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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2016 1:37:02 GMT -8
Hippie games is a meaningless term like meta gaming is to most people. It's just a way to condem something you don't like. Odd to express that view here since you must know you are in the minority of happy jacks listeners. That said, your second paragraph mirrors other people's sentiments and has nothing to do with first. A hippie story game is a game where the players affect change beyond the scope of what their characters can accomplish. The words have meaning, even if you claim otherwise. If you don't understand the words, then their underlying message is still true, regardless of your ability to comprehend it. If you're playing a hippie story game, your GM might be encouraged to "Yes, and..." your inclusion of ninjas into the setting. This would not happen if you were playing an actual RPG, where the line between player and GM is clearly delineated and cannot be crossed.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2016 1:44:20 GMT -8
Hippie games is a meaningless term like meta gaming is to most people. It's just a way to condem something you don't like. Odd to express that view here since you must know you are in the minority of happy jacks listeners. That said, your second paragraph mirrors other people's sentiments and has nothing to do with first. A hippie story game is a game where the players affect change beyond the scope of what their characters can accomplish. The words have meaning, even if you claim otherwise. If you don't understand the words, then their underlying message is still true, regardless of your ability to comprehend it. If you're playing a hippie story game, your GM might be encouraged to "Yes, and..." your inclusion of ninjas into the setting. This would not happen if you were playing an actual RPG, where the line between player and GM is clearly delineated and cannot be crossed. I said hippie games, not story games. The fact that you say hippie story games shows your prejudice. Your definition might be taken seriously if you weren't snearing down your nose by terming it a hippie game. Also, it's not the definition of a story game that is so much the issue, it's the fact that you exclude it from being a role playing game. The makers of first person shooters don't get to exclude strategy games from the Catagory of videos games. Similarly, changing the definition of RPG's to only fit your game of choice is equally invalid.
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Post by ilina on Mar 26, 2016 1:45:06 GMT -8
in d20, it was easy for a character with class levels to outshine a monster of a CR equivalent to their class levels. a level 10 fighter had a 60% chance of winning a fight against a CR 10 monster. and in the Challenge Rating formulae, 1 Class level is Equivalent to 1 rank of Challenge Rating Uh huh. Insert comment here about pigs flying. Other than high level magic users, a monster of equal CR to player level should win every time. I certainly would pick to have a monster race every time in regards to strongest character with your rules. Many monsters have more hit dice than their CR and great stat boosts. Sure, you may low out on a few features, but the raw power of the race is almost always better. See the pathfinder entry for degenerate serpentfolk if you want a good example of how honkers broken it can be. the monster won at the low levels. but class levels were generally better later on, unless you were blatantly seeking to minmax a martially inclined character and the sheer size or anatomy of most of said monsters, generally denied them access to quite a few magic items and even limited access to such things as spells or other abilities that scaled with level hit dice and stat boosts look cool on paper, but don't do much in practice when most of the magical loot you can acquire isn't fitted to your monstrous size or your monstrous anatomy. in fact, stuff like Centuars, Serpentfolk, Yuan-Ti or Wemics actually don't even have a pants slot or a feet slot for magic items. and most large creatures have a difficult time finding the large sized armor they require, because i generally don't use magic mart and enforce such things as gear prices modified by size and anatomy. plus, being a generally larger monster also means you are an easy target to hit and generally have difficulty entering enclosed spaces. i actually use a monster's weaknesses, size, and anatomy against them. most monstrous races are screwed the moment you use common sense against them. in other words, a bird man with wings on his back better be willing to accept that his shirt will have to be backless to acommodate the wingspan and accept that an attack from behind will ignore any torso armor he wears. snake man better accept that he won't be able to wear shoes or trousers. snake man may be able to wear a kilt, just not an armored kilt because it would be too constricting.
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Post by ilina on Mar 26, 2016 1:55:45 GMT -8
even with the use of a monster's challenge rating as an effective level adjustment. i don't get many people who actually play a monster for the stat bonuses, because of the racial drawbacks that limit the monster and keep them in line. usually, it sucks for the ogre when the ogre is physically incapable of crossing the bridge without it collapsing under his weight. so the player of the ogre starts to realize, that the strength bonus is not worth being unable to cross bridges, so they end up playing something more normal.
and most of the reasonable humanoid monsters, i have a much weaker conversion for that can be used in place of the monster entry with a much lower level loss. sometimes not any, if the monster conversion is weak enough.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2016 1:57:52 GMT -8
I said hippie games, not story games. The fact that you say hippie story games shows your prejudice. Your definition might be taken seriously if you weren't snearing down your nose by terming it a hippie game. "Hippie game" is a mildly-derogatory term for "story game". If I just called it a "story game", then some people might be led to believe that I approve of them in any way whatsoever. If there are hippie games out there which do not pursue their hippie agenda through story mechanics, then I haven't seen one yet.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2016 2:04:08 GMT -8
I said hippie games, not story games. The fact that you say hippie story games shows your prejudice. Your definition might be taken seriously if you weren't snearing down your nose by terming it a hippie game. "Hippie game" is a mildly-derogatory term for "story game". If I just called it a "story game", then some people might be led to believe that I approve of them in any way whatsoever. If there are hippie games out there which do not pursue their hippie agenda through story mechanics, then I haven't seen one yet. What hippie agenda!? I've never seen a RPG that is telling people to burn bras, smoke dope, or not to shower. Why the hippies? You could condescend with any number of terms, yet you choose to go after the hippies. I don't get it. Why not just call it a stupid or retarded story game if you really must constantly bag on it?
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Post by ilina on Mar 26, 2016 2:18:57 GMT -8
Degenerate Serpent Folk reversed Engineered
5 Monstrous Humanoid Hit Dice at CR 4
+10 Strength +8 Constitution, +2 to dexterity and wisdom, -6 to intelligence and -4 to charisma
Telepathy out to 100 feet. immune to mind effects, paralysis and poison
spell resistance
a poisonous bite
+8 to escape artist
the Downsides
Serpentine Tail, meaning no ability to wear shoes and no ability to wear leg armor of any kind, forced to wear common kilts.
due to spell resistance, the caster using a spell to heal or buff the serpentfolk, is going to have a painful time trying to heal or buff them. a wand of cure light wounds is going to need 14+their class level to even heal them. so to heal a serpentfolk with 5 levels of fighter, a standard healing wand needs a 19 on the die. this gets harder as the serpent folk gets higher level
while they are immune to mind effects. it generally means they can't benefit from heroism, bardic performance or heroes feast either. makes it a pain when everybody is being buffed by the bard except for you
they are monstrous humanoids, not proper humanoids. due to their immunity to mind effects. this simply means they cannot be enlarged, most fighters want to be enlarged for the reach in many tactical scenarios, because they can't be enlarged, this cuts off a whole tactical avenue for them, especially one that works against larger monsters. the lack of ability to be enlarged, means they eat lots of opportunity attacks
because they can't wear leg armor, their armor class would be a lot lower than somebody who actually could. their +7 natural armor doesn't stack with abilities that actually provide it. meaning they only have a 2 point lead over the best amulet, which is crushed by them not being able to wear leg armor or magic boots.
it also doesn't say they have control over thier telepathy, so every time they use it, they are broadcasting their position to everyone within 100 feet of them, both friend and foe. they can not narrow down or single out individual targets.
darkvision is an extremely common racial ability and scent can be replicated by buying a cheap dog.
the bite is also a secondary natural attack, eating a -5 to hit and adding half strength bonus to damage,
and with their low intelligence, there is a huge chance that they might be not gaining skill points when leveling up.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2016 2:30:55 GMT -8
What hippie agenda!? I've never seen a RPG that is telling people to burn bras, smoke dope, or not to shower. Why the hippies? You could condescend with any number of terms, yet you choose to go after the hippies. I don't get it. Why not just call it a stupid or retarded story game if you really must constantly bag on it? Part of the literal, textbook definition of "hippie" is that it is counter-cultural - it goes against the established culture of how things are done. That's not automatically a bad thing, and hippies themselves seemed to be okay with the label (as far as I'm aware). By calling it a "hippie game", I'm saying that it's not part of the mainstream established hobby; by calling it a "hippie story game", I'm clarifying that it's not part of the mainstream because of its emphasis on story (rather than traditional RPG values). It's not a matter of intelligence or complexity, and seriously, those kinds of insults can be pretty offensive. Nobody chooses to have low intelligence, and insulting someone for that is just not cool. People do choose which games to play and support, though. They take a stand to support the establishment, or to reject it, or to simply not care - to be Lawful, or Chaotic, or Neutral - and it's perfectly acceptable to call people out on their informed choices.
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Post by ilina on Mar 26, 2016 2:50:28 GMT -8
a lot of monstrous power races in RPGs become quite underpowered when you intentionally remind yourself to apply common sense and remember weaknesses the monster actually possesses, even if it is something like an unusual anatomy or an unusual size. there are many cases where a monster's size or anatomy can actually screw them over quite often.
at the same time, most species that have a lot of things that appear to be advantages, those advantages tend to have disadvantages built in. and well, most monstrous races are gimmick races solely designed around one specific gimmick. and when that gimmick isn't in play, many of them drop quite low in power.
a pixie might appear to be a good rogue via perpetual invisibility and flight, but there are many common senses that allow you to detect a pixie, such as hearing and smell for example, and a pixie rogue can't open any door being warded by an iron horseshoe or the equivalent or physically touch anything made of iron without taking damage from the fae equivalent to an allergic reaction. they can technically tolerate steel, which is made by mixing the iron with carbon, but pure iron still screws them over.
a man with an iron ring can literally kill a pixie with damage over time by holding the pixie's bare hand with the hand wearing the iron ring, yes, i actually will look to mythology for commonly known weaknesses.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2016 2:56:52 GMT -8
I beg to differ. I've seen people chose stupidity and ignorance. It's this idiotic idea that people are born one way and have no ability to better their position that gets my goat. Even people who are actually mentally challenged can improve. Most of us have no excuse. And more importantly, almost no one cares what excuse you might have. I've seen someone who graduated college fail to make a box of mac and cheese. It's embarrassing. And you can't tell me that a person can pass algebra and English 101 and not be able to do it. They choose to not pay attention or try until they can get it right because it's easier to give up. In my book, what makes you stupid is that you give up trying to learn. It also makes you weak.
Tirade over. Again, stop trying to define what is and what is not mainstream (also, lmao, traditional RPG values). PbtA could be said to be fairly mainstream by today's standards. I'm certain you would call that a hippy game. FATE is also fairly big. I'm pretty sure every game shop is currently carrying the Star Wars games by FFG as well. Given that the entire industry isn't even 50 years old, it's hard to call anything traditional about it (maybe the picture of the demon from the cover, that was really traditional at the time... Not).
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Post by Kainguru on Mar 26, 2016 3:53:10 GMT -8
FTR - I was referring specifically to the'ninja' class as it appeared in the likes of White Dwarf and The Dragon 'back in the day': the supreme martial artist with melee prowess, stealth and magic. You know, Batman!!!. Hell we only just got our heads around the Monk in a European centric fantasy setting then along comes 'the Ninja' with a rationalisation equally as oblique as the Monk. Not to mention the fucking Anti-Paladin: "yeah I'm a tough bastard except I gotta do evil cause I'm an Anti-Paladin, I cause wounds with a touch instead of heal and I want an unholy avenger and my mount should be red dragon because they're evil and I'm an anti-paladin and I'm gonna be a dick to everyone else at the table cause it's what my character would do". Fuck that shit, the hobby was young then but, like us, it's all growed up now . . . Aaron
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