Editorial RPG Codex Retrospective: Roguey dismantles white privilege in Tim Cain's Temple of Elemental Evil

[Jaesun]

Can anyone refute any statement specified in this Retrospective?

 

[Nael]

I do not like that Roguey guy.

 

[eric__s]

Can anyone refute any statement specified in this Retrospective?

The majority of the article is a sequential list of battles roguey fought and how much she enjoyed each one. What is to refute? The way identifying potions works is bad? Okay. Sometimes things don't work right? Okay.

I read another article of roguey's that was a lot like this, an introductory opinion followed by a list of Things That Happened and her immediate reaction to them mixed with trivia about the game's development. I think it might have been Icewind Dale 2? What am I supposed to get from this? It's not an analysis, it's a chronology of game events. What would have made this an article worth reading is if it actually did discuss white privilege in the game. The footnote dedicated to it is a snide jab - look at these idiot developers - not an exploration of why it is actually bad. The parts that are interesting, the harsh development cycle, the update of the rule set mid-development and the way it affected the final product, the brief mention of Zuggtmoy's design change, are things that I would have liked to read about in far more depth.

Next time you decide to do one of these, do something other than a timeline of caustic reactions to things in the game.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Can anyone refute any statement specified in this Retrospective?

Opinion cannot be refuted.

I would have liked to read something on the mechanics and tactical aspects of combat; this review is lacking in this area - focusing instead on content or commentary on things other than combat mechanics which really is the star of the show along with art and a few great tracks.

 

[Twiglard]

Will try.

Addressing the Roguey question, hopefully an answer, or even a solution could follow:

> Bloodlines was even worse about these matters. Someone could write mountains of text about the problematic aspects in all of Troika's games; fortunately for all of us, that's not what this article is about.

For some very subjective meaning of "worse". Bloodlines, good art direction, atmosphere, good in respect of character concepts.

This side of whether anything's "problematic" hardly shared by anyone other than the most fight-seeking female-superiority "people".

> This inept design is all on Troika's shoulders.

Inept or deadline-related? Whether Troika's ambition (to faithfully represent an RPG system where potion identification is a valid action) excuses not worth to enter the temple is a point to discuss.

Even aware of deadline and feature creep at the end: "if Troika had used their 16-turned-19 month schedule to adapt two 32-page modules instead of a massive 128-page supermodule".

Hardly worth an absolute statement, p. much a bare assertion.

 

[Sensuki]

Can anyone refute any statement specified in this Retrospective?

Sure. The statement about ethnocentric racism is a crock of shit because in the Greyhawk world, a person of asian appearance would be exotic, particularly to this location. That is simply writing from the character's perspective. Therefore: Roguey is attempting to be a social justice warrior and/or if this is a WWJS attempt then sorry bro but you're way off target.

The "haha I'm better than you at games" attitude is pretty lols, since I'll bet that anything that Roguey finds 'hard' in any game he will just palm off as "shit design"/not enjoyable gameplay. "Hard" is generally irrelevant in a single-player game if you've played it before, or read walkthroughs. Then there's always J.E. Sawyer's own words about D&D games not being challenging if you have a thorough understanding of the rules already, which I'm sure a lot of codexers don't .

 

[Cynic]

Fuck you Roguey.

 

[Severian Silk]

I started making a tool to increase enemy unit levels according to RAW, thus making the game harder, but never got much farther than a proof of concept spreadsheet.

 

[Trash]

The link to the lost caverns comic isn't working, Roguey

 

[imweasel]

I skipped ToEE back in the day, but now I really want to play it. Thanks Roguey.

 

[Shannow]

Can anyone refute any statement specified in this Retrospective?

Sure. But I got bored and stopped reading after 3 paragraphs. The read magic thing was the only valid complaint. After that it was nonsense.
But why would I waste even more time with her by reading everything and then refuting the parts that need refuting? Will you pay me for it? No? So why bother? It's not like anybody gives a serious fuck about Roguey's opinion. *shrug*

 

[aratuk]

I'm only around here occasionally… but didn't Roguey used to be addressed as and referred to as female?

 

[Black_Willow]

I'm only around here occasionally… but didn't Roguey used to be addressed as and referred to as female?

 

[Infinitron]

I'm only around here occasionally… but didn't Roguey used to be addressed as and referred to as female?

That's part of the joke.

 

[Sitra Achara]

You should review the co8 mod next. A perfect opportunity to rub it in that the best content is made by Livonya.

P.S. the lag in the nodes is a bug related to particle effects. Mostly fixed in latest Co8.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this is shameful and should have never been posted.

But whatever, have your cheap-ass "lulz" and trolling.

 

[thesheeep]

Can we please have an official review of the retrospective?

 

[Telengard]

Admittedly, most of it was Dear Diary stuff. As in, Dear Diary: today I beat Balor better than a certain mod on Codex, who shall remain nameless. But, people pay good money to read others' diaries. Okay, usually they're the diaries of sex workers or politicians who act like they're sex workers. But still, we're all supposedly RPG fans here, so we should find it interesting to read the diary thoughts of a fellow RPGer. Even one who's a massive troll. Especially one who's a massive troll. In that, we can see us.

 

[Kz3r0]

I would read that tripe only if mentions Cloud' sword.

 

[crawlkill]

I guess I somehow thought this was already the consensus on ToEE? apparently it isn't. I found it boring, hackneyed and undercontextualized from the get-go, never got far in it. and that was as someone who was moderately into 3E D&D.

that dialogue is truly cringeworthy. it's the best thing about Bloodlines, which is far and away my favorite of theirs, that it's actually possible to remember the lines and the general mis-en-scènelyness for more than half an hour after you've experienced it. I'm surprised Troika's quality (both in terms of "goodness" and "feel") has bounced around so wildly. I wonder if they had a lot of staff changes, or just hugely different design specs between three such different games as Arcanum, ToEE and Bloodlines.

the fact that they had to make the fungal queen hot is basically inexcusable, though. come the fuck on. these studios create their own manchild audience and then protest that the audience wants it. there are a million million ways to make a character visually interesting without resorting to "body I've been trained to wish I could have" or "body I've been trained to want to fuck."

the guy who writes Dresden Codak actually did a really cool blog on character design a while ago, which has sort of become my personal standard in evaluating character art assets: http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/post/3583964949/figures-they-speak-for-themselves-mildly-nsfw

 

[Harold]

It's clear they had the least amount of time spent on them, considering I have a PC that's 8-9 years older than a top-of-the-line PC from 2003 and yet there are times where the game freezes for seconds/sometimes even minutes.

So you have a PC from '94-'95 and are surprised the game runs like shit? Why should we believe any analysis from this 'review' then? A shit under-min-spec PC automatically disqualifies anything you say about the product. Maybe instead of being lazy boring fucks and doing lame trolling on the front page the Codex-Editing-Staff (tm) should do a fundraiser to buy Roguey a new PC.

 

[Infinitron]

It's clear they had the least amount of time spent on them, considering I have a PC that's 8-9 years older than a top-of-the-line PC from 2003 and yet there are times where the game freezes for seconds/sometimes even minutes.

So you have a PC from '94-'95 and are surprised the game runs like shit? Why should we believe any analysis from this 'review' then? A shit under-min-spec PC automatically disqualifies anything you say about the product. Maybe instead of being lazy boring fucks and doing lame trolling on the front page the Codex-Editing-Staff (tm) should do a fundraiser to buy Roguey a new PC.

That's probably a typo, should be "newer"

 

[Harold]

Tell me more.
Fucking editing of articles: how does it work? Who gives a fuck, right? Much more important to preface the tl,dr front-page troll post with a omgsofunny! photoshop than actually doing editing. Prestigious Game Magazine Professional Journalism at its finest.

 

[Infinitron]

What, and alter Roguey's brilliant original vision?

 

[Harold]

Then the '8 years old PC' is not a typo, it's God's Josh's gospel, meaning the whole 'article' means fuck all, you can't review a game from '03 on a '94 PC. IT'S EITHER/OR MOTHERFUCKERS, YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS!