Season 07 Episode 02

[Stu Venable]

Season 07 Episode 02

Our periodic voice mail episode, complete with technical difficulties!

Sent from my LS670 using ProBoards

[lordvanduu]

After the mention of Stork's staff with a d20 on top that has all ones, I tried googling for a die like that but couldn't find one. Anyone know of somewhere that sells dice like that?

Technical problems aside ( ) I liked this episode. Keep up the good work, gents.

[HyveMynd]

Glad to see (hear?) that the episode recorded OK on your end, guys. I wouldn't have been able to get through the start of the work week without my Monday afternoon HJ's audio injection.

I had left the chat room by then to prep for a game of Cosmic Patrol I was running the next day, but that random 13 second voice mail was definitely not Japanese. I not sure what language it was, but I'm guessing it was probably Chinese. There are a number of Chinese instructors at my school, and the sounds in that voice mail were similar to their conversations.

I had to put my hand over my mouth and stifle giggles when Stu and Stork lost it like that. I can only imagine JiB's face, which made it all the funnier. I'm looking forward to when you guys start doing a video cast. Hopefully you'll get that set up before the 2000 listener topless episode. ;D

[otherdoc]

Wow. I wonder if this means my next voice message should be in Mandarin...

[Stu Venable]

I don't know why Stork and I lost our shit so badly.

Maybe it's because I'd warned that voicemails were unscreened like five times before we played a wrong number?

I almost stopped recording, but I couldn't find the space bar.

I'd love to know what she said.

[Nolinquisitor]

I'm pretty positive about the fact that if the belching into the mic, the swearing, Tappy's weak resistance to alcohol and JiB's tongue piercing are no issues... then technical difficulties and chinese voice mail call won't be either.

Your reaction to it was hilarious! And the unannounced Kimi at the end was a nice surprise.

Keep the good show going. Kudos to all.

[Deleted]

I was that Punk Rocker character in Jib's game of Hero: Sleeper at last Strategicon.

That was fun!

Andy

[uselesstriviaman]

RE: Gamers in the military

I compressed more gaming in the year I was stationed overseas (Korea) than I had in the previous ten years combined. In a span of about eight months, I gamed almost every single day. We took a group of 2nd Ed D&D characters from 1st level all the way up past 25th level! That's also where I got introduced to both Rolemaster and Palladium RPGs. We used to joke about it, "You either become an alcoholic or find a hobby" because there just wasn't shit to do in your downtime.

[willh]

Jan 26, 2012 9:06:26 GMT -8 uselesstriviaman said:

"You either become an alcoholic or find a hobby"

That's a false dichotomy.

[jazzisblues]

Jan 25, 2012 12:22:22 GMT -8 Nolinquisitor said:

I'm pretty positive about the fact that if the belching into the mic, the swearing, Tappy's weak resistance to alcohol and JiB's tongue piercing are no issues... then technical difficulties and chinese voice mail call won't be either.

Your reaction to it was hilarious! And the unannounced Kimi at the end was a nice surprise.

Keep the good show going. Kudos to all.

Tongue piercing Since when did I get a tongue piercing

JiB

[Henry Hankovitch]

I'm glad somebody finally called/emailed in to explain about why AC is totally okay because it's just an abstraction of your reflexes, luck, defenses, peevishness, and distracting body odor! I look forward to hearing a different listener explain this to us every week!

Time to muddy the waters a little bit.

The idea of AC as an extremely loose abstraction is not bad in and of itself. What is bad about D&D's use of it--3E in particular--is the uneven narrative results caused by this abstraction. In D&D, the abstraction of AC and HP means that targeting an enemy's HP is possibly the least useful method of attacking them, because reducing HP has no negative consequences for the target until they actually dip below 1.

But this is fine, because AC is just an abstraction, blah blah blah. Apply your metaphor of choice for what it represents, and move on, right? Except that D&D is also a game where effects like magic spells are spelled out in excruciating, mathematical detail. The amount of horse meat that can be exploded via an Explosive Horseflesh spell is calculated down to the cubic foot, along with blast radius, damage, the effects of nausea on the horse-splattered targets, and the amount of HP lost by the targeted horse per cubic foot of flesh exploded, and the direction and distance it runs in panic before finally collapsing.

So we are given a system where hitting someone with an axe is almost meaningless--where it has no mechanical effect beyond (hopefully) reducing the target's HP, and can be equally badly-described by whatever metaphor the player chooses. Conversely, hitting someone with a spell or other magical effect is described in very specific, useful terms. No abstraction required; no handwavey discussions about how Hold Person is actually reducing a character's self-esteem, forcing them to stand in place contemplating their meaninglessness in the face of an infinite universe.

If every other mechanism in D&D was as heavily abstracted as AC and HP, it would be one of those fuzzy, storytelling games where the players are given grand license to narrate events based on the dice. And if melee combat were given the sort of specific, mechanical effects that magic historically has enjoyed, it would be 4th Edition. Or Tome of Battle. (Which amount to the same thing anyway.)

Anyway, congratulations, good show, look forward to hearing next week's voicemail explaining how we just don't understand that AC is actually an abstract narrative mechanic.