Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[FeelTheRads]

The masses that don't understand thac0 or BAB. Like even MORE decline was needed.

 

[Rake]

Off-Topic' but was this already posted?

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AntiDanilevski/20131219/207425/Interview_with_Chris_Avellone.php

Hilarious interview with Chris Avellone. I have trouble figuring out how you can make one even more pretentious.

What do you think will happen to us after our death?
Oblivion. Not the game.
...although that would be interesting.

You must have been a terrible person...

 

[Athelas]

An afterlife stuck playing Oblivion would probably qualify as hell.

 

[Roguey]

The masses that don't understand thac0 or BAB. Like even MORE decline was needed.

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/200486752538996736

not being able to explain a concept to a nublet is my sniff test for bullshit complexity/lack of elegance/understanding.

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/410830938298277888

an enormous amount of D&D mechanical design, especially going back to red box days, is complexity that adds nothing. e.g. 1st/2nd ed's skill/prof/THAC0/save mechanics vs. 3E's d20 resolution mechanic. complexity is not always interesting.

Liking something because it's more difficult to understand is a ridiculous thing to do.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Obligatory:

The man was a prophet.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Liking something because it's more difficult to understand is a ridiculous thing to do.

First you need to say where the difficulty bar is set. Difficult to understand is way too relative.

 

[Grunker]

Stop it with the ridicoulous strawman that the problem with THAC0 is that people don't get it. That's not the fucking issue. The issue is that THAC0 is the textbook example of something that is deliberately overly complex. What does THAC0 achieve that other, simpler systems don't? NOTHING. THAC0 is literally just complexity for complexity's sake.

Turning THAC0 into BAB is the ideal example of what "good streamlining" is: simplifying something WITHOUT losing anything of value.

Anyone who defends fucking THAC0 can legitimately be written off as a trying-too-hard, nostalgically biased fuckhead.

inb4 accusations of desiring simplification is thrown at the resident gurps fanboi

 

[FeelTheRads]

What does THAC0 achieve that other, simpler systems doesn't?

Keeps away retards, a thing sorely needed for RPGs, imo.

 

[Grunker]

scores of retards that i have played ad&d with over the years prooves that theory wrong, even if it was more than a sarcastic ackknowledgement that you don't have any actual defense for THAC0

 

[DeepOcean]

What does THAC0 achieve that other, simpler systems doesn't?

Keeps away retards, a thing sorely needed for RPGs, imo.

Smudboy played Baldurs Gate 2, so your theory is wrong.

 

[FeelTheRads]

What defense should I have? It is what it is.
What do you have against it? Who says simpler is necessarily better than complex even if it achieves the same result?

And the "fucking issue" is that Sawyer has problems with thac0 and BAB and proficiencies (lol SO DIFFICULT) and so on exactly because dumbfucks can't understand them and we wouldn't want them to put their brain to work too much.

Smudboy played Baldurs Gate 2, so your theory is wrong.

Joke aside, you didn't even need to know what thac0 or really much of anything about D&D to play the IE games. And yet Sawyer thinks that at least IWD had a big problem because supposedly people not familiar with D&D couldn't play it.

Therefore, one can only conclude that he sets the bar REAAAAAALY fucking low.

 

[Lhynn]

Again the stupid rant against thac0?
Now im inclined to believe that an AD&D nerd stole grunkers family, raped his ex-gf and pissed on his dog.

 

[Grunker]

Who says simpler is necessarily better than complex even if it achieves the same result?

what the fuck am i reading

 

[Grunker]

Now im inclined to believe that an AD&D nerd stole grunkers family, raped his ex-gf and pissed on his dog.

actually, i play ad&d somewhat frequently and we have fun

 

[Goegoff]

Who says simpler is necessarily better than complex even if it achieves the same result?

William of Ockham

 

[FeelTheRads]

Actually, no.

 

[Lhynn]

actually, i play ad&d somewhat frequently and we have fun

Yes.
Plus the very same DM book says "if you dont like a thing about this, change it". It knows its lacking, and it also knows empowering the DM is the best way to make PnP fun.

 

[Grunker]

actually, i play ad&d somewhat frequently and we have fun

Yes.

Sorry, our fun runs purely on the power of nostalgia.

 

[coffeetable]

What does THAC0 achieve that other, simpler systems doesn't?

Keeps away retards, a thing sorely needed for RPGs, imo.

itt we conflate intelligence with willingness to devote ridiculous amounts of time to learning the intricacies of a convoluted system of rules, for no other reason than so you can talk to other people who have devoted a ridiculous amount of time learning the intricacies of a convoluted system of rules

this is why rpg groups end up as samplings of the autism spectrum

 

[FeelTheRads]

ridiculous amounts of time

In this codex thread we greatly exaggerate.
See, like this:
If you need ridiculous amounts of time to understand thac0, you're a retard and good riddance.

 

[coffeetable]

If you need ridiculous amounts of time to understand thac0, you're a retard and good riddance.

ive spent twenty years studying maths. if you need ridiculous amounts of time to understand differential forms, you're a retard and good riddance

hint: a concept is only easy to understand if you have prior exposure to similar concepts. if you have not played an RPG before, the 2e rulebooks may as well be written in hieroglyphs

 

[Grunker]

side-steppin' the issue again

thac0 is not OMG INSANE COMPLEX

it is simply way more complex that it needs to be, for no reason

feeltherads admitted this on the last page asking the glorious question:

"omg who says something is bad just because it achieves the exact same thing as something else just in a much more convoluted manner???"

which kind of settled the dispute from my point of view: if you think the above statement is self-explanatorily nonsense, go sit over here, if you think overcomplicating things for no reason other than teh lulz, go sit over there

there, debate ended.

 

[FeelTheRads]

the 2e rulebooks may as well be written in hieroglyphs

there, debate ended.

I disagree. BAB is next.

 

[Delterius]

The strangest thing about THAC0 is this bizarre mystique that even a ten years old game seems to have. The idea that games from bygone eras such as 1998 were too amazingly difficult and complex Weirdest of all is how this is more prevalent in discussions about the current direction of games. As if people must maintain that Baldur's Gate and IWD were hard because, apparently, now RPG developers must cater to filthy casuals and console players.

Except that Baldur's Gate isn't hard. And neither is IWD. Farther still is something like THAC0 to be complex. Its not even needlessly complex. Fuck, its not even 'complex'. Its just badly conveyed. Nothing at all changes if you just call it 'chance to hit' and invert the AC/THAC0 'math' into the positives like every other statistic ever. Except I suppose that some random internet persona's anus clenches at any sign of streamlining, like they are too dumb to see the difference between good and bad straightforwardness.

Maybe PoE could include a version of the character sheet where every attribute and stat is written in ancient glanfathan. Like 'Ua Eir Ainmere' comes with a tooltip that says 'this is your chance to hit, we didn't call it that in order to recreate the IE feels of not having read the manual even though we haven't had to require that for nearly a decade'.

 

[coffeetable]

it is simply way more complex that it needs to be, for no reason

this isn't aimed at you grunker, you just reminded me of it: there's this great talk by rich hickey with a tilt towards software, and while you all should definitely watch the whole thing, the first slide in particular is fantastic. it gives the etymology of "simple" and "easy".

"simple" derives from the greek "sim plex", or "single braid". this is opposed to "complex", which is "many braids".

"easy" has many posited origins, but the one he picks out is "ease < aise < adjacens", which is "lie near".

the important thing to take away is that simplicity is objective. a simple system is exactly one where there's very little interleaving. "easy" is subjective, and is relative to what you've done before.


ye olde D&D might be easy for some people, but anyone who claims it's simple is out of their mind