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Decline Critical role ruined PnP

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
28,111
1684487717981.png
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,208
Apocalypse world was weirdly fixated on sex and swearing, a 15 year old's idea of mature. The newest version of it has stripped a lot of that out, funnily enough.

There's plenty of PbtA hacks that don't use the sex moves. I'm personally partial to the death moves - when your character dies, you can do certain things.

The Dungeon World gut being weird has nothing to do with the Apocalypse World guys being juvenile though.

Sure, but it set a bad precedent. I also accidentally mixed up the two, but it seems DWorld isn't much better, kek.
 

Alex

Arcane
Joined
Jun 14, 2007
Messages
8,752
Location
São Paulo - Brasil
Apocalypse world was weirdly fixated on sex and swearing, a 15 year old's idea of mature. The newest version of it has stripped a lot of that out, funnily enough.

There's plenty of PbtA hacks that don't use the sex moves. I'm personally partial to the death moves - when your character dies, you can do certain things.

The Dungeon World gut being weird has nothing to do with the Apocalypse World guys being juvenile though.

Sure, but it set a bad precedent. I also accidentally mixed up the two, but it seems DWorld isn't much better, kek.

I'm as opposed to any depiction of sex in game as the next guy. In fact, I am probably more opposed to it than most... But all this sounds like such a dumb scandal for nothing.

I mean, the Apocalypse World game having sex moves is really dumb, but not any more dumb than cramming sexuality in every other series that comes out for tv, which is exactly what it was trying to replicate. Thankfully, it is easy enough to remove the mechanics from the game without really losing anything.

As for the guy with the weird game sex scene, people need to learn how to handle weird people in their games. Here is a guide:

20111118-pissworld.png
 

NecroLord

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Sep 6, 2022
Messages
8,928
Location
Southeastern Yurop
DARE YOU ENTER MY MAGICAL REALM?
Classic.

Alex Sex is not bad, as far as this biological imperative goes, but it becomes bad when it is included or forced into a story and the characters who are doing it.
Perhaps Tyranicon will like to add something. :smug:
 

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
6,091
DARE YOU ENTER MY MAGICAL REALM?
Classic.

Alex Sex is not bad, as far as this biological imperative goes, but it becomes bad when it is included or forced into a story and the characters who are doing it.
Perhaps Tyranicon will like to add something. :smug:

A lot of sex in a tabletop game usually leads to either your group getting grossed out and reducing sex to a minimum, or a real-life orgy. The desirability of which is dependent on the composition and attractiveness of your group.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,208
Supposedly, the presence of "sex moves" in the Apocalypse games is because the writer behind the OG game used pnp games to flirt with girls or something like that. He probably played Vampire.
 

Alex

Arcane
Joined
Jun 14, 2007
Messages
8,752
Location
São Paulo - Brasil
DARE YOU ENTER MY MAGICAL REALM?
Classic.

Alex Sex is not bad, as far as this biological imperative goes, but it becomes bad when it is included or forced into a story and the characters who are doing it.
Perhaps Tyranicon will like to add something. :smug:
Problem with sex is that it leads to a suffused environment where the due respect to it is impossible. Sex isn't bad, of course, but it must be kept where it is proper, in the holy institution of the marriage, not on the game table.
 

RPK

Scholar
Joined
Apr 25, 2017
Messages
340
DARE YOU ENTER MY MAGICAL REALM?
Classic.

Alex Sex is not bad, as far as this biological imperative goes, but it becomes bad when it is included or forced into a story and the characters who are doing it.
Perhaps Tyranicon will like to add something. :smug:
Problem with sex is that it leads to a suffused environment where the due respect to it is impossible. Sex isn't bad, of course, but it must be kept where it is proper, in the holy institution of the marriage, not on the game table.
Sex on the game table is terrible. Have you ever rolled over onto a d4? it's even worse than stepping on a Lego.
 

Caim

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2013
Messages
15,717
Location
Dutchland
DARE YOU ENTER MY MAGICAL REALM?
Classic.

Alex Sex is not bad, as far as this biological imperative goes, but it becomes bad when it is included or forced into a story and the characters who are doing it.
Perhaps Tyranicon will like to add something. :smug:
Problem with sex is that it leads to a suffused environment where the due respect to it is impossible. Sex isn't bad, of course, but it must be kept where it is proper, in the holy institution of the marriage, not on the game table.
Sex on the game table is terrible. Have you ever rolled over onto a d4? it's even worse than stepping on a Lego.
Anal beads except it's d4s.
 

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
6,091
Perhaps Tyranicon will like to add something. :smug:
This is why he makes SINGLE PLAYER games. Actual sex in a multiplayer game is just weird and wrong.
More accurately, I think roleplaying having sex with a bunch of nerds is just really weird because most people don't want to know their friends' weird basement fetishes.

Some things are better off as a mystery.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
What TTRPGs aren't about is fucking around for four hours doing improv theatre as a form of shitty therapy. Talking back and forth in character forever and putting on stupid voices to do it. Just go be a theatre kid and fuck off.
Yeah, hard disagree. There are tabletops designed for such a playstyle and there are tabletops which are designed for opposite playstyles. D&D is - or, rather, was, for majority of its history - clearly not well suited for extensive roleplay, it doesn't provide mechanical structure for it, which is why it ends up being a detached improvised theatre. D&D is a questing tabletop game. It structures itself around quests which are adventures when it comes to their content. It works best if its a quest about killing things, but heists or investigations can work as well.
Dungeons & Dragons is straightforward in what it's on about. It's a fucking dungeon-crawling system, complete with boss fights. That's it. Everything else is an afterthought, and it shows. People who claim D&D is about deep roleplay and non-dungeon-crawling encounters are fucking lunatics. Sure, you can do that in D&D, but it's either freeform RP trash or someone is about to break the quest with a couple of dicerolls or spells. You need gentleman's agreements to stop that system from collapsing from its own brokenness.
 

Laz Sundays

Educated
Joined
Jan 12, 2020
Messages
154
I love parts of the first critical Role Vecna campaign. It certainly influenced Stranger things, I'm thinking. I also love Matthew "Greyhawk" Mercer and his obvious talent'n' all. OTOH : I hate ole Matt for actually believing that DnD is for everyone. It fucking isn't. His merry gang of voicefags didn't FUCKING BOTHER to learn a single FUCKING THING about RULES in 2 f-u-u-ucking years, man = except their resident joker, Sam f. Riegel. Imagine. The fuck am I watching. Watching that cleric b was an insult to any support soul, and a torture for powerplayers. Guest characters rocked, and some were better healers than that blonde poor person meryl streep garden toolerino. Everyone who ever raged at bad support is going to hate seeing her choices. Blaming Matt for not suggesting them and giving clear tips off-or-on camera. They suuuucked at the gameeee, ffs.

You gotta understand: the only, ONLY reason that show was not epic is because they wasted time sucking eachother through roleplays and never BOTHERED to actually LEARN THE GAME.. OUT OF RESPECT FOR IT, IF NOTHING!! Yes, it makes me madly butthurt. Yes, it did ruin DnD for everyone. And yes, it had potential to shine. Fuck. I'm mad because it didn't. Asking me to watch second campaign is like asking me to be happy about being sad. Fuck them and fuck Matt for not training his guests and enforcing ruleset on 'em. They're fucking actors and it should've upgraded from "night at the house with the crew" to "job, learn the lines we recording yo", but fucking Matt is just in his cloud. He thinks everyone can dig it but doesnt actually teach them anything, he's all into scenes and visualizing them. Goddamit it was sooo close..

They had Sam's bard scry his love interest through magical turd. They had a deranged junkie roleplay a dragonborn ( !!! + watch Critical role's first campaign, it's a MUST. But remember to fforward alot ). THey had a Barbarian use Rage to pick up loot faster. They had the B E S T forced(!!) dual classing - which you can only see among the best tabletop sessions in your life - of a Rogue to a fricking Paladin. Characters, enemies, memes, STUDIO JOKES where Sam R shines, the maniac. Fan art of highest quality shown in pauses, later a video - intro where they recorded themselves dressed as their characters.. The whole package.. ruined by laziness of those fucking casuals, man.

And that's when I found out that majority of their fans are twitterfags. Made more enemies than Putin.
 

Dhaze

Cipher
Joined
Apr 1, 2022
Messages
527
Location
Belgium
Degradation of a fanbase/hobby.jpg

In France, twenty some years ago, was first published a magazine titled GamePlay RPG:

kJhoaDg.png


More so than actual western RPGs, it delved into JRPGs like Vagrant Story and Tactics Ogre, survival-horror games like Galerians and Clock Tower, as well as anime from the eighties and nineties. And like most magazines at the time, a double page in each publication concerned itself with letters sent by readers, followed by the answers of the staff members; and one letter in particular I'll always remember.

For context, in France and Belgium of the nineties, anime wasn't a huge hit. A small handful of series like City Hunter were popular with the kids due to a very specific morning show; but outside of that, things like Kerberos Panzer Cops or Record Of Lodoss War were damn hard to find in any format. More or less, you had to know a guy who knew another guy who could make a copy of the tape he bought during his trip in Japan; or know the existence of that one minuscule shop at the end of a perpetually dirty, unfrequented alley. But there was a huge boom in the early naughties, and suddenly it started spreading everywhere.

So a reader of GamePlay RPG wrote a letter, lamenting that his hobby—anime—had quickly become so readily accessible and so popular as to attract a 'lesser crowd'. I.e. people who didn't really like anime, people who knew nothing of it, save that it was suddenly popular and a cool thing to like. The increasing popularity, the reader wrote, was going to ruin the little community of enthusiasts by flooding it on all parts with people who only followed the trend.

And Jay—creator and chief editor of GamePlay RPG—plainly treated the reader's concerns with scorn and derision. In Jay's opinion it was a most fantastic thing, this sudden popularity of anime. It meant more people would know of its wonders, and meant more of it would be published around these parts of the world. This popularity should be celebrated, not bemoaned, and there is no downside whatsoever.

Fast forward to twenty years later: anime, JRPGs, RPGs, DnD and things of a like ilk, have in a significant part been co-opted by dudebros and lolsorandom dangergirls and degenerate dweebs, to the point that the 'original enthusiasts' so to speak are kind of back into their little corner, amongst themselves, keeping to their—often aging—intimate circles.
 
Joined
Sep 22, 2022
Messages
187
Apocalypse World guy being a creep seemed a given. I remember reading that game's rules, and it barely gave any focus on the game's setting (so that the QM can make up his own thing, sure, but not even a premade example?), and instead on its weird rules, including a way-too-focused description of the consequences after one of your PCs sexs with another one, potentially including other PCs. Nevermind that IIRC other characters could use social skills against your player characters to "force" them to sleep with said NPCs, which felt like a cringier version of "using mind-control to do something nasty to you". Future games on these rules kept that "feature".
Was DW and AW from the same writer(s) though?
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
Sex on the game table is terrible. Have you ever rolled over onto a d4? it's even worse than stepping on a Lego.
That is because before we used them for gaming, they were called "caltrops" and used specifically to cause pain to people. The use of the D4 in gaming came into being when officers confiscated the dice to discouraging gambling, but the soldiers still had leftover caltrops.
 

NwNgger

Educated
Joined
Sep 27, 2020
Messages
85
You could be playing World of Darkness with fat smelly wiccans
I ran a game of Mage with genuinely mentally ill hippies and weirdos. Does that count? Mage always attracts those people due to needing a real world understanding of gnostism and /x/ tier schizophrenic spiritualism to play it properly. Mage is super misunderstood by people who never play it tbh. They want robe and wizard hat antics and get pissed off it's a superhero game about consenual reality and a fantasy version of the Matrix.
 

Reinhardt

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2015
Messages
29,739
run game about dress wearing people, be surprised it attracts dress wearing people.
 

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