use GMBinder or something but that requires a mountain of formatting

    override367 on
  • ToxTox I kill threads he/himRegistered User regular
    OneNote actually works great as a shared document, iirc, you just make sure to share the doc view-only? I think is what you want

    Twitter! | Dilige, et quod vis fac
  • ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    Aldo wrote: »
    The more I think about it, the more the guy sounds like a narcissist. Just the right amount of charm to wedge himself into any social gathering, but without a single thought given to the feelings of anyone but himself. The fact that 2 of your players would just walk away from your table, because he told them to is a bad sign. The longer you let him enter your house, the likelier it'll get that he will convince other players to leave your game. Narcissistic people don't handle rejection well and will manipulate others to get what they want.

    my other players hate him and want him gone as soon as possible

    Then, as much you are not looking forwards to doing it..... you know what you gotta do.

    First, select your d20.

    And then, select the asshole.

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    I use obsidian portal for my campaign management. You have basic tags you can use for formatting, but don't have to go whole hog or anything, and you can generate pages and links on the fly. It's pretty nice.

    Steam ID: Webguy20
    Origin ID: Discgolfer27
    Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2019
    Tox wrote: »
    OneNote actually works great as a shared document, iirc, you just make sure to share the doc view-only? I think is what you want

    Hows it work on mobile view?

    I have been using worldanvil for world management and its really good but I want to put a whole pile of NPCs on one page

    override367 on
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