Quote from: cranebump;847238Hmmmm, I see...Senator Brady, your response?

That there's this agenda against a single word, and that people are ascribing meaning to it where there is none.  

I also find it amusing that someone pretty much right out said that a AD&D2e sucks, and no one took them to task for it.  I guess Gronan doesn't actually care about any other edition until he perceives an attack on his own.

At the end of the day, I still believe that every Edition after the little brown books are an evolution, and adaptation, to better fit the way that gamers changed over the years.  If people prefer one edition over an other, that's their prerogative.  It has no bearing my beliefs, nor should my opinion have any bearing on theirs.  And if they want to get upset, that's their problem, not mine.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;847243That there's this agenda against a single word, and that people are ascribing meaning to it where there is none.  

Boo! Hoo! Everybody is being mean to me just because I don't know what words mean. It's a conspiracy I tell ya. They all have an agenda. Of some kind. That I also don't understand. Waaaaa!

QuoteI also find it amusing that someone pretty much right out said that a AD&D2e sucks, and no one took them to task for it.

Because it was obvious he was only stating his personal and subjective opinion that he doesn't like AD&D. He was not claiming that objectively AD&D, as a game created later in time than OD&D, must have a higher entropic level and therefore is only a decayed version of the original, pristine design of OD&D...because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. :rolleyes:

QuoteAt the end of the day, I still believe that every Edition after the little brown books are an evolution...

There you go again. And you still don't know what the words you keep using actually mean.

Quote from: Bren;847385Boo! Hoo! Everybody is being mean to me just because I don't know what words mean. It's a conspiracy I tell ya. They all have an agenda. Of some kind. That I also don't understand. Waaaaa!

Amusingly you're ascribing the very same tone people reacted to my statement of 'evolution' to me.  Could it be that you're projecting you're dismay at your own misuse of the word?

Frankly, I don't know, and couldn't care less.  I made my statement, I stand by it, and if people want to get upset about it, nothing I can do about people looking for something to get offended about.  At least that's the impression I'm being given.

Quote from: Bren;847385Because it was obvious he was only stating his personal and subjective opinion that he doesn't like AD&D. He was not claiming that objectively AD&D, as a game created later in time than OD&D, must have a higher entropic level and therefore is only a decayed version of the original, pristine design of OD&D...because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. :rolleyes:

Actually he did.  He never added 'in his opinion', he flat out state that 2e sucks.  Boom, done.

In fact, let me repost it for you:

Quote from: Justin Alexander;846336Because it's a shitty game. 2nd Edition is significantly better than 1st Edition, but it's still a clunky mess of broken mechanics that virtually no one ever plays without substantially house ruling the hell out of it.

Collectively, AD&D is the worst RPG published under the D&D trademark.

(And, yes, I am including 4th Edition in that assessment.)

Where does he say 'in his opinion'?  I see him bashing AD&D outright, and yet, no one bats an eye.  Interesting, wouldn't you say?

Quote from: Bren;847385There you go again. And you still don't know what the words you keep using actually mean.

Really?  I have the dictionary.com page for it, and it tells me otherwise.  Could it be because you don't want it to mean what it really does, that you want to continue this charade?

Personally, I'm done.  I've had my go at the topic, and apparently, found the one word that sets a bunch of people off on this forum, to the point of deliberately misreading it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;847392Amusingly you're ascribing the very same tone people reacted to my statement of 'evolution' to me.  Could it be that you're projecting you're dismay at your own misuse of the word?

No it couldn't. But by all means keep beating that silly-ass drum.

QuoteFrankly, I don't know, and couldn't care less.  I made my statement, I stand by it, and if people want to get upset about it, nothing I can do about people looking for something to get offended about.  At least that's the impression I'm being given.

Upset or offended? No. Think you are being a disingenuous maroon? Yes.

QuoteActually he did.  He never added 'in his opinion', he flat out state that 2e sucks.  Boom, done.

My mistake. I thought you were referring to Gronan disliking AD&D not Jason Alexander. Jason confuses his subjective opinion with objective fact on a daily basis.

QuoteWhere does he say 'in his opinion'?  I see him bashing AD&D outright, and yet, no one bats an eye.  Interesting, wouldn't you say?

It might be interesting if it were true. But it's not. In fact several people disagreed with Jason.

Here One Horse Town is pointing out the silliness of Jason's opinion by sarcastically referring to Jason's love of the super innovative Jenga tower used in Dread, a game Jason and all the hip kidz play.

Quote from: One Horse Town;846341Ad&d should have used Jenga.

Ulari disagreed with Jason's assessment of AD&D's design by citing it's popularity and usability as a counter to Jason's subjective opinion.

Quote from: Ulairi;846358D&D had the widest reach in popular culture under Ad&d. I play Ad&d without a lot of house rules. We pretty much run it raw.

And Gronan himself took Jason to task for his idiotic comment right here.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;846483

Quote from: Justin Alexander;846336Because it's a shitty game. 2nd Edition is significantly better than 1st Edition, but it's still a clunky mess of broken mechanics that virtually no one ever plays without substantially house ruling the hell out of it.

Collectively, AD&D is the worst RPG published under the D&D trademark.

(And, yes, I am including 4th Edition in that assessment.)

Stupid people dislike AD&D because it's too full of big words for them.

People aren't picking on you because we are upset or offended. You said something dumb. Then you waffled. Then you returned to the same dumb statement.

QuotePersonally, I'm done.  

We can only hope. But I kind of doubt it.

I may not always agree with you, Christopher Brady, but since your very first post contesting your viewpoint that other definitions of 'evolution' being congruent with D&D's existence over time and versions, you have been correct. You explicitly made a distinction from your beginning that you are not talking about it in a biological or ordinal context. So I don't understand why we have so many more pages on this; it's like watching the fight against phantoms.

But whatever makes people happy, no? :cool:

Quote from: Bren;847398People aren't picking on you because we are upset or offended. You said something dumb. Then you waffled. Then you returned to the same dumb statement.

Nonsense.

Which game is better is purely a matter of opinion.

Anything I say other than that is poking the monkeys with sticks.

... I have the stick, not the monkeys.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;847465Nonsense.

Try to be more specific about what you are calling as "nonsense"? Because I have a really big stick of my own and you look like a primate to me.

To clarify, I was arguing that which game is better is a matter of taste which is irrelevant to the date of publication. There is a reason milk needs a sell by date and RPGs do not.

...okay, there are enough layers of quotation and response that I'm no longer sure who is responding to what any more.  I think I misunderstood your comment.

Kind of like if-statements nested eight or ten deep.  At some point you lose track of what the hell's going on.

Quote from: Bren;847077I've no bias regarding the word. I'm biased against people using the word to support their own agenda that certain changes in games made games better as opposed to simply different.

I dig that, but is it really what Christopher Brady is doing? Maybe you're reading too much between the lines. More specifically, is CB really unclear on the concept that "better" is an opinion? Or is that perhaps taken as understood?

From the mere fact that some other people claim "better" is an objective standard, it does not follow that CB does so in this case. Are you paying enough attention to what CB actually says?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;847479...okay, there are enough layers of quotation and response that I'm no longer sure who is responding to what any more.  I think I misunderstood your comment.

Kind of like if-statements nested eight or ten deep.  At some point you lose track of what the hell's going on.

It happens. Besides it gave me a good excuse to wave a big stick around.

Now the new fangled programs match parens for you. In the old days we had to do our own matching and sort and carry our punch cards to the compiler ourselves.

Quote from: vini_lessa;847188Oh I don't see a problem with that word. See, I'd argue we do have objective criteria for judging game designs and that's presentation, easiness use and learn, speed of play, and accomplishment of stated goals. And that involves everything you cite in your post (unified mechanics, simpler math, less idiosyncrasy, etc), and the reason why I think the early 80's to mid 90's was the period with more crap designs ever released.

Wrong.

Now, I'd agree that such things as editing, quality of print, production values, etc, ARE objective, and have gotten better.

But the others are pure subjective.  I, for instance, HATE "unified mechanics."  Unless you're using percentiles for everything, which gets clumsy when I want a 50-50 chance... I'd rather use a d6.  Do people think that Dave and Gary, and those of us who were playtesters, were so FUCKING STUPID we never thought of using one die roll system for everything?

And one person's "idiosyncratic" is another person's "interesting."

I don't mind people liking later games, but I hate like hell the imputation that we were a bunch of godsdamn drooling imbeciles who couldn't think.

Quote from: Bren;847483It happens. Besides it gave me a good excuse to wave a big stick around.

Now the new fangled programs match parens for you. In the old days we had to do our own matching and sort and carry our punch cards to the compiler ourselves.

...yes, I've dropped a deck of punch cards when I didn't bother punching the sequence numbers.

I personally prefer a series of if statements where the "else" condition is "go to end of function."  It's more wordy, but each if statement tests for exactly one desired condition, and it makes it a HELL of a lot clearer what's going on.

Of course, when I was told that I "write C like a COBOL programmer" I took it as a compliment.  I don't think it was intended as one, but too bad.

You old dudes are like totally, like, talking about really old stuff

Quote from: Phillip;847481I dig that, but is it really what Christopher Brady is doing? Maybe you're reading too much between the lines. More specifically, is CB really unclear on the concept that "better" is an opinion? Or is that perhaps taken as understood?

From the mere fact that some other people claim "better" is an objective standard, it does not follow that CB does so in this case. Are you paying enough attention to what CB actually says?

I think I'm paying more than enough attention.

He's changed what he has said throughout the thread. A prior poster documented the evolution (heh heh) of his usage of the term in his use of the connotations of growth and progress. CB is insistent on using the word evolution and is extremely loath to just label change as change so as to avoid seeming to argue that the change is anything other than different people writing different rules to appeal to different tastes and not some forward moving, inevitable progress in game design.

If he doesn't want to claim that newer games are better than older games there are ways to talk about the observable fact that different games have different rules and are designed differently and that appeal to different people without talking about games evolving.

Quote from: The Ent;847489You old dudes are like totally, like, talking about really old stuff

I can't intelligently talk about my lumbago, but if you like, I could tell you about my shoulder separation. That's fairly new.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;847089I personally think that an additive system was a good change.  It's easier for the human brain, apparently.  Or at least so I heard.

Skipping the added work is easier on my brain. Noticing whether one number is greater than another doesn't even involve conscious arithmetic!

Adding a couple of small numbers beforehand is still in the category of pretty trivial, though. It seems to me ludicrous to make a big deal of this -- all the more so in light of the great increase in complexity from old D&D to the WotC versions. People swallow the camel and balk at the crumb because they've become habituated to it.

QuoteBut I'll also concede that not everyone would like it.